Bryan and I trade regularly. We have ongoing daily trades like Bryan emptying the dishwasher and me preparing meals. We trade long-term, too, like Bryan's job that moved us to Oklahoma: he chooses where to live and I choose where we vacation. We also trade with money. Bryan is currently paying me not to bring home a puppy. Most of the time our trading is simple and with a little bit of haggling, we can exchange goods or services that make both of us happy.
Recently, I had to trade my pride.
It was awful. But Bryan had spent the last evening with me and my friends being the designated driver while we gossiped about The Bachelor and Tosh.0. Here I was, at the house of Bryan's friend and also economics professor. I'd played all sorts of weird economics games there (Wealth of Nations, Carcassonne, Puerto Rico, Dominion, Pandemic) knowing it was a trade.
Something was different this time. The game on the table was one that I promised myself I would never play. The nerdiest of all games: Magic the Gathering.
Immediately, I started backing out and offering to play any other game. They poured me another glass of wine and peer pressured me into playing. They gave me the devil deck and started explaining the spells, enchantments, creatures, sorcery, graveyards, tapping, wizards and all that nerdy stuff. The game is very complicated and back in the 1990s, it was novel.
First, I ganged up with the other wife and attacked Bryan and his friend. We killed the boys off quickly and then she killed me.
Three. Hours. Later.
It was brutally complicated, but it was more fun than I thought it would be. I liked that my deck had special powers that their decks didn't have. I liked that you could build your deck out of the thousands of cards. I liked that there were demons and devils that could take lives away from players without costing me anything. I liked beating the professors. I liked that some people think the game is evil. I like a lot more of the game than I thought I would. It scared me.
That's kind of how it goes in my marriage to Bryan. He loves to trade things I've never tried (or think I won't want to try) because he enjoys pushing my comfort zone, and he has a quest to bring out the inner nerd in me.
We're operating in a free market: property rights are voluntarily exchanged at a price arranged solely by the mutual consent of sellers and buyers. We do not coerce each other, in the sense that they obtain each other's property rights without the use of physical force, threat of physical force, or fraud. Instead, we engage in trade simply because we both consent and believe that what they are getting is worth more than or as much as what they give up.
