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Viliam comments on Open Thread, Apr. 13 - Apr. 19, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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You could make the argument that someone in a relationship in which serious changes have happened should precommit to keep in the relationship even if it changes. The precommitment is bad in the case of some changes, but makes the relationship more stable and reduces the chance of there being such changes in marginal cases (such as one partner becoming incrementally less attractive and the other partner having an incrementally greater chance of cheating on the first partner).
Doing things out of obligation, even though they don't benefit us, is just our way of describing precommitment. And you don't need a transaction to have a precommitment.
Of course, this isn't necessarily correct, because whether this precommitment is overall good or bad depends on the balance between different kinds of cases, which can't be deduced from first principles.
You're right that you don't need a transaction to have precommitment (and precommitment may be good or bad, depending on the circumstances). But transactions make mutually beneficial precommitments more likely. Why should A precommit to stay with B? What's in it for A? But if A precommits to stay with B in exchange for B precommitting to stay with A, now we're cooking with gas.