Would I kick him out if he were suddenly disabled? Well, I totally failed to kick the tires, so I'd have only myself to blame. Onset of diabetes in middle age (after the hookup) and that raises those odds. Between the two of us, in the last five years, we've both had too-youthful cataract surgery go awry (his a retinal detachment, just to keep up with me and my surgeries to repair all the botch, leaving me with glaucoma and now some nerve damage), and he's been hospitalized twice in rapid succession in near-death diabetic ketoacidosis. And we both smoke. 
I'd kick him out for a lot of fairly minor reasons, but disability, no, that wouldn't be one.
What I was getting at though wasn't the uses in the outward sense, like for financial support or household duties. It was in the psychological/emotional sense.
It's part of our hardwiring, that we seek out a mate/partner (the polyamorous can read themselves in, there). To fulfil those intangible needs that are hardwired in (else there might be lots of babies but few living to breed themselves, without two protective parents - and I speak historically).
We use the other person to meet our need for emotional closeness, touch, laughs, and sex. Another person really is always an object to us; we are the only subjects in our own lives. The trick, I think, is to treat people like subjects of their own lives. That's what the concept of human rights is really all about.
But our own interests, as subjects of our own lives, are always going to factor into anything we do. Rare is the person who is going to sacrifice their own life to save someone else's, or give up the last piece of pizza to someone who needs it only a teensy bit more.
Sex does involve using the other party, I can't disagree with that. But the issue is whether the exchange is fair. Is food or shelter or money a fair exchange for sex?
Well, if you really really need them, who could say no? Except that this is definitely exploitation, and exploitation is precisely treating people like objects and is just something we reject ... beyond a certain level. Obviously our economic system is based on exploitation. But addressing exploitation is no different from anything else in life: we draw lines where it's possible to draw them.
To me, progress is precisely moving that line toward less exploitation, whatever realm you're looking at. You can't draw the line where it will mean someone is unable to get food and shelter, but you should not draw it in such a way that you tolerate exploitation where there is an alternative that would benefit the exploited party at least nearly equally. Sweden didn't just outlaw prostitution by outlawing the buying of sex services, it set up a whole system to provide alternatives for prostitutes.
Do the interests of the exploiter need to be considered? Not so much, in my own opinion.
Remedying the power imbalance in any relationship, whether economic or sexual, is the goal, so there is no opening for the exploitation.
And then just working on the politically personal: learning how to show people to relate to other people as subjects of their own lives, even if not of equal standing in one's own life as one's self and even if they are objects in one's own life.
Hey, I know what I'm saying.
Edit history
= new reply since forum marked as read
