Sugar dating’s a weird one. It doesn’t necessarily evoke a ‘fuck you, pay me’ mindset. It teeters on a fine, fine line between sex work and a real relationship. What happens when you find yourself longing romantically for that oldie you normally see a couple of times a month? Is a proper relationship between yourself and a literal OAP even possible?! Turns out, it is. Once upon a time, I fell in love with my sugar daddy- and so our story began. Here’s the Pros and Cons of the relationship in comparison with my previous ‘normal’ relationships.
The Pros
1. Maturity
It’s the thing that most women who like dating older men say when people ask them but why? Now of course this isn’t always going to be the case. You’re going to meet young guys who are old souls, just as you’ll meet old guys who throw their toys out of the pram or don’t seem to have an emotionally intelligent bone in their bodies. But for the most part, older guys tend to be more mature when it comes to knowing how to act in a relationship.
Whilst my previous younger boyfs were thoughtful, emotionally intelligent guys who loved me very much, they weren’t experienced or self-assured enough to know how to properly express their love. On the other hand, my daddy-turned-boyf regularly did little things, small actions (cook me dinner, surprise me with plans, give me little gifts) that made a huge difference. My valuing these actions so highly might seem cold and shallow- but it’s not the action itself that I cared about; it’s the fact that these actions made me feel loved. Real emotions are the obvious key to a relationship. But it can’t work on that alone. You have to consciously act on your love. Older guys tend to know how to do this.
2. Our Differences
Opposites attract, yada yada yada. I didn’t meet my sugar daddy through my usual social circles, as I did with my previous relationships. Whilst I would normally end up with artsy, sensitive, broken-boy types with a very similar outlook on the world to myself, this was absolutely not the vibe of my daddy-turned-boyf. From the outside looking in, people might wonder how on Earth our relationship could work. There was the obvious age difference- meaning we were at very different stages of our lives, but there were also differences in interests, political views, personality types, you name it… but in my opinion this only made the relationship even better. Our differences complemented each other, the best example being in moments of conflict. In previous relationships, sensitive me and sensitive boyfriend would both be too fearful and avoidant to ever properly confront our problems, silently pushing the other away. In my daddy-boyf relationship, his confrontational attitude meant that he would pull me out of my shell and allow my feelings to flow out.
When it came to our different interests, we both eventually stepped out of our comfort zones and did things we wouldn’t normally do, only bringing us closer together and making the relationship more transformative than ones I’ve experienced with people so similar to myself.
3. The Sex
A sugar relationship tends to begin on more of a physical basis. It is first and foremost about ticking the good sex box. A more emotional connection is a mere bonus. Therefore, with my daddy-boyf, we’d had sex plenty of times before a real relationship began. This meant that for a long time, our dynamic had survived purely from the sexual compatibility. So I knew that the physical connection was strong, which in my (perhaps controversial) opinion, is one of the most important things in a relationship. When the physical connection is lacking, it starts to impact the emotional connection.
There are also many positives to having sex with older men. One is that they tend not to be selfish lovers. They’ve been around the block so at this point in their lives, they tend to be more focused on their partner’s pleasure. There’s less of that high-testosterone, relentless pounding and more focus on sensual experience and trying out new things. Older guys also tend to be less brainwashed by internet porn that the men of our generation, meaning that my daddy-boyf, whilst being very open to experimentation, didn’t have that perverse, unhealthy obsession with perverse fantasies to keep their desire alive.
The Cons
1. The Girl and Woman Expectation
One of my biggest qualms with older guys is their decision to go for women half their age, and to then berate them for displaying any aspects of immaturity. Sorry daddies, but you dug your own grave on this one. You can’t expect to get the endearing innocence of a girl and the maturity and experience of a woman your own age all in one package. The two things sort of contradict one another. When I turned from sugar baby to girlfriend, the reality of my inexperience and naivety about life became clear to my daddy-boyf. I felt as though my youth was partly why he loved me, and yet he wanted to change this when it became inconvenient for him. He wasn’t keen on my 25 year old life- going to nightclubs, or staying up late. And around his friends he wanted me to participate in the conversation like I was one of them, which was difficult and intimidating when in reality I was so much younger. All the same, when it suited him, he would still ‘mentor’ me and revel in my youth and our dynamic in which he had a lot of control. It was a challenge, to stand my ground and let him know that whilst his frustration was valid, his expectation of both a girl and a woman in the relationship was unrealistic.
2. How it Began: Power Dynamics
In my time as a sugar baby, I had zero problem with the dominance of the daddies. If they wanted to choose the food I would eat at a restaurant, they could; if they wanted me to dress a certain way, I would; if they wanted to always choose how we spent our time together, they could- after all, they were paying me for a good experience. But catch one of my usual boyfriends trying to tell me what to do with my appearance and I would be having absolutely none of it. When sugar daddy became boyf, the control he had as a daddy sort of just continued on when we entered a real relationship. At first I wasn’t affected by it, but after a while I wondered, If this is no longer a transactional relationship, why am I allowing you to decide what we do every day, or have influence over my appearance? I started to feel like a toy, swept into his life as an accessory more than a human being, which is no problem in sugaring but a huge problem in a real relationship. I felt I shouldn’t have to sacrifice my freedom just because I was part of his world. In not doing any of the things I was interested in doing, what he could learn about me was capped, whereas I knew all about him and how he lived his life. I had to very actively pull myself out of my sugar baby go-along-with-it approach and start pushing more to do things together that I cared about and go places I wanted to go to to create balance.
3. The Sex Work Past
What became a point of contention in mine and daddy-boyf’s relationship was my sex work past. During the time that I was a sugar babe, he never pitied me; our transactional meets were all fun and games and he never seemed to care about the fact that I was more or less a sex worker. Once we entered a relationship, and I was no longer in the ‘whore’ category to him, the fact that I enjoyed aspects of my sugaring past seemed to become a truth that daddy-boyf was unable to accept. He felt relieved whenever I expressed feelings of sadness and regret about my sugaring experiences. It seemed I was much more of a respectable human being to him if I were a victim in my sex work narrative. He pleaded with me to never go back into sugaring, and whilst I know he had good intentions, I felt mildly annoyed by it. I was a fully grown human after all, and capable of making my own informed decisions. I never once asked him to not go back to paying girls for sex, because I personally felt I had no right to ask that of him- it was his life to live.
It’s common knowledge that this is a number one reason why sex workers don’t enter relationships with someone who once paid them for sex. Out of a sudden fear and a desire for you to be theirs and only theirs, they often try to victimise you or alter you, to virgin-alise you and take you far away from your ‘whore’ identity. One of the biggest challenges of entering a real relationship with an ex-sugar daddy was to remember that for me, sex work was never a solely degrading thing. It had ups and downs, there were sad parts, happy parts and moments of true empowerment.
Iso
Iso is a writer and filmmaker based in East London. She is passionate about all things erotic and leads a sexy, shame-free life in hope that she can inspire others to do the same. Originally from a Northern seaside town, she is naturally drawn to the best things in life: candyfloss, trashy karaoke bars and heart-shaped sunglasses.
