Sugar Baby

me like shit anymore because I'm in control. I'm getting paid for my time and their experience. So it felt really powerful. After probably a really rough eighteen months of not having much body autonomy for quite some time, I found out about it through a friend who said that she had dabbled in the sugar baby industry. I think I had always heard about it sort of on and off terms of being thrown out. But I didn't know how accessible it was to become a sugar baby, so

I just found a website online and signed up. The basis of it is men paying you for your time with them, so the dates I would go on would look fastly different. So I had one client in particular, like I'd just accompany him to his business dinners and he'd buy me new clothes to wear or get my makeup done, and I would spend the night at his dinners with him, or like fundraising events. There were men who just didn't want to be alone. I had one client who had broken up with his girlfriend and just

paid me. He wanted to call me his ex girlfriend's name and just hug me and paid me for that time. So it was really different what every man is looking

for in the sugar baby sugar daddy world. I loved how I felt like I got to have like this secret life, like this secret world where I got to meet all of these people and have lots of new experiences, and I was exposed to worlds that I'd never normally be exposed to, Like the line of work I do doesn't come with fancy dinners or corporate events, and so being exposed to those things was really fun for me.

The things that were the highs were like I suppose, like unexpected generosity, like people who would just like shower you with gifts that was sort of unexpected, or those kinds of events. And the lows were people who would just be really degrading, like I've paid for this time with you, so we'll do whatever I want to do, and didn't take any time to get to know me. That was more just I won't see that person again.

I never thought I would do it long term, but there were some really great clients too, like one named James. I'd been doing it for roughly six months, and I had been with a few who I had seen multiple times. Some were just one off and it really varied. But really immediately upon meeting James, I knew that was going to be really different. He was just lovely. From the first time we met. He was very awkward. He was

forty eight. He is very tall, quite dorky looking like definitely not my type by any stretch of the imagination. Really just looked like a middle age man. Yeah, definitely. His height took me by surprise, like I came up

to his shoulders. We just went out for lunch, and I remember him saying like, oh, you're never gonna want to see me again after today, But I at that point it was like, well, you paid me for my time, and why wouldn't I I got lunch and five hundred dollars, Like this is great, So I was like, no, of course I'd happily see you again. He was very recently widowed. He had lost his wife of twenty three years only

two months prior, so he was seeking company. For the most part, on the first meeting, we didn't speak much about his wife. But I remember the second meeting, We're in a hotel room and was sort of just like cuddling on the bed and he was telling me about her, and I rolled away to not be facing him because I was crying. I was just devastated for him, and I remember thinking, this is horrendous, how can someone experience such a loss in their life, and feeling so much

sadness for him as he spoke about her. And I think that me having such a big reaction definitely led to him wanting to continue the relationship because he knew that I was more than just sort of surface deep, like I really cared.

wanted to protect him straight away. He was just kind and gentle and really genuine, and he wanted to get to know me and what I wanted, and he was interested in my career aspirations, and we had spoken about like what UNI degree he had done thirty years prior and things like that, So it wasn't just a man sexualizing me because he thought that's what he had paid for and that's what he was entitled to. It was

just a man who wanted to create a connection. We're seeing each other weekly to begin with, the first few months was probably weekly. I distinctly remember maybe like four or five dates in and we would text a lot, and I knew he was having a rough day and he was quite upset about his late wife, and I I text him one night saying can I give you a call? And he texts back saying like, oh my god, are you breaking up with me? And I said no, like, I just I know you've had a really rough day

and I just want to talk. And from that point on, I think we would spend three hours a day talking on the phone every day. We would text all the time when we were apart, and it was just lovely. So when we had all this time together on the phone,

it was really different for me. So I had been in a really long term relationship, which was a marriage that had taken a really rocky turn when we had lost our baby and we were grieving separately, I suppose, and myself and my husband had always lived like a very working class life, like we'd both worked full time for as long as we'd been together, and all of a sudden, I was seeing this retired man who me

calling him was his world. So he had unlimited time for me, and I wasn't used to that because adult relationships are so constrained by work pressure and life and all of these other things that he didn't have. So when his kids were at school during the day, he was just constantly available to me, and that was something I had never experienced before, just that availability. And any time I wanted to talk to someone or needed to talk to someone, I knew I could pick up the

phone and he'd be there anytime of the day. He would just buy me so much jewelry, gorgeous jewelry, and like we'd set prices for what he was going to gift me in exchange for my time, and he'd always give me like double what I had said I was expecting, or throw in like vouchers or like a beautiful bracelet one time. So he would just always go sort of above and beyond. It made me feel really valued, yeah,

just valued. Maybe By the fifth time I saw him, I remember thinking to myself, like, this is as good as it gets in this world. So you're not like I'm not going to try anymore, I'm not going to go on any more dates, because like, I've reached the peak of what happens in the sugar baby world. In my thought processes, I thought, I've reached a peak here, like this is as good as it gets. I have been so showered with like generosity and love and gifts and affection I can't go back to like the tire

kickers of the community. Like so, I made a decision pretty early on that he was going to be my last ever client.

to you when they don't. But he'd say he loved me, and I think we'd been seeing each other for like six weeks when he asked how I wanted to be proposed to, and then he sent me a message like sorry, I didn't mean to accidentally propose, like I don't even think I want to get married again. But he was just he was overwhelmed in his own feelings as well, so he would tell me he loved me, and I think after about two months I told him that I

loved him too. We started having discussions about what the future would look like because it was really clear that above all else, we had this really great, genuine friendship that we both wanted to protect it all costs. So he had a conversation with me one day where he was like, look, I really want to keep seeing you, but this isn't financially viable and it's not smart, and I've got kids to think of, and like, I can't keep paying you the way I have been, And he

was extraordinarily generous for my time. And that's where we started having conversations about what the future would look like if we moved away from sort of like a client based relationship where money wasn't being exchanged for spending time together. So they did it really just it happened. There was a few big hurdles that we needed to face, Like up until then all of our meetings had taken place in hotels, and he had I mean, I say kids one of them was an adult, one was an adolescent.

Two kids he needed to protect in that space as well, And he was really mindful of not mixing me with his family because his wife had only been deceased for a few months at that point and the kids had lost their mum. So he was really respectful of not wanting me in that space just yet. So we had a few sort of teething issues about how we were going to work this hour. We also lived an hour and a half away from each so it wasn't simple geographically to work out how we're going to do this either.

Not meeting his family in the early stages felt really appropriate. It's very different to his experience. But I was a child of divorce, so I do understand the pressures that adults face of their children meeting new partners. And that's definitely not to compare a divorce to someone passing away, but I did understand, like being a child of divorce, that parents have a lot of pressure to not introduce

new partners to their kids really quickly. And I mean, on a side note, I'm also terrified of teenage girls. I think they're just the scariest breed of human possible, so not meeting his daughter that sat quite well with me for a while. I just thought, oh my god, she's going to tear shreds off me. Like yeah, I was okay with not meeting for a while. I think I ended up up going to his house for the first time. So we'd met in the May, and I think I went to his house for the first time

in the July. So I remember going to his house for the first time. No one else was home at the time, so there was one day a week where one of his children was at work and one of his children was at school, so we sort of had a few hours where I could go over and spend some time there. And that for me was a really emotional experience because it was walking into a family home but knowing that the family had been broken. It felt really sad. It felt like I could feel the love

for this wife and mother who they had lost. And the house was as warm and homely as you like. You could tell there was like that woman's touch in the house and that she had set it up beautifully, and there was lots of memories of her, lots of photos of her around the house and even on the

kitchen table for for months. In this lasted months after the first meeting, was still like the pamphlets left over from her funeral, and there was sort of arrangements from the funeral home that obviously he was unable to deal with at the time, so he just left them on the kitchen table and I would see them all the time and just yeah, not know what to do with that.

It made me feel guilty, probably because there was so much that he was showing me of his world, and I felt like, because of the way we met, we were both going to have these ideas of each other and who each other were that we couldn't take back, but.

He contained me in a way i'd never been I'd never felt that safe before. I suppose I had like a pretty deep wound of feeling unloved by men. My father had taken his own life, and I had this gaping hole of feeling unloved, like feeling like people love me out of necessity. But I think having this relationship with an older man and was very healing for a lot of those wounds, Like I, you know, like the sugar baby with classic daddy issues was really coming out.

It was like, Okay, I felt really abandoned by a parent, and now I was desperate for this older man to love me and to make that feel good. And he did. He made that all feel those holes were just getting filled up by him.

was texting me or you know. We got into this huge fight once about me saying I was going to the gym with this ill friend of mine, and he hung up the phone heid you know, text me it's over, like I can't deal with this, and I suppose I lived with I don't know what the feeling of jealousy is called, when you're jealous over someone who you can't compete with, but I definitely felt like I was often being compared to his late wife, and I would say, like, you have to choose me for me because I can't

be her, and all the things that make me me I can't take back. So my marriage had always been a really open marriage. My husband and I had always dated other people, and my life had been really sort of like fun and free. And he was like, well, I don't understand that, because if you were in love with your husband the way I was with my wife,

like I never thought about anyone else. So he didn't understand that, and he couldn't understand that I was making him a promise to say that was an arrangement in my marriage between two out of all who agreed to that, and now we're two adults who agree to something different. So he would always sort of say, you can't just have one person, you always need more, And it was hard for him to believe that he was the center

of my world. By that stage, I felt like I couldn't escape my past, and I felt like I was having to hold shame for how we met. But we met because we were both mutually on the same website, right, So like it was bizarre that somehow I was the bad guy for being on that site, but he was like the innocent bystander and just sort of refuted his responsibility in being on that website as well. I didn't share much of my life with him for probably eight

or so months before he met friends of mine. I think there was an element of probably not knowing how to explain to people the relationship. I was scared of judgment because just based on looks, there was quite apparent differences in our life. He was seventeen years older than I was, so it was apparent to look at us that were in different stages of our life. I didn't know how I would explain to people that I had

met him. I suppose I didn't give my friends enough credit, and I worried that they would be judgmental of his appearance and sort of ask me, what are you doing, Like why you know, you're young, and you're sort of in this peak of your life and you've settled for a bit of a dorky old man, and just I suppose the way I had always met different people, it

was different to that. He self admit that he didn't have many friends, Like his relationship with his wife, they just lived in this love bubble where he just said he didn't really have friends, she didn't, and they just all they needed was each other. And I had a huge friendship network. And he had also faced really significant health problems his whole life, and so his twenties and

thirties looked really different to what mine did. His was faced with sort of like constant hospitalizations, whereas I was sort of really healthy and young and free and got to go out with friends and do whatever I wanted. So he wasn't exposed to the same world I was. Like. I remember one day, out of the blue, he just sent me a text message saying, is sex better on cocaine?

She just had never experienced these things like he didn't drink alcohol at all, and he had never experimented with drugs, and he just had this really sheltered life in some elements, like of course his massive health stuff. He wasn't sheltered from that, but he had never experienced his twenties and thirties in the way I was. I think that he would look at my life and sometimes he'd be like, I can't believe you do these things. Like one time

we met up. It was one of my friend's birthdays, and I was really reluctant to invite him, but I also really wanted him to meet my friends. But unfortunately, by the time he got there and I had way too much to drink and ended up vomiting. And that was like a first time for him of like experiencing like going to a pub and like, oh, you're with your girlfriend who you've got so drunk, she's vomited in her hair. Like he just hadn't had those experiences before,

so it was new to him. And I think that even though he was like, well that was a waste of money, like why do I get Huber's there and back? Like, I think he had fun.

this entire life with him. And then over time, as he waded through the grief he was feeling, he sort of came to me and he said, look, I'm actually never going to have a baby with you, and I don't want to get remarried. I didn't take him seriously for quite some time, and it was always a conversation we'd have and then we'd put it away. We'd just sort of very much sweep it under the rug, like okay, well,

that's not a today issue anyway, We've got time. We don't need to work this all out now, you know what couple plants having kids in the first twelve months anyway, kind of think. So that sort of where things were at where I think we're both hoping the other person would negotiate, and he would he would come up with suggestions, I suppose, like he'd be like, why don't you use a sperm downer? And then the baby's not technically mine,

but I'd still help you raise it. But it was just that he wasn't prepared to have another baby because there was lots of milestones in life he didn't want to experience with another woman like he had them with his wife, and he had a sense of loyalty to not doing them again. And also his age was a factor. He said, my kids have grown like I've nearly done my job as a parent. He's only got a couple of years left with his youngest, and he said, I'm

not doing that. I'm not starting from scratch, Like I'm not young enough and I'm not fit enough, and i don't have it in me to be awake all night with a crying baby. So yeah, it was It was just a long time of both of us trying to negotiate and hope that the other would change their mind. I was convinced I could change his mind for a really long time. I thought, no, like, you're going to love me enough to want all of this with me.

sort of in a relationship. I remember I felt like in my mind, I was like, it's too soon. But who was I to tell him what decisions to make with his own children. I was like, oh my god, Like he'd text me one day and he said, like, I told my kids about you today, and I was like, WHOA, Like what do you mean? You know this is wild, but.

or anything like that, because that was so unreasonable. So I just had to accept my space in his life and that was all he could offer me. But it was hard because for me, he was everything. He had a milestone birthday, his fiftieth birthday, and he was sort of planning it and he made a comment like, oh, you might be invited, and I laughed, and I thought,

this man is joking. What do you mean I might be invited, and I thought he was being a bit silly, and then his son sort of like chuckled nervously, and I was like, are you serious, And he just said, like, I just don't know if I can face the judgment from all of my friends to know that I've partnered. Yeah, I'd always been very understanding and very respectful of my place in his life. But I was devastated, Like I thought,

how can you not invite me? So he did end up inviting me, and I went to his fiftieth birthday and met all of his family and all of his friends. I was just introduced as Carli. I wasn't introduced as like this is my girlfriend or my friend. He just introduced me by name, and that was all there was to it.

my work is really close to home. And I said, well, that means giving up all of my clients, and I'm giving up living in the same sort of regional part of town as all my family and all my friends to live alone in one of your units, but not with you. So I was like, no, thank you, you know, respectfully, no, you know, And I know that that was him trying to compromise, but I don't think he saw the bigger picture that I wasn't moving an hour and a half away to live by myself.

and he lives a very comfortable life. And he had always said to me from the start that that money was for his children and that no matter who he ended up partnered with or in a relationship with like that money would be protected from any partner in the future. And he was always very clear about that as well.

And so it got to a point where I probably shouldn't have done this, but I had sent him a screenshot of like a period tracking app saying my p was one day late, and I sort of jokingly said like, oh god, what have you done? And he just went straight into panic mode. He called me and is like, well,

what are you going to do? And then he accused me of sort of like baby trapping him into this, into having a baby, and he said, I'm going to put all of my assets into the trusts that are in my kids' names, and you're the baby won't see anything from me, Like you're not taking my money for this baby. Oh, and then he also said and also I'd need a paternity test. And I was just like ropeable, and I said, you know what I will do is I will fuck your life up. You have no idea

how much I will fuck your life up. And I will fuck up your perfect little trust funds. And if you've got three kids, there will be three trust funds. There won't just be two any more. And We've hung up the phone, enraged, in rage really each other and didn't speak for days. It felt awful because I felt like he was reducing all the love I had for him, was just coming down to his money. And I was thinking, like, I spend six hours a week in my car to

see you. How could you say this is about money, or if it was, like I would have stopped seeing you ten months ago when you stopped paying me, Like I was so offended by the whole suggestion. Really, I never questioned the rest of our relationship. I knew that he just had big reactions to things when they happened, and that was a theme, like he would just blow up and then get over it really quickly. So I didn't question the rest of the relationship or how he

felt about me. But it made me mad because I didn't like what else was I meant to have done to have proved how much I loved him. This is where I'm going to cry. We didn't speak for a few days, and we spoke again and he said, I think it was like, how would you feel about going out for dinner or something? And we didn't end up going out for dinner. We ended up meeting at his house, and we just knew it was the end going there. I knew that that was it for us.

in his arms, just crying. And it was the first time that.

out life. I think that he had built me up enough that I didn't need him, and I think he was a bit of like a safety net for me because he did. He just always made me so calm. I didn't want to let go of any of it. The safety and the security and the containment and everything that I had never felt before. I couldn't imagine life without him, because more than anything, he was just my very best friend. He was the person I could talk to about everything, and he was the biggest part of

every day of my life. The drive home was rough. I remember needing to leave. It was sort of at the point where it's like there's nothing left to say and there's nothing left to do. I need to leave, And the thought of leaving his house knowing I was never going back was sickening, Like I was like my legs were shaking, and I just felt like I couldn't walk to his front door. Of course, we were still talking, not every day and not consistently, but I would still

reach out to him. I think I was reaching out to him to try to get those feelings of being safe back. So after we stopped speaking, I started experiencing horrendous anxiety at nighttime, just horrendous, like I was feeling like nauseated and I couldn't sleep, And it was debilitating every or to get this anxiety. So some nights I'd call him just to make it go away.

thinking about them. So one time, if we're sitting on the couch, I got put my legs up on him, and he referred to my legs as feeling like concrete stumps or all of the trust issues we had, a lot of my friends were sort of like red flag, like you need to leave him, Like this isn't good, Like he's mean about your appearance, and he doesn't trust you and you don't deserve that. But I just I saw through all of that because I saw no malice. Like I didn't think he's got trust issues because he's

a red flag. I thought he's a man who hasn't dated in thirty years and he's come from the comfort of a I think it was a twenty three year marriage. Of course, he's going to be jealous when he's dating a thirty year old who's attractive and young, and like, I just felt like almost a compliment that he was jealous. Like I didn't see it as like a red flag that all my friends did. So by the time it came to an end, my friends were well and truly over hearing about what was going on. Anyway, they were

sort of like, you know, you deserve better. And it's not that I didn't think I deserved better, because I think he is amazing, But it was just like they didn't see what I saw. I guess no one knew what he meant to me.

And he texted me saying, you know, I know you asked for space, but I just want to I think you should know that I've signed up to RSVP, And that was like relief for me, Like I felt like, okay, like he's really closing the door. Now I can move on with my life because he is. And I think because he always had that jealousy and he, you know,

never quite believed that I loved him. I didn't want to be the first one to make a big move in life because I could just picture him thinking in his frain like oh she had that planned all along, or and I just I was really a relief when he told me he was going to start dating again. I thought, great, like you've set me free, Like I

can be free now because you are. There were a few times where we'd gotten into our fights and I had felt relief when we had said, Okay, well we want different things, we'll just break up, And in the moment, nearly every time i'd feel relief. I think because I knew that I would never get the whole big picture of what I wanted out of life with him, and so I knew that I was giving up giving up

some really big things to be with him. It felt really freeing, and it felt like the relationship had served a purpose, and that purpose was going to be lifelong, like he had helped me for the rest of my life. I think it's just because we crammed so much into sort of eighteen months of healing for each other. The version of him that I met was so far away from the version of him that we left each other at as well. He was okay to be alone by the time we stopped seeing each other, whereas at the

start he was paying women frequently for their time. And he's okay alone now, which is really nice.

there for me. On that last time we saw each other, he did say like when I do have a baby, like he'll come and see my baby and he'll be so happy for me. Healing from him occurred while I was still with him, because the experience I had with

him built me up to being a stronger person. I think he helped me with multiple things, But one of my biggest takeaways is that I realized how many people I probably never gave the time of day two I know for sure, like if he had just met me in a bar and asked to buy me a drink, like I would have said, no, I'm not interested, just

based on his appearance. I had to do a lot of reflection on like how I got to that point, How many people have I missed out on amazing opportunities with because I was I wouldn't call myself shallow, but I definitely had a type that I would pay more attention to than others. And unfortunately, if our relationship hadn't started by him paying me, I wouldn't have got to know him as a person, and I wouldn't have found one of my soulmates in this world. So he's definitely

taught me to give everyone a chance in life. Because we didn't have similar interests or hobbies or definitely didn't have similar political or social views at all, but he was my best friend. And you know, I'm a believer that you have sort of like multiple soulmates in your life, and I like, I'm really confident that he was one of mine and that we needed to meet. I think that my story is important because of how much I learned about beauty only being skin deep and all of

those other sayings that you hear growing up. But I didn't realize how true they were until this relationship, and I didn't realize how much I needed to reevaluate my own morals and my own values and looking at the importance of relationships for me, because if I had missed out on this one, I would just hate to think

where things would have ended up. I think I healed a lot by knowing him, by knowing that there is this like, there's feelings of safety that I can achieve, and if I achieve them with him, then I can do them by myself or with other people. So it was nice. I definitely feel a lot more secure in who I am that I don't have this need for everyone to love me like I used to. It used to be so consuming that I didn't believe people could

ever love me enough. I felt like people loved me out of obligation to love me, and he definitely showed me that that wasn't true. Life since has been pretty pretty good. I just try and keep really busy and look forward to the future. Really, I think that I definitely have a lot more gratitude for for life. When I wake up every day, I know that good things are just like unexpectedly around the corner. I don't worry about not finding friends or being lonely. I just know

that everything's going to be okay. We've sort of made an agreement like that will never sort of block each other on Facebook, so we can sort of see what each other's doing from time to time. And I think we'll always chat intimittently. Like I said, you know, when you get a new girlfriend, you have to make sure she's fine with you talking to your ex because I don't want to get booted when he finds someone new. That scares me a lot. Just the thought of not

having him in any capacity is scary. I think I will love him forever.