Episode 378: What It’s Like To Try Sugar Dating
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You're listening to the Sex and Psychology Podcast, the sex ed you never got in school and won't get anywhere else. I am your host, Dr. Justin Lehmiller. I am a social psychologist and research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and author of the book, Tell Me What You Want, The Science of Sexual Desire and How It Can Help You Improve Your Sex Life. Sugar dating is a type of transactional relationship in which sex and companionship are exchanged for some type of compensation, such as money, tuition, or luxury goods.

By all accounts, sugar dating is on the rise. Google searches related to this topic are increasing. You can find discussions about it all over social media and in the popular media. And websites that facilitate sugaring relationships have seen a surge in users. Research suggests that in countries all around the world, there are now millions of people who are engaged in sugar dating. So what is it like to be in one of these relationships? In today's show, we're going to dive into the results of a recent study on sugar dating.

We're going to explore what people hope to get out of these relationships, the biggest perceived advantages and disadvantages of sugar dating, who holds the power in sugaring arrangements, and so much more. I am joined once again by Kate Metcalf, a clinical psychology PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of Dr. Cindy Meston's Sexual Psychophysiology Laboratory.

Kate's research focuses broadly on sexual agency and motivation across different contexts and life stages. She has published research on transactional sexual relationships, as well as more traditional intimate relationships. This is going to be another fascinating episode.

Before we get to it, here is today's top three segment presented by Field. Field is the dating app for the curious where you can really get to know yourself. While most dating apps are all about pursuing someone else, Field has carved out a space for you to find yourself and go on a journey of self-exploration. It's a space without any expectation or pressure to be someone that you're not, and it opens up the opportunity to find true expressions of yourself.

To that end, our top three segments are designed to equip you with the knowledge you need to assist you on your own journey of sexual self-discovery. In these segments, I'm joined by my friend Ashley Weller, who is host of the amazing podcast called What's Your Position?

She will be joining me and will be sharing our top three tips for exploring a different aspect of your sexuality. Today, we're diving into the subject of navigating group sex. So, Ashley, are you ready to talk about it? Green means go! All right. So before we get into it, quick question. How do you define group sex? Like, what's the minimum number of people necessary for something to count as an orgy?

Why are you in my head? I have had this argument with a group of people who know a thing or two about group sex. And we have decided as a consensus, it has to be more than four, because if it's just four, what that is, is like partner swap.

It needs to be five or more is, is the group consensus. I said six, someone else was like, no, you can have a fifth because a fifth means it's not just partnered sex. I'm going to say five.

So, you know, this is a fun question to ask people like when you're out at the bar or just trying to generate some interesting conversation because people are all over the map on this. In my experience, I will say the single most common response I get is five. People have different rationales and reasonings for it. But I've also heard some people who say an orgy starts at three people, right? So for some people, there's no distinction between a threesome and an orgy. So it depends on who you ask when it comes to how you define group sex. I guess whatever your flavor is.

Yes. All right. So what is your first tip for navigating group sex? I want to let you know that when I came up with these tips...

They were a little less research-based and came from, we'll just say, a place of understanding. Lube, lube, and more lube. Multiple bodies means multiple friction points. Keeping things smooth and pleasurable for extended periods of time is of the utmost importance.

Yeah. And you know, you can buy a 55 gallon drum of it on Amazon. I've seen it before. So, you know, if you never want to run out, you can buy a economy plus size lube if that's important for you, depending on how big your orgies are.

So my first tip on this was if you're just starting out with group sex and it's something you want to try, maybe consider being a voyeur at first. So use this as an opportunity to learn about how other people navigate this scenario. So for example, if you go to a sex club or you get invited to a sex party, maybe the first time you go, you just kind of stand around and watch and kind of see like, how does this work?

Things to pay attention to would be, how do people express or communicate their interest in others? And how do they indicate what they do or don't want? And how does consent work in an orgy? This is something a lot of people don't really think about until they actually get into that situation.

being there as kind of a lurker the first time before you actually get involved with others can be arousing in and of itself, but it can also kind of teach you how you might go about this in the future in a way that kind of reduces your anxiety and makes you more comfortable in that environment. My second tip is stay safe. It's

It's actually one of my taglines in my show. Stay safe. Please talk about STI protection. Group sex means lots of fluids, means lots of bacteria, means potential chance for heightened risk of infection. So discussing whether you're going to be using condoms or

laurels, which are latex-based underwear for lots of mouth play, talking about making sure that everyone is comfortable in this experience in the types of fluids that are going to be exchanged in many different ways.

Yeah, my next tip was also dealing with safety. And I came at it from a somewhat different perspective. I think what you described is very, very important. But my safety tip was going to be being very careful about mixing substances and group sex. And I'm talking about alcohol and also drugs and other things so that you don't go past your own boundaries, right? And it's for this reason that at many play parties and at many sex clubs where group sex takes place, they don't even have alcohol.

And substances are prohibited. You know, they want people to go into this sober so that they don't violate their own or somebody else's boundaries. So I think this is a case where sober sex can be really valuable when it comes to staying safe.

Additionally, you want to remember it. You want to remember if you are experiencing an orgy for the first time or getting double penetrated for the first time. It's something you're going to want to remember. And while I can understand why people may be nervous and want to take the edge off with liquid courage, I think it's very important to remember that this is probably a space where having all of your faculties present is of the utmost importance. My last tip was

was to hydrate. And that may sound so basic, but pace yourself and drink lots of water. Not only is it important to pee after sex, you want to make sure that you're flushing out any bad bacterias, but this is a marathon, not a sprint. Group sex typically is going to last a few hours, if not more than a few hours. And you want to make sure that you're taking breaks, staying hydrated, and

and enjoying every moment. So if that means you step away and you go get a glass of water and you go to the bathroom, maybe even taking a shower, hydrate and get ready for the marathon.

Yeah, it's okay to take a break during group sex, right? My third tip was that it's important to recognize that everything in a group sex encounter, of course, still needs to be consensual. And that just because you're in a group sex setting doesn't automatically mean that you've consented to have sex with everyone who is there or that everyone there has consented to have sex with you, right? So that's a good thing.

That's, again, why it's important to understand the rules of engagement. And if you're going to a play party or sex club, they will often have these rules very clearly spelled out in terms of how things like consent are communicated. But it's your job, your responsibility to be fully informed about this, to ensure that you're not violating anybody else's boundaries and also to ensure that your boundaries don't get violated. I love that.

So thank you so much for sharing your tips for navigating group sex with us, Ashley. That wraps up our top three segment presented by Field. A huge thank you to our friends over at Field for sponsoring this segment and for helping us to expand our horizons in the dating world and on this show. We have much more ahead in today's episode, so stick around and we're going to jump in right after this short break.

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Okay, Kate, let's talk about sugar dating. So I did an episode on this subject a few months back, but you had some interesting research that came out that I thought could add to our coverage on the topic. But for listeners who might have missed my previous episode on sugar dating, what are we talking about here? So how do you define sugar dating or how did you define it for purposes of your research?

Yeah, so sugar dating falls under this umbrella of transactional sexual relationships. So typically what we see is a younger individual, often female, often college age, often conventionally attractive, who's engaging in sex and or dating relationships with typically an older gentleman who is giving them some sort of compensation, gifts, etc.

money in exchange for that intimacy, in exchange for those sexual interactions. I will say predominantly we're seeing younger females dating older males, but that varies. That's not the rule. And typically we're always seeing some sort of sexual exchange in that encounter.

Yeah, and it's an interesting topic, right? So in the previous episode we did on this, we talked about how it kind of falls in between sex work and traditional dating, right? Because it sort of blurs or straddles that line there. And there's some debate about whether or not sugar dating works.

quote-unquote counts as a form of sex work? And the answer to that question really depends on who you ask, right? Some people do consider it to fall under the umbrella of sex work. Other people don't. There are various reasons for that. Some sugar daters themselves, for example, don't consider themselves to be sex workers in part because of the stigmas and taboos that surround sex work

more broadly. So, you know, it's kind of a complicated topic to discuss that intersection between sugar dating and sex work because lots of people have lots of different feelings and opinions about that subject. Yeah, it definitely varies. Sometimes you'll see sugar dating interactions where it really is just like,

I'm going to give you $600 for two hours of your time and we're going to hook up and that will be that. That is closer to what we would see in more conventional or traditional sex work. But then sometimes there is a dating component and there's dinner and then there's sex that really replicates kind of the encounters we'd see from like other dating apps like Tinder. So I think that it varies. I think people get caught up on this financial exchange, which is why I think sugar daters will often use like gifts or allowance as a way to kind of...

separate themselves from that. I'm giving you money to have sex with me.

Yeah, and you're so right that there's so much variability in the nature of the arrangements that sugar daters have. And, you know, for example, in some cases, it might just be a regular monthly allowance that comes in, and that's not tied to like a specific sexual frequency or something else like that. And so that's also where it can kind of differ from a lot of traditional sex work that happens where there is that prompt payment for services rendered, right? And so, yeah, lots of variability in how the arrangements themselves actually play out.

So you recently published a study on sugar dating, but before we get into the results, tell us a little bit about the story behind it. So why did you want to do this research and what were you interested in looking at here? Yeah, absolutely. So I actually started this research when I was in my third year of my undergraduate degree at the University of New Brunswick in Canada. I was working with Dr. Lucia O'Sullivan and her graduate student, Lauren Cormier, and we had another RA kind of helping, Pascale LaCroix.

And we were kind of sitting talking about like what I wanted to research and the topic of sugar dating came up partially because among my peers at the time, all of us were like, wow, like, wouldn't it be nice to just be able to talk to someone and get paid? And this was this assumption was like, you could just get money for just talking to someone. At the end of our research, we found that that's pretty much not the case. And it's usually more than just talking. But what we did find was there is this kind of push

pushed to young college students who engage in sugar dating, coupled with the very kind of limited research in this increasing accessibility to sugar dating via Seeking Arrangement and other sites, we kind of started off with that and took it. And so what were the main questions, topics that you wanted to look at when it came to sugar dating?

Yeah, we really wanted to know the motivation behind sugar dating and the benefits and the risks, particularly the risk, because this was not something that we had seen talked about or advertised to the people that they were trying to pull into sugar dating. I think one of the other conversations kind of tied to risk is this idea of power and whether...

these sugar babies are able to negotiate the terms of the relationship? Or is this really just kind of an opportunity for the sugar daddy to get whatever he wants using whatever means he wants from whoever he wants? And so both kind of the motivations, but also the dynamics at play there and how they can negotiate these terms were our main research interests.

So you ended up having a pretty diverse sample in your research. And one of the things that I think is so cool about it is that you didn't just include sugar babies in your work. You also wanted to get the perspective of sugar benefactors, right? So the people who are paying the sugar babies. So, you know, a lot of the existing studies on sugar dating have only looked at sugar babies and their perspective. So having both sides of the equation here, I think really adds something important to the literature and

to our ability to have an informed conversation about this topic. So tell us a little bit about who participated in your study and the diversity of your sample.

Yeah. So like you said, we use the term sugar benefactor because we didn't just have men as the ones that were paying for these encounters. We had some non-binary folks and we also had a few women who one of them that comes to mind was engaging with sugar babies with her husband. They were doing kind of threesomes and finding their partner via seeking or a sugar dating encounter. So we had a wide sort of range of participants with our sugar benefactors and

our sugar babies were primarily, again, women, but we did have one or two men and a non-binary folk as well. Yeah. So, you know, sugar dating is something where I know there's sort of the prototypical or stereotypical image that people have in terms of what these relationships might look like, but there's a lot of diversity and variability and you also have sugar mommies out there. And as you said, transgender and non-binary individuals may participate in this as well, either as

sugar baby or as benefactor. So yeah, it's not something that is limited to any one particular gender or sexual orientation in terms of the role that they might take on here. And, you know, I would also venture to guess that sugar dating is actually quite common in the gay male community. And I think it's something that is often not talked about as much and is

not researched nearly as much as well. So I think that would be something that would be very interesting to look at further in the future in terms of, you know, how are the dynamics of sugar dating different when it's in that sort of same-sex context versus when it's in a heterosexual context. But it's a question for future research to answer.

Yeah, I completely agree. I have a few kind of male friends after hearing about my research. They're like, I'm going to try sugar dating. And they, you know, create an account and they're like, ah, there's no one for me because it's either, you know, gay men looking for other men or...

you know, people looking for, unfortunately, like primarily females and that. Yeah. The market for heterosexual men to engage in sugar dating as the sugar baby is a little bit different compared to other individuals. Yeah. It happens, but it's not as frequent. Yeah. It's more of the unicorn versus I think if you're a younger woman who is engaged as a sugar baby, you're

there are a lot of options that are out there for you. Absolutely. So for people who participated in your study, was sex a component of every sugar dating arrangement?

primarily some sort of sexual exchange. So the vast majority were having sexual intercourse. Some were, you know, they had just kissed at that point in their relationship, but I would venture to guess that as time went on, they probably would do more. And then the vast majority of the remaining participants, which was a small percentage, were exchanging kind of sexual content, sexual nudes, etc.,

I would also say that there's kind of this self-report bias and that people might not want to disclose the full nature of their relationship. So I think even for like the one sugar baby who reported nothing, there probably was some aspects of sexual exchange. It just might not have happened at the point at which we interviewed them.

Yeah, and who knows, maybe it was fetish-related or something else, you know, because there are a lot of different forms that sex can take. I think if I remember correctly from your paper, it was something like 93 to 94% of these relationships involved either oral, vaginal, or anal sex, and the remainder involved, you know, for the most part, some other type of sexual interaction. So sex typically is present in some way, usually physical sexual contact, but as you mentioned, in some cases, it can also be virtual. Yeah.

So tell us a little bit about what you found with respect to people's motivations for engaging in sugar dating. So what are sugar babies and benefactors looking to get out of these relationships?

Yeah. Sugar babies, primarily they're looking for that financial component. That is a big motivator to these encounters. They like that they can date someone who's also going to provide for them in like really big influential ways. Some participants talks about even having their tuition paid for. So that's pretty notable. Our sugar benefactors typically are looking to date up. They're trying to gain access to attractive people that align with kind of their sexual desires. I

I will say both partners also talked about the kind of companionship as a potential benefit of this relationship too. But there was that discrepancy between sugar baby's finances and sugar benefactors gaining access to attractive younger individuals.

Yeah. And there was something else that came up too as a benefit, which was this idea of mentorship. And in some of my own research on sugar dating, that came up as well. So talk to us a little bit about mentorship in terms of how it plays out in sugar dating relationships.

It's such an interesting kind of component of these relationships. We see this mentorship come out as typically the benefactors will offer mentorship as like a benefit of dating them, where they will offer you career guidance or relationship advice or life advice in whatever kind of capacity they

that looks like. And so, you know, we had one sugar baby who said that she's studying the same area that her sugar benefactor, I think her sugar daddy was working in. And so they would often talk and debate about these topics. And that was like a really enjoyable aspect of this encounter that she had. So that is something that they push. I think it's interesting to think about because when we think about mentorship, typically we think about non-sexual relationships,

But still, there is kind of this like age discrepancy where you're like looking to someone older who can give you this advice and guidance. And for some sugar babies, sugar benefactors fill that role.

Yeah, and I think it highlights how these relationships are about so much more than just sex for a lot of people, right? So as we said, there's typically a sexual component, but there's also this dating component of it as well. And I believe the participants in your research, both the sugar babies and benefactors, both said that the dating component, they rated it as being kind of like equally important.

to the relationship. And then on top of that, you also had this mentorship aspect that often came out. And I believe I remember reading, at least one of the participants in your study was talking about how as a sugar baby, she was setting up a business in a certain area.

her sugar daddy or mentor was providing advice in terms of like how to set up that business and make it financially sustainable and successful. And so, yeah, there can be a lot of different components or elements to a sugar dating relationship. And I think oftentimes it just gets reduced to sex when it's talked about in the popular media, but there's a lot more to it than that.

Yeah. And like even a large percentage of our sugar benefactors had engaged in other types of transactional sex. They'd been to sex works clubs or they've had encounters with escorts. And for them, they enjoyed this companionship piece. And that's why they're seeking out these sugar arrangements as opposed to these other forms of sex work that they might have might have accessed in the past.

And I think one of the other ways it's different from a lot of traditional sex work is that sugar dating relationships are often very long term. Now, certainly there's a lot of individual variability. You know, I think the range for your participants in terms of how long their relationship was, was anywhere from a month

to over 100 months, right? So in some cases, these relationships go on for many, many, many years. Certainly in traditional sex work, that can happen as well. So for example, in the study abroad courses I teach in the Netherlands, we talk to a lot of sex workers. And I remember on one of our trips, we actually had a tour around Amsterdam's red light district with two 78-year-old women who were twins who had been sex workers for a half century. Oh my gosh.

It was really incredible. The Falken twins, if you want to look them up, they have a fascinating life story, but you know, they were kind of like semi-retired from sex work at that time. And they said that, you know, their clients that they were still working with were people that had literally been with them for decades and had kept coming back for years and years. And they actually talked about, you know, sort of the grieving process of when one of their client's

passes away, right? Because they had that connection with them. And so, you know, even outside of this sugar dating context, in some traditional sex work, you might have those very long term ongoing relationships as well. But yeah, just interesting side note. We learn a lot on our study abroad courses. That's so interesting. I'm definitely going to look them up. Dating apps can be frustrating for many reasons, but one of the big ones is that it often feels like no one is really being their authentic self. This gets tiresome and frustrating after a while.

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Okay, so on the flip side, right, we talked about the benefits, like what people are looking for in terms of sugar dating, but what are some of the disadvantages? You know, what are the drawbacks to sugar dating that people talked about? Yeah, I think for our sugar babies, they mentioned kind of these like,

physical risks or like, you know, what if he hurts me or what if he divulges my sugar dating secrets to other people? But also there's like this physical safety. They talk about a number of different things that a sugar baby might do to, um,

protect themselves when they're first going on a sugar dating encounter. You know, friends will track locations or they'll tell someone that they're doing this. But at the end of the day, that's not that different than what we see with women in traditional sexual encounters too. Like, you know, when my friends go on dates, I will typically know their location. That's just something that I think women are bred to do.

I think, too, for men, their primary concern was kind of their reputation being found out. If someone found out they were sugar dating, what consequences would that create? And often for our participants, our sugar benefactors, they had other significant partners. And so there's this kind of I don't want my other significant partner to know. And they know a lot about me and they could ruin that.

One other interesting finding was the sugar benefactors were often concerned about the genuineness of the relationship. They've really felt this like deep kind of insecurity as to whether their sugar partner was doing this just because they were being paid for it. Themes of like,

you wonder if you're still going to be friends with this person or are they doing this? Do they enjoy having sex with me? And that was kind of a key component that A, we didn't expect and B, we didn't necessarily get from the sugar babies. Yeah, it's interesting thinking about it from the perspective of the benefactors and thinking about, you know, for example, men who are cultivating these relationships with sugar babies, how there can be that insecurity that comes out about is this a genuine connection or not?

And people often discount how much men want to feel wanted or desired and how crucial that is to not just like their sense of well-being and sense of security, but also their ability to feel aroused and to feel sexual desire. And so I think that's where a lot of the insecurity is coming from. It's that they really want to know that they're desired by this other person, but by virtue of the fact that they might be pursuing somebody that is, quote unquote, out of their league and they're paying them.

that can create some of this anxiety about, well, are they into me or not? And how that can kind of creep into the relationship and the dynamic.

Yeah. You know, one of our participants quotes is kind of coming to mind right now. He's like, you know, I'm actually really anxious and I get nervous around women. And so I turned to sugar dating and that's actually really raised my confidence and now I feel more comfortable. So I think that's a great point of like men want connection too. And sometimes they're turning to sugar dating to get that.

Yeah, and it's a tough dating landscape out there for everybody right now. And I think, you know, for a lot of men in particular, it's hard because you have a lot of women who are kind of opting out of the dating market right now. So in some of my other research, for example, I found that there's been a rise in voluntary celibacy and women are much more likely to say that they're going to be celibate now for a while compared to men. And so when you have, in a heterosexual context,

a number of women who are off the market, if you will, that creates kind of like this void or dynamic and makes it harder to find connections with other people. And so I think that's also part of the rise behind sugar dating is that there are a lot of men who want relationships but can't find them and would otherwise be involuntarily celibate. And so a sugar dating relationship might be a way of fulfilling that need for connection with other people and also having relationships

sexual contact and relationships. Yeah. And that makes me think too, with sugar benefactors tending to be older, there's going to be more coupled people in that age group. So already that market has shrunk. And if you have these really high attractions to younger individuals, which, you know, from an evolutionary perspective, men do tend to hold attraction to younger people. And that kind of stays even as they age, um,

sugar dating is a compelling thing to gain access to partners and partners who you're attracted to. Yeah. And this might sound provocative, but older men need relationships more than older women do, right? And we see that again in the research on voluntary celibacy, that older women are much more likely to kind of say, you know, I'm done with relationships and I don't need to have relationships with men anymore. I'm going to pursue relationships with

friends instead. And if I have sexual relationships, it's going to be with like a friend with benefits or it's going to be a casual thing as opposed to jumping into another long-term or lifelong sort of relationship. And so I think also if we're looking at older adults in particular, you know, that's part of the reason why some men are drawn to sugar dating is just like the dating market shrinks as you age to some extent.

Yeah, that's a great point. I'm thinking about the joke of like, does your dad have any friends or are they all your mom's friends? And I think that kind of like speaks to this, like women are more likely to form close female friendships. Men don't get that same, on average, deep level of intimacy. So I think that's a great point as well.

Yeah, and I know it sounds like a stereotype, but there's some truth to that stereotype. You know, that for a lot of men, their primary relationship and sense of connection and intimacy with another person is in their romantic relationship. And if they don't have a romantic relationship, they often don't have those other sources of social support. This goes back to, you know, gender roles and gender socialization and

We could have a whole separate conversation about that, but yeah, lots of things we could talk about here. So one of the other things you wanted to look at in this research was perceptions of power within sugaring relationships. And as I mentioned in my previous episode on sugar dating, I have a study on this topic that we published a few years back that was led by Kim Kirkaby, who she conducted it as part of her master's thesis, which I supervised.

And one of the things we found was that most sugar dating women perceive themselves as having equal power or even more power than the benefactor or their sugar daddy.

And this is a finding that was surprising to a lot of people because there's this big assumption out there that whoever has more money in a relationship has more power. And I think there's also this assumption that a partner who is older necessarily has more power as well. And I think these are mistaken assumptions. I think power can take a lot of different forms in relationships. And we can't necessarily intuit who has more power in a given relationship based solely on something like age or income.

So what did you find with respect to perceptions of power? Yeah, something very similar. And I think we kind of fell guilty to that same kind of thought process of like, these are older men, typically, these are wealthier men, and these are, you know, college students who are doing this because they need money. Like, of course, they're going to hold more power. When we actually took a step back and looked at our results,

We measured power in two different ways. One, we employed an actual relationship power inventory where our participants responded to standardized questions and

And we found no differences in their perceived power that they hold in their relationship between the sugar babies and the sugar daddies and sugar benefactors. Now, it's important to note we didn't have dyads, meaning we didn't have the sugar baby and their direct partner. So we don't actually know the specific dynamics, but the very least, they're not perceiving different levels in our samples. The other thing was when we asked them about their power, they

A large percentage of our participants were saying that it was actually the sugar baby who held the power and held more power. And often this was attributable to them being attractive young women who could and other folks who could leave and go find another partner very easily in the way that the sugar benefactor cannot.

You know, if you want to have a fun and lively conversation with your friends over drinks, ask them how they define power in a relationship. So I've done this before, you know, at conferences when some of us are out like having drinks after the end of the day or something like that. I like to throw out a provocative question and see how people define it. And you get a lot of different answers in terms of how people define power. And the one I always like to bring up at the end, because no one mentions it, is this idea of the

principle of least interest, which is essentially that it means the person who has the most power in the relationship is the person who needs the relationship the least. So the least interested party is the party with the power. And I think in the context of a sugar dating relationship, the sugar baby is often the least interested in the sense that they have a lot more options in terms of benefactors who would be willing to pay.

versus for the sugar benefactor, they might have fewer options in terms of who would be willing to accept payment from them. So the principle of least interest could, I think, help to explain a lot of this dynamic in terms of how people are perceiving power in sugar dating arrangements.

That's a great kind of framework to look at it from because if we think about sugar dating and the way that we initially thought about it was like, these women are doing it because they need money. But if you actually log on to Seeking and we did this kind of in our initial literature reviews, there are so many different options of people that you can encounter and there's almost a surplus of benefactors compared to desirable women.

And so, yeah, at the end of the day, money might be the core of their motivation, but it's not that difficult to go find a new partner. And that gives them this ability to negotiate how frequently they meet. If they're busy, they can meet less. Obviously, this might vary for certain relationships, but the sugar benefactor expressed almost what I found to be a surprising amount of vulnerability in how much control they can even exert over the relationship, because if they demand too much, they might lose this partner.

Yeah. And so I think it just goes to show that a lot of the stereotypes or ideas that people might have about what power means or looks like in relationships and what it means specifically in the context of sugar dating don't necessarily match up with reality. And yeah, in your research and in mine, it does certainly seem to be the case that a lot of sugar babies and a lot of sugar benefactors seem to think that most of the power in that relationship resides with the sugar baby.

I think that's so important. And your study really illuminated this when you guys found that, you know, the higher perceived power, the more likely they are to use condoms or feel like they can use condoms in their relationship. So we are actually seeing that that perception matters. And it's very important for these dynamics.

Yeah, that perception of power, whether it's a perception or not, it is empowering to them. Like believing that you're the one who holds power or holds the cards in the relationship seems to empower sugar babies to take steps to protect their sexual health and to assert their boundaries. And so, yeah, it's another reason why it's important to look at this topic.

So in the previous episode, we talked about your research on duty sex, and it got me thinking about how this concept might overlap to some extent with sugar dating, where sex might be seen as an inherent duty or obligation to kind of keep that sugaring relationship going. So tell us a little bit about how you see your work on duty sex and sugar dating as being connected.

Yeah, I mean, as far as I know, there's not a direct study, but I think it's one that needs to be done. But if I were to kind of step back and hypothesize from both studies, I can see duty sex coming into play. You know, we had one sugar benefactor, for example, say, you know, like,

At the end of the day, if we stop seeing each other and having sex, I stop paying. You know, the effect that that payment has on her is on her, not on me. But there is that assumption that like that is a core piece of it. And on the flip side, we say we have some sugar babies say, you know, like sometimes it can feel like a job and I feel like I have to have sex.

And at its core, that is duty sex, engaging in sex out of a sense of obligation. One of the things that was kind of the theme of our last episode was like, it depends how problematic that dynamic is. And if you're satisfied with that, and even at the beginning, it's, you know, obligation, you know, we can't say if that's problematic or not, but I think it certainly could come to light complicated by the fact that there is this financial exchange involved.

Yeah, and whether there's sort of this explicit pressure or coercion, right? So as we discussed in the last episode, duty sex is a complicated phenomenon. And sometimes that sense of duty comes from an internal source. Other times it's coming from an external source. And those are two different things in terms of talking about what the effects of this are.

So my last question for you is sugar dating is a topic that a lot of people seem to have a lot of strong feelings about. So case in point, I did a quick Google search before the show and I found a lot of articles saying things like sugar dating, not so sweet and sweet.

the exploitative realities of sugar dating, along with a bunch of pieces lamenting how social media is glamorizing sugar dating when in reality they see it as a form of sexual coercion. And then on the other hand, you can find a lot of articles that talk about how sugar dating can be a form of empowerment and talk about it in very positive terms. So based on your research, how do we make sense of all these conflicting media narratives about sugar dating?

Yeah, I think from our work, our participants were very pleased with their decisions to engage in sugar dating. Like we didn't really get any negativity with it. We did, you know, rely on a self-recruiting sample and we didn't pay them. So of course, we're probably going to get the participants most eager to talk about sugar dating in our sample. So is our study generalizable to all sugar daters? Absolutely not. But we can say that there is at least a portion of sugar daters who

really enjoy this and they're not, you know, like victims, at least in the way that they think about it. And I also can think that there are probably problematic encounters in this. You can even read up on cases where, you know, a sugar baby has expected, you know, some sort of compensation for their exchange and then they end up not getting paid. And I think they're typically called the bad sugar daters in the sugar lifestyle, right? That's a thing that happens. And that is

when we take away that piece that was involved in consent then that's a non-consent violation and that happens yeah and i'm on the same page with you in terms of how i think about this right so as i mentioned when i do my study abroad courses for example we meet with a lot of sex workers and we talk with them about their experiences and we also talk about you know what the research and data say on sex work and there's a big portion of the literature on sex work broadly

that seems to imply that no one would ever voluntarily choose to be a sex worker and that all sex workers are inherently victims or they're being coerced in some way. And I think that literature is just so biased in terms of how it comes at this topic, right? Because they've already come in with this preconceived notion that sex work can never be consensual because somebody is always being exploited, right?

So I think it's important for us to shift the conversation in terms of how we talk about sex work, because we need to hear from sex workers themselves in terms of what their experiences with this are like. And that includes hearing from sugar daters about what their experiences are like. And for many people, it's a decision that they voluntarily choose and it is consensual and they enjoy the job. They find perks and benefits in it. And so it comes back to that issue of, you know, who are we to judge if these are people who choose to enter this profession and enjoy that line of work?

Yeah, absolutely. And that's why I think, so I'm from Canada and Canada has a model where it's legal to sell sex, illegal to buy it. So it kind of comes in with this assumption of these are kind of vulnerable people in this and it, and it penalizes the people who are buying sex. And so sugar dating is this gray area where if it was just like a normal relationship and you got this huge gift from your partner, people probably wouldn't blink an eye, but because

we're putting a label on it or there's just larger chunks of change or more consistent exchange of change that kind of leads people to make these assumptions. And I think if we were to sit here and say, no, it's great, everyone should go sugar date, I'd be like, no, that's not the case, right? Like really be informed in this and take into consideration like your legal laws in the country that you're in. But also at the end of the day, I think it's difficult to sit here and say this is bad across the board. Yeah. And, you know, I think...

As with everything, there are very complicated topics here. And what you mentioned about sex work laws in Canada, I think might be surprising to some people that you can sell sex, but you can't buy it. How does that work? And what's the point of that? And I'll have to do an episode at some point in the future on the different models of sex work that exist around the world, because there are really a lot of different ways that governments approach regulating it that I think are fascinating. And I think it's important to look at

What are the laws that governments want? What are the laws that actually work? What are the laws that sex workers themselves want? So we'll get into that in a future show. I think that would be a great episode. So thank you so much for this amazing conversation, Kate. It was a pleasure to have you here. Can you please tell my listeners where they can go to learn more about you and your work?

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm on Twitter and Instagram, Kate B Metcalf. And you can also keep up with our work that we do in the Messin Lab at messinlab.com. Thank you so much for having me. Well, thanks again so much for your time. And I'll be sure to include those links in the show notes. Thank you.

Thank you for listening. To keep up with new episodes of this podcast, visit my website, sexandpsychology at sexandpsychology.com or subscribe on your favorite platform where I hope you'll take a moment to rate and review the show. If you listen on Apple Podcasts, please consider becoming a Sex and Psychology Premium subscriber to enjoy ad-free listening for just $3.99 a month.

You can also follow me on social media for daily sex research updates. I'm on Blue Sky and X at Justin Laymiller and Instagram at Justin J. Laymiller. Also, be sure to check out my book, Tell Me What You Want. Thanks again for listening. Until next time.