A Sweet Savior: My Sugar Partner's Generosity Preserved Our Home

When I left home at 18, the idea was to cut off all contact with my family for good. I don’t want to get into the details. It just, you know, wasn’t a good situation.

And it was really hard, of course, to get on my feet and make my own life. But I did it. I put myself through nursing school. I found my own friends. I got health insurance and took myself to the dentist. To put it another way, I became an adult against the odds. And I was proud of myself!

Part of my financial independence was thanks to sugaring, of course. I started during nursing school when I realized there was no way I was going to have enough energy to keep a full-time job while keeping up with my courses. And sugaring was a great choice, especially the one-time dates and no-strings-attached kind of set-ups where I could “check in” to the date and “check out” afterwards, and then forget about them as soon as we said goodbye.

I told myself that I didn’t have time for anything deeper than that. But, of course, later on, I would realize that the real problem was that I wasn’t emotionally ready to make any kind of genuine connection. Because, hello, genuine connections lead to attachments. And attachments, I had learned the hard way, lead to pain and disappointment.

But one thing I’ve learned about the universe is that it doesn’t allow your most stubborn opinions about life to put down strong roots. And, meeting Ethan certainly weeded out my opinion that I didn’t need (or at least couldn’t enjoy) a connection.

So, first of all, I never should have met Ethan in the first place. In fact, the only reason that he came on my radar was because his profile on Secret Benefits said that he was looking for something casual. Cool. That was what I wanted too, obviously.

And when we met up, that’s what I was expecting. Casual. But it soon became clear as we talked that he was looking for a sugar baby with whom he could plan a future. He had travel plans and wanted someone who could attend business conferences with him. He even mentioned the idea of paying for a sugar baby to live closer to him if they were getting along really well.

Throughout the whole conversation, I found myself getting quieter and quieter. How was I about to tell this guy that I couldn’t think about anything further than a couple of weeks in the future for myself, let alone a sugar relationship?

Eventually, I just had to cut him off.

“I thought that your profile said that you were looking for something short-term?”

He looked confused.

“No, no. I want a long-term relationship. I updated my bio a couple of months ago.”

I pulled up his profile on my phone to show him. It stated pretty clearly: casual, short-term, etc.

His face fell, “No, I wrote a whole new bio. I don’t know what happened. I must have exited out of the browser before it saved or something.”

We sat in awkward silence for a few excruciating moments.

“Well,” he finally said. “Are you sure that you wouldn’t be open to something more long-term? Maybe we could take things slow, and you can end things any time you want. I think there’s some good chemistry here.”

I told him that I would think about it. After all, for me, the fact that there was good chemistry (really, undeniable) was not a good thing. I worried about falling for him.

But he kept his word, and we took things really slow. I never went over to his house, and he never came over to mine. We kept things fairly surface-level, only talking vaguely about work and our personal lives.

Eventually, he tried to move things in a more serious direction.

“I want you to come over to my house for the weekend.”

I was hesitant, but I did feel so comfortable with him. So I said yes.

At the time, I didn’t realize that he lived in my old neighborhood. The fact became clear, of course, as we were driving to his place. For years, I had actively avoided this part of the city. There were just too many memories, and I never wanted to run into any family members.

But, driving through it, now, I couldn’t help it. My curiosity got the better of me.

“Can you take a right up here? I used to live over here, and I’m just wondering what my old house looks like.”

My heart was pounding as we turned the corner and drove slowly down my old street. Everything looked the same but different. Kids' bicycles in the front lawns. Picket fences and rose bushes. Trees that had grown from saplings. The house three doors down from mine had been painted, and the new paint job looked old already. It felt like decades had passed, and also no time at all.

When we pulled up to my house, I told Ethan to park at the curb.

Half of the house was blackened from fire damage. The windows on that side were boarded up. The rest of the place looked about the same as ever, but clearly abandoned. There was a for sale sign on the lawn. I jotted down the number of the real estate agent, even though I doubted I would ever call. There wasn’t anything for me here. Or so I thought.

Ethan immediately clocked the situation, but he knew better than to say anything. He just asked me if I still wanted to go to his or if I’d rather call it off and try again another time. I told him I was good, but for the rest of the weekend, I was off my game. And thank goodness for Ethan, he was quiet when I needed him to be. And he filled the silence when I wanted to get out of my own head.

On Tuesday morning, as he was driving me back to my place, he told me, “Look, I didn’t want to cross any boundaries, but I called the real estate agent.”

He paused and waited to see if I was going to tear him a new one or not. I stayed quiet.

“They said that no one was hurt in the fire. Just material damage. But the tenants didn’t have homeowners' insurance and couldn’t pay for the repairs. So they left.”

I stayed quiet still. But I couldn’t convey to him how relieved I felt at hearing that. I honestly didn’t know I was even capable of caring about them at this point.

Ethan went on, “From the very vague details I’ve been able to pry out of you in the past, I’m going to assume that was your parents' place?”

I couldn’t speak all of a sudden, so I put my hand over his and gave it a squeeze. I was looking out the window.

“I know that this is a huge swing, and absolutely out of bounds. But I put in an offer. Now, just listen. If you don’t want anything at all to do with that house, I get it. I can rescind the offer, or I can buy the house and fix it up, and sell it. Or…we could fix it up for you to live in. Or burn it the rest of the way down. Anyway, it’s yours if you want it.”

As tempting as it was to burn the rest of the place down, that’s not what happened. I told Ethan that I did want to live in the house, but that it would need to be entirely different from the one I had grown up in. And, so I met with the architect and the contractors that he hired. I even put in my own work in the garden and laid down the front walkway.

The craziest thing is that, as stubborn as I was about not getting attached to anyone or ever coming back to this house, a year later, here I am: drinking coffee in my family home with a sugar daddy who has become one of the most important men in my life.