Navigating a Sugar Relationship While Living in Different Countries

I’m an American who has lived in different Latin American countries for almost a decade now, ever since I graduated high school. It started off, as it so often does with digital nomads, that I came down here to do a backpacking trip with friends before going off to college. I had my acceptance letter for my dream school and everything. But there was a part of me that just didn’t want to lock myself into a career path just yet. So I stayed. And stayed and stayed.

I ended up getting my credential to teach English, and that’s been more or less enough to pay the bills and my various adventures traveling around the continent.

But, as much as I loved my life and my job and everything, I knew that I wasn’t making as much as I wanted. And there’s not that much upward mobility when it comes to teaching English, even if you get hired at a private school or big-name company.

So, I decided I was going to go back to the US for a time and figure things out. I wasn’t even sure what that would look like. Maybe I would find a job there and settle in for good. Maybe I would win the lottery and then head right back down to South America.

It turned out to be the latter, in a way.

James was a friend of my cousin’s who had made it big in the tech industry around the time that I was learning how to order a beer in Spanish in a dive bar in Lima (priorities, am I right?) Anyway, he was a plus one at one of our family reunions, and we hit it off right away. He was fascinated by the idea that I had been living outside of the country for so long. Apparently, it’s something that he always wanted to do but had gone right into the corporate world as soon as he graduated from college.

There was something of a mutual respect there. Obviously, I admired him because he had put his nose to the grindstone and gotten rich at a young age. He admired me because I had thrown caution (and practicality) to the wind and spent my youth traveling like he always wanted to.

“Yeah, well, now I’m paying the price for it, I guess. I’m 28 years old and living in my parents’ guest house.”

He laughed at that and said, “What would your ideal lifestyle be? Like, if you could manufacture your dream life, what would it look like?”

I put on a dramatic, dreamy look and said, “Well, best case scenario, I find a rich sugar daddy who could fund my travels, and we would only ever see each other when he comes down to bring me American dollars and play tourist for a week at a time.”

James didn’t say anything at the time, but he had a sparkle in his eye. I expected that he might hit me up for a date sometime soon.

He did hit me up, but with a very different offer. He asked to take me out for coffee. I thought maybe he was going to offer me some kind of business opportunity? Ask for travel advice? I had no idea.

Turns out, he quite literally wanted to give me my dream life.

“Here’s the thing,” he explained. “I prefer sugar relationships at this time in my life because I’m not interested in getting married yet and all that hassle. But I want to travel, and I want a local guide when I go. I’ve run the numbers, and I would be able to cover your rent for a one-bedroom apartment in just about any major city in South America. Ideally, it would be a new city every three months, because I plan on coming down about once a quarter. When I’m there, I’d cover everything, of course, meals, travel, activities, whatever you feel is worth seeing. And when I’m not there, it would be nice if we could have a weekly video call or something like that. I’d like to practice my Spanish. I’d like to see pictures and videos of what your life is like. Things like that. Think about it.”

I had already made up my mind and was mentally at home packing my things to get the heck back on a plane. I honestly couldn’t believe my luck.

So, that all happened two years ago, and James has been down to see me every quarter like clockwork. He’s even funded me to come back to the US a couple of times for holidays to see my family.

And as mostly wonderful as it’s been, there have been some bumps in the road, so here are a few things that we had to work through as sugar partners living in different countries:

Cultural differences

Listen, I said that I’m American, and that’s true. But when you spend your twenties in a foreign country, you tend to adapt to that culture; it’s like a weird hybrid thing. And, with me and James, that cultural difference came up in a number of ways.

For one thing, we had different ideas of planning. In many parts of South America, it’s common to plan things at the last minute or change plans at the last minute to account for the unexpected, like a strike shutting down public transportation or a heat-wave-related power outage. We just don’t tend to plan things very far in advance down here because things change constantly. And, people here have a much higher tolerance for lateness. If you show up within 15 minutes of the meeting time, for example, you’re on time.

But, of course, this looked like a total lack of respect from James’ perspective. We would schedule a video call at 5 pm, and I would send him a message at 4:30 that I had to cancel because my landlord had dropped by to work on the plumbing leak. Or, when he would come to visit me and we would have plans with friends at 9 pm (already late for any American), and I would order the Uber at 9 pm so that we could get there at 9:20 pm, his sour mood would kind of ruin the night.

It’s something that we eventually had to just be like, “hey, this is a cultural thing. I’ll try to do better, you try to be more flexible, and we can meet in the middle.”

Our families do not understand

Both James and I agreed that we wouldn’t tell our families that our relationship was all sugar and no romance (I mean, okay, there’s some romance, I do care a lot about James).

So, since they think we’re in a traditional relationship, they really don’t like the idea of us living on separate continents. On the outside, it looks like a really weird long-distance relationship in which we don’t actually care about each other. In particular, his family came at me pretty hard, saying that I was selfish for choosing my adventurous lifestyle while their James was at home being the responsible one.

To his credit, James has done a good job of protecting me from their criticism, and he even told me that he’d be willing to spend holidays with my family instead of continuing to field their uncomfortable questions. But yeah, it’s been hard to receive that kind of criticism.

Missing each other

Of course, the hardest thing about having a sugar relationship like ours is that we do genuinely miss each other when we’re not together. Long distance is hard on any relationship, but it’s even more difficult when you’re having a bad day and you just want your person to take care of you and bring you food, and they’re literally 13 hours away by plane.

We’ve gotten through that part by making sure that we both have strong support systems to fall back on when we’re not together. I keep my schedule pretty busy, so I’m not spending too much time at home wondering what James is doing or waiting around for him to message me back.

But then, when he’s here, it’s like, all of that time spent missing him was worth it. We have such a blast when we’re together, and I’m reminded all the time that I’m literally living my dream life because of this man. So, keeping that in mind makes the harder moments easier to deal with.

Now, I’m not sure that I would recommend this kind of setup for everyone. However, it has worked so well for me and James. I don’t see us giving up any time soon, unless of course, he retires early and comes to join me full-time! Don’t worry, I’m trying to convince him of that any chance I get!