Anonymous Reader Says Sugar Arrangement Became Caretaking
An anonymous Queerty reader says paid trips with an older benefactor became an exhausting role managing his partying and emotional crises. The account was not independently verified.
In a Queerty advice column, an anonymous reader wrote that a sugar arrangement with a man 28 years older had begun to feel less like dating and more like caretaking. The reader said the benefactor paid for trips, hotel rooms, dinners and clothes. According to the letter, weekends were often shaped by the older man’s heavy drinking, drug use, hangovers and emotional crises. The reader said that meant calming him down, deciding when he had had enough to drink and, on one occasion, hiding a bag of drugs.
The reader said some parts of the arrangement were enjoyable but asked whether the age and financial imbalance could be considered balanced when the younger partner carried the practical responsibility. Jake Myers, the licensed marriage and family therapist who answered the letter, distinguished occasional care from taking responsibility for another adult’s emotions and behavior. He suggested setting a boundary around the partying and watching whether the relationship could continue without the caretaking role. The letter is specific about a cost that cannot be reduced to the value of trips or gifts: the reader felt drained after managing another person’s substance use and emotional state. Myers’s advice treats that burden as a relationship boundary problem, not as proof that age or money alone determines who holds power. The writer used the pseudonym “Daddy Daycare,” and Queerty did not identify the reader or independently verify the events. The response is one therapist’s advice to the facts presented in the letter; it is not a clinical assessment of either person.