Is a Sugar Relationship Prostitution? What 48 Women Who Lived One Say

Sugar relationships are often portrayed in a very simplified way. On one side, there's the image of the young woman deliberately seeking a rich man for money and gifts. On the other, stories of women who were exploited or coerced. The article Sugaring as a Deviant Career: Modes of Entering Sugar Relationships and Social Stigmas, by sociologist Maren T. Scull, based on 48 interviews with women who were or had been in sugar relationships, shows that reality is far more varied.

The study set out to understand how these women entered these relationships and how they dealt with other people's judgment.

Three ways in

The study classified the ways of entering into three categories: gradual or accidental entry (what the author calls drifting), conscious decision, and defensive entry, associated with coercion.

The most common was precisely the one least like the stereotype. 58% of the interviewees weren't looking for a sugar relationship when they entered one. They met someone who made them an offer, or gradually realized that an existing relationship was taking on that shape. Some met the man at work; others were first hired for a different kind of job; some met him on websites that weren't even meant for sugar dating. Some already knew the man before the relationship took on that character.

For others, it was a deliberate decision: 40% entered this kind of relationship consciously. Some learned about the concept from friends; others from TV or the internet. After that, they actively looked for a partner. Defensive entry, tied to coercion, accounted for the remaining cases.

There's no single motivation

Money and material benefits are indeed an important part of the explanation, but not the only one. Drawing on the existing literature, the article mentions other motives linked to seeking sugar relationships, such as companionship, sex, mentorship, love, curiosity, and even boredom. It would be simplistic to assume all women enter these relationships just to get money.

Not every sugar relationship involves sex

One particularly interesting finding: about 60% of participants had had some kind of sexual interaction with their partner. That means a considerable share reported none. This helps frame one of the main questions the article discusses.

Is sugar dating prostitution?

The interviewees themselves had no single answer. Some saw the two as completely different activities: for them, affection, companionship, intimacy, friendship, and a relationship lasting months or years made it different from a simple sexual transaction.

Others were blunt in saying that, in some cases, there was no meaningful difference. If there is a direct exchange of money for sex, they argued, calling it sugar doesn't change what it is. One participant even said the name hardly mattered: if the activity is prostitution, there's no reason to hide it behind another term.

Scull's conclusion is that there is no clearly defined line between sugar dating and prostitution. In some relationships the sexual component is practically absent; others combine sex, affection, companionship, and financial support; and some situations work essentially as a sexual transaction, simply using the language and mechanisms of the sugar world.

One name for many relationships

This also helps explain why the term sugar itself is so controversial. Some women use the label sugar baby precisely to distance themselves from the stigma of prostitution. Talking about "gifts," an "allowance," "companionship," a "relationship," or "mentorship" produces a different description of the relationship, even when money and sex are involved. The article interprets this as a way of managing social stigma.

Perhaps "sugar" isn't the best name for this world. The term suggests a clearly defined category, when the research shows the opposite: some relationships involve only companionship and financial support, others include sex, others have a strong emotional dimension, and in some the difference from prostitution is genuinely hard to draw.

More than deciding whether every sugar relationship is or isn't prostitution, the study shows these relationships are more varied than the labels suggest. And that may be the main problem with the word sugar: it tries to give a single name to relationships that, in practice, can take very different forms.