“It’s Its Own Thing”: A Typology of Interpersonal Sugar Relationship Scripts

Abstract

Although academics have focused on sugaring in various parts of the globe, sugar relationships in the United States have largely been ignored. The few studies that address these arrangements in the United States often frame them as a form of prostitution. Drawing from 48 in-depth interviews with women in the United States who have been in sugar relationships, I adopt a connected lives approach to explore the structure of these arrangements and to assess the extent to which they are a form of prostitution. Overall, I found that, although there is a dominant, subcultural relationship script that serves as a blueprint for sugar arrangements, they comprise their own unique relational package and take a variety of forms when enacted on an interpersonal level. Specifically, I identified seven types of sugar relationships, only one of which can be considered prostitution. These included sugar prostitution, compensated dating, compensated companionship, sugar dating, sugar friendships, sugar friendships with benefits, and pragmatic love.

Providing Sexual Companionship for Resources: Development, Validation, and Personality Correlates of the Acceptance of Sugar Relationships in Young Women and Men Scale (ASR-YWMS)

“…It is possible that being together with an intimate partner as a reason for having sex is simply irrelevant in a sugar relationship. This possibility is supported by certain findings obtained in former studies (e.g., Ryan, 2019;Scull, 2019).…”

“…Transactional sexual relationships generally lack the emotional intimacy characteristic of committed relationships (e.g., Scull, 2019) and so can be connected with previous findings about positive associations between a game-playing love style (Ludus) and unrestricted sociosexual orientation (e.g., Jonason and Kavanagh, 2010;Lee et al, 2013;Proyer et al, 2018;Smith et al, 2019). Accordingly, we hypothesized that individuals with a more positive attitude toward sugar relationships would view love as a source of pleasure without commitment (as reflected in a positive association between the ASR-YWMS and the Ludus love style).…”

Chemistry or Service? Sugar Daddies’ (Re)quest for Mutuality within the Confines of Commercial Exchange

“…Although our own research does indeed show that some sugar dating arrangements are nothing but a cover for the explicit selling and buying of a delimited sexual service (Gunnarsson & Strid, in press), taken as a whole sugar dating differs from more explicit forms of prostitution by being more diffuse and nonprofessional regarding how compensation is handled (Gunnarsson & Strid, in press;Nayar, 2017;Scull, 2020;Swader & Vorobeva, 2015). Moreover, when sex is part of the arrangements, it is often described as something emerging "naturally" from a more comprehensive dating relationship, where it is the dating that is compensated rather than the sex itself (Chu, 2018;Gunnarsson & Strid, in press;Scull, 2020). Furthermore, there are sugar dating arrangements that do not include sex at all (Gunnarsson & Strid, in press;Li, 2015;Scull, 2020).…”

“…A research field on sugar dating in a Global North context is in the process of emerging in the wake of the proliferation of profiled sugar dating websites (Deeks, 2013;Gunnarsson & Strid, in press;Hier, 2017;Miller, 2011;Mixon, 2019;Motyl, 2013;Nayar, 2017;Scull, 2020;Upadhyay, 2021). In Sub-Saharan Africa, there is a significant number of studies on sugar daddy relationships, predominantly from a health perspective (Bhana & Pattman, 2011;Brouard & Crewe, 2012;Kuate-Defo, 2004;Toska et al, 2015), reflecting a long tradition of the practice in this setting.…”

“…A key tension in existing research concerns whether sugar dating/compensated dating should be framed as a form of disguised prostitution where the age difference is marked (Deeks, 2013;Lee & Shek, 2013;Li, 2015;Miller, 2011), or as something different from prostitution (Scull, 2020), or at least from prostitution in its traditional form (Chu & Laidler, 2016;Nayar, 2017). Although our own research does indeed show that some sugar dating arrangements are nothing but a cover for the explicit selling and buying of a delimited sexual service (Gunnarsson & Strid, in press), taken as a whole sugar dating differs from more explicit forms of prostitution by being more diffuse and nonprofessional regarding how compensation is handled (Gunnarsson & Strid, in press;Nayar, 2017;Scull, 2020;Swader & Vorobeva, 2015). Moreover, when sex is part of the arrangements, it is often described as something emerging "naturally" from a more comprehensive dating relationship, where it is the dating that is compensated rather than the sex itself (Chu, 2018;Gunnarsson & Strid, in press;Scull, 2020).…”