Before We Began: Setting Boundaries, Benefits, and Pace

I was married to a love bomber for two years, and let me tell you, it messed me up. Basically, his MO was to shower me with compliments and gifts. He would take me out to the movies or nice dinners every night of the week. He would post about me on his social media and insist that I also share his posts so that everyone would know that I was his and that things were going super well.

And then, after a few weeks of this kind of manic display of love, he would totally disappear. Usually, it would be prompted by some silly disagreement, like the time that I showed up 15 minutes late to our date because I got a flat tire. And the icing-out phase was brutal. He would use the silent treatment, or he would make passive-aggressive comments to me in front of my friends. Sometimes, I simply wouldn’t hear from him for days at a time (yes, even when we were living together.)

So you can imagine that once the divorce papers were finalized, I had a whole lot of healing to do on my own. And we married young, so I had gone through all of this at a pretty vulnerable time in my self-discovery phase, you know? Luckily, I had a strong group of friends around me and an actually good therapist. And after a few years, I got back on my feet.

A big part of that journey was becoming a sugar baby. I wanted a way to be in a relationship that felt in my control. In sugaring, there were no grey areas, which had caused so much chaos and confusion in my marriage. I told my sugar daddies what I wanted and expected and agreed to terms that I felt comfortable with. And at the first sign of them pulling anything even close to what my ex-husband would do, the agreement was swiftly ended.

This felt good and empowering for me. I was able to be strict with my boundaries, and my rigidity kept me safe.

And yet, my therapist asked whether I was being a little bit too cautious with my sugar daddies. There was a time, for example, that I ended things with a sugar daddy a week before we were supposed to go to Spain together because he had asked if I would be willing to meet some of his family members while we were there. I had clearly told him that I was not interested in an emotional connection of any kind, and had gotten it into my mind that he had planned the whole trip as a way to manipulate me into meeting them.

He was furious. But more than that, he was hurt. And when I’m feeling really self-deprecating, I remember how pained his face looked when we had that argument. I really hurt his feelings, and maybe he didn’t deserve that. But what was done was done, and I told myself that I was just protecting myself.

“Do you think it’s possible,” my therapist said kindly in our next session, “that you might be overcorrecting? It almost seems like your trust was so betrayed in your marriage that you refuse to trust anyone at all, to the point of cutting off people who might actually be trustworthy.”

She was right, but by that time, my Spanish sugar daddy was already on a plane, probably with another baby at his side.

I promised my therapist that I would at least consider whether I was being unreasonable with my boundaries. Maybe there was a way to be a little bit more flexible without putting myself in the same position as before.

And that’s around the time that I started dating Lance.

Lance has always been a very exuberant, loud, outgoing kind of guy. When he walks into a room, people look at him, either because they already know him or because they want to know him. He’s tall, too, and looks great for his age. He’s got a great smile. A disarming smile, you could say.

You can imagine that all of this made me extremely nervous around him. I felt like his “life of the party” personality was thinly-veiled narcissism. I had basically already written him off as a manipulative psychopath by the time we ordered drinks, and he insisted on ordering the same thing that I got by saying it was just a habit of his to learn more about a first date.

He spent the entire rest of the date trying to get to know me. He asked questions and then actually seemed to absorb my responses. He looped the conversation back to things I had mentioned earlier in the date. He remembered my drink order, but instead of ordering it without asking, he said, “Are you up for another round? Or would you prefer something else?”

I thought, hmmm. Maybe this is my chance to quiet that overly protective voice inside my head. Maybe, just this once, I could give this guy the benefit of the doubt.

So, I accepted his offer for a second date, one in which we might talk about what a sugar relationship would look like. And as usual, I came with my list of strict demands and non-negotiables (I mean, I wasn’t going to change overnight, was I?) We talked through them one by one, and Lance was accommodating. No sleep-overs, okay, fine. No phone calls after 8 pm, alright. No changes to dates within 24 hours without prior notice, firm but fair.

But then, he threw me a curveball.

“This all seems fine to me,” he said slowly. “But I have a request that I think, based on what you’ve told me so far, you’re maybe not going to like.”

My gut reaction was to end the conversation right there and call it a day. But I let him go on.

“If we’re still seeing each other next year, I want you to be my date for Thanksgiving.”

I started to protest, but he put his palm down gently on the table between us.

“That’s a whole year for you to figure out who I am. A whole year to potentially go to parties with me and see that I’m not just going to throw you to the wolves in social settings. And if, at that time, you still don’t trust me or want to meet my family, then that’s fine, and we can go our separate ways. But I’m just not the kind of guy who keeps his sugar baby in the shadows. This is a non-negotiable for me.”

I told him that I would need to think about it before agreeing, when, of course, what I actually wanted to do was talk to my therapist about it. Really, I wanted to strategize with my therapist how I would let this guy off easy before getting more involved. But, to my surprise, my therapist was on his side.

“It’s all green flags from what I can see,” she said. “Yes, he’s challenging your boundary against becoming personally involved. Meeting someone’s family on a major holiday is a big deal. But he’s also giving you plenty of time to take things slow. He’s being honest and clear about what he wants. There’s no gray area or confusion here. And he’s giving you an out in the case that you change your mind. I think he seems solid. I think you should give him a chance.”

Over the course of the next year, I put Lance through all the tests. I wanted to see what he was like when he was annoyed, when he was tired, when he was stressed. I wanted to know what his family was like and what it would be like to meet them. I wanted to know what would be expected of me as his plus one.

And much to my surprise, there were no surprises, after all. I went to his family’s Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone was perfectly kind. Lance wasn’t testing me or setting me up to fail. He was genuine. And I never would have known that unless I had been willing to open up my mind a little.

I’ve learned that healing doesn’t mean never making the same mistake twice. It means finding the courage not to hide under a rock after you make that first mistake. And, I’ll look forward to many more Thanksgivings!