Discovering My True Calling: How a Sugar Relationship Helped Me Find Purpose

I never knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life, which is really to say that I had too many ideas of what I wanted to do with my life, and I could never land on just one. All throughout high school, when my peers were set on becoming doctors (and so, applying to pre-med programs) or putting together their art portfolio for art school, I was barely organized enough to sign up for the SATs.

I dreaded seeing any of my parents' friends or going to the dentist or talking to extended family because inevitably, they would ask me what I was going to do after high school, and I truly had no idea.

Cut to six years later, and I had graduated from an okay college with a communications degree (notoriously known as the major you choose when you don’t know what to do.) Changing majors three times had added a year and a half onto my college career, so I know that my parents were happy that I had managed to graduate at all.

But I still didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I spent a couple of years after that working at an after-school program, leading art workshops at the rec center. I worked part-time as an assistant at a vet clinic. I babysat. I was pretty good with a sewing machine, so I sometimes got paid to mend people’s clothes.

I still felt pressured to pursue a career, so I studied for the LSAT and then never took the test. I applied for fashion school and didn’t get in.

I guess you could say that I was lost, but I really just felt like I was meandering along pretty happily when I wasn’t feeling pressured to do more. I didn’t feel compelled to “find my calling.” I just liked following interests for a while and learning new things. And I always loved people.

Anyway, things changed for me when my parents cut me off. Which, like, fair. I was 25 by then. And, they did tell me that if there was ever an emergency or I needed help with a big expense, they would help me. But when it came to living expenses, shopping, health insurance, and the rest, I was on my own.

I didn’t tell them that I had already started supplementing my income with sugaring. It was all virtual at the beginning. I was having video calls with guys who would mostly just want to tell me about their day or complain about their job or spouse. Sometimes we would talk for hours, and I would be there painting my nails or cooking dinner and offering a listening ear.

My friends thought I was crazy, and eventually, my roommate at the time told me that I had to stop setting up my tripod in the kitchen because she did not want to show up on some random man’s screen. She was really judgmental about it.

But the fact is, I loved it. I was fascinated by these guys’ stories and each of their different personalities. I’m a bit of a reality show fanatic, and some of the drama that these men were sharing with me was really compelling stuff.

Beyond the fact that I was genuinely interested in all of the gossip and personal stories, I found that I felt really good about being able to give my sugar daddies a safe place to let it all out. Honestly, there were times that I cried because they were crying, and many of them told me that they didn’t have anyone in their life that they could talk to. I started taking notes after video calls so that I could remember to follow up on certain details.

For some people, this probably sounds like a nightmare. I know, for sure, that there are many sugar babies who want nothing to do with the emotional stuff. They just want the luxury meals and shopping sprees, and I love that for them.

But, for the first time in my life, I felt like I was doing something not only meaningful, but that I was actually really good at.

After doing this for about six months, I sat my parents down and told them that I wanted to go back to school. This time, for real. And I wanted to become a therapist.

They said that they were happy for me, but they had decided that they weren’t going to fund me. Again, I don’t blame them. They had paid for my LSAT tutors and my application fee for fashion school. And I already told you how that ended.

Looking back, I’m glad that they didn’t help me. It forced me to think really carefully about whether this was something I wanted to do. After all, it’s easy to apply for something you’re not paying for. It’s another thing entirely to take all of your earnings from allowances and your part-time jobs and put them directly into a savings account for school.

Eventually, I had enough money to apply for an online program that would allow me to take on a virtual caseload (i.e., pretty much exactly what I was doing with sugaring, but with patients instead!) And, I got lucky enough to be assigned a supervisor through my program who had actually been a sugar baby once upon a time! That was a crazy coincidence.

It’s now been about three years since I graduated and transitioned almost full-time into therapy work. I kept two of my sugar daddies just because I felt like we had a really strong connection, and they had been with me through the craziness of my grad program and licensing, and all of that. Of course, nowadays, I’m a lot more cognizant of the differences between being someone’s therapist and being a sugar baby and I’m careful not to cross boundaries that I might have early on in sugaring: things like giving too much of my own opinion instead of listening or not knowing how to validate someone’s experience.

My long, meandering career path is absolutely a joke in my friend group. After all, when I told them that I was going into sugaring, they basically had a collective panic attack and wondered if they should organize an intervention. Now, they can recognize that it was literally the best thing that I could have done for my career because it showed me how much I love helping people and hearing their stories.

I can’t say that every young person should become a sugar baby so that they can learn what to do with their life. But, I can say that it was a great way for me to gain some financial independence while I figured out what was important to me. I’m so grateful that my path went the way that it did because I swear, I was about to sell out to take whatever miserable corporate job came my way next. The fact that I chose an unconventional route is what led me to find my true calling.