Woman's 44-Year-Old Boyfriend Asks 'Why Would I Like You?' When She Refuses To Be His Sugar Mama
She now wonders if their entire relationship has been a sham.
Dmytro Zinkevych / Canva Pro Whenever there's a so-called "May-December" age-gap relationship, accusations of gold-digging nearly always follow, fairly or not.
For one woman on Reddit who's been dating a younger guy, she really thought she and her guy had genuinely connected. But several increasingly pointed money-related comments have left her blindsided and unsure of what to do.
When she refused to be his sugar mama, a woman's younger boyfriend cruelly rejected her.
In her Reddit post, the 53-year-old woman shared that she and her 44-year-old boyfriend have been dating for just two months, but they've been an incredible two months all the same.
Zinkevych | Canva Pro
"Our chemistry is off the charts," she wrote.
"Great conversations, we laugh a lot," and when it comes to the bedroom, things are "spectacular," she said. "He told me many times he liked me a lot, once even suggesting he'd like to be my boyfriend." But the inequalities of their relationship quickly began to add up.
She is very successful in their mutual career field, but her boyfriend is not. And soon, money started coming up a lot.
She wrote that she is "incredibly successful" in their field, but "him, not so much. When I was his age, I was way higher in my career than he is right now." She added that she's also "quite wealthy," whereas he struggles quite a bit financially.
But it's not for lack of talent, she said. The problem is that he spends most of his time smoking, gaming, and making music, which is his true passion. As she put it, "Unsurprisingly, he didn't make strides on the job front."
As a recent divorcee, though, none of this really mattered to her. She's not exactly ready yet for a long-term relationship. "All I want is to have a good time," she wrote, "and we certainly have it."
But then things took a turn. "He started to make small comments here and there about money," she said. It slowly escalated until one night, in bed during the afterglow, she jokingly asked him, "How can I repay you?" and was shocked to find he actually answered the question in earnest.
"He said: 'Buy me that guitar,'" they'd recently looked at in a store while shopping. Which struck her as "weird." Soon enough, he basically full-on asked her to be his benefactor. And that's when things took a truly vile turn.
When she refused to be his sugar mama, he cruelly told her the only reason he was with her was for her money.
On their most recent date, her boyfriend asked her about a hot and heavy text exchange in which she'd told him she'd "give you anything you need."
"'When you say that you'll give me everything I need, what do you mean? Because I'd love that, but I don't know if I can really count on you,'" he told her — and immediately, she saw red flags. When she asked him to clarify, he spilled it: "'It's not unusual in couples where if you're [with] someone younger… that you help them out.'"
Shocked, she refused and then said to him, "I thought you liked me," to which he responded in the cruelest way possible: "'Why would I like you?'" as if the very notion of him being into her was ridiculous.
He immediately apologized, but she refused to back down and told him, "His words were a deal breaker," as they should be. But before long, she was questioning whether she'd overreacted or misunderstood. "He didn't destroy my self-esteem, but dude, it still hurt."
Here's the thing: there's nothing fundamentally wrong with a sugar mama/sugar baby relationship. As long as it's agreed upon from the start. And if he was really looking for a benefactress with benefits, there are more than a few dating sites specifically designed to match older women and younger men who are perfectly happy to pay for company.
People on Reddit agreed that his request was out of line and mocked him mercilessly in the process.
"I'm sorry, this is hilarious," one Redditor commented. "Did he really think that as a grown man of 44, he's gonna be getting sugar baby treatment? Unreal." Which it's hard to argue with. Forty-four and looking for a benefactor? Come on now.
"In a year, he'll be an anecdote you pull out to amuse everyone," another wrote, to which a user added that the woman should tell him, "If you intended to have a sugar baby, you'd obviously go for someone in their early twenties." Both gave the woman a hearty laugh that was surely richly needed.
But others pointed out that the pattern here follows in lockstep with the typical progression of a con artist. "That off-the-charts chemistry you had? That was an act," the commenter wrote. "A con artist and a very inept one."
In the end, it seems like she definitely dodged a bullet — so-called "love-bombing" is indeed part of the con artist playbook. But one other Redditor pointed out that this story does have a silver lining: "I'm just glad you had a little fun for less than the price of a new guitar."
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.