To think my age gap / sugar baby relationship is nobody else’s business?

*Should have been not many boys of 15 or 16 having children.

Would you want to marry him & have kids with him, OP?

This would be the best way, from your selfish POV, for you to secure a decent payout, whether by divorce or widowhood.

I imagine it’s one of the things his adult dc worry about. If he’s wealthy & spending what amounts to chump change on buying his much younger girlfriend trinkets & holidays, they could probably see it as you do - he’s having a ball, they don’t have to like or respect you but hey dad’s enjoying himself. Whereas if he marries you, things get much more complicated & expensive.

The other concern they will have is you leaving him as soon as he gets a bit wobbly. Suddenly they’ve got to deal with elder care for a vulnerable older parent who has just been dumped & is upset about it.

Again, he’s not your responsibility - it would be cold but logical for you to bail - but that’s not going to endear you to them, either.

Basically, it would be much much better from the POV of your bf’s dc if he’d found himself a financially secure & woman of his own age to buddy up with.

So no, they aren’t ever going to be keen on you.

From your POV, it does seem risky. You aren’t building a career; if he dumped you tomorrow, you’ve got a CV gap to explain if you try to get back into regular work.

Finding another similar arrangement is always going to be a game of diminishing returns; rich older men who want a younger girlfriend are going to have access to an infinite supply of women younger than you are now.

If you want kids, again, you need either a rich older man who’s up for another family OR an exit strategy from prostitution which gives you time to find someone whilst your fertility is on your side.

It all sounds like a lousy long term deal. I’m not judging - you aren’t dragging him into bed at gunpoint - I’m just not convinced it’s a great long term strategy.

If this is true it’s very sad OP. Having a transactional relationship like this wouldn’t be my choice, but what really struck me was you have stated you are hoping he might gift you a house, and if not you’ll move on and find someone else who might. Yet if you had a career that paid £100k in your 20s you could easily buy your own house. You could also meet other equally well paid men your own age. I managed to have a great job, have kids, be a SAHM for nearly 10 years and go back to a great job. It’s not impossible if you have the kind of job you claim to have had. I can’t imagine your partners kids are going to stay quiet if he buys you a house. What a strange sad life you are leading devoid of any actual feelings.

Sounds financially crazy if true.

You earned 100k and are only renting. You are destabilising your future. If he is genuinely wealthy you would be paying a mortgage (via his payments) every month at the very least, paying a pension. too..It all sounds very cheap OP.

If you are going to be transactional at least be smart about it...

None of anyone's business really, you do you x

"Enjoy" servicing an old man while being unemployed and completely dependent on him still fancying her?

She supposedly had a very high paying job before and as a single woman could have afforded an excellent lifestyle. What's 'enjoyable' about her current set up?

You're being judged, because this isn't a genuine relationship in any way. It's basically a long-term prostitution arrangement. You say it yourself that you're only with him for his money, and he's only with you for your youth. When the basis of a relationship is prostitution, materialistism and superficiality, people are going to judge you big time. The age gap thing is also too big to not judge, even if this was a genuine relationship. It's up to you to not care about people's judgements, but they are not going to stop judging you. You keep feeding them the material to judge you on after all.

It's also very normal for family to worry about their members. This whole "none of anyone's business"-thing is really dumb, and this attitude comes from an extremely selfish mindset - which is fine if you don't give a shit about anyone but yourself. But, I absolutely think family should worry about each other, especially when they make questionable choices. Which, by the sounds of it, this man as well as yourself are. What's the point of having a family if they're not there to let you know when you do stupid things?

To be honest, I'd be really angry and embarrassed if my dad paraded around with a prostitute and pretended like they're a normal couple. It'd be embarrassing, and his actions would reflect badly on me. Sorry to say, but when you are a parent, you don't get to pull stunts like this and make your family's life a humiliating hell.

I think you're both utterly in the wrong.

Oh yeah I forgot, This is MN the home of all the 100k a year earners.

It depends on how much the allowance is and if she's saving anything.

Oddly I know a woman like this too. Aged 53. Married twice in her late 20s and early 30s - both marriages lasted 2-3 years. 1 son aged about 35 now (who she had at about 18-19 from a one night stand) who she rarely sees. Not been in a marriage for about 20 years now.

For the last 20 years she had had 'rich' boyfriends who worked abroad a lot and she didn't see for a few weeks at a time - aka married - who bought her expensive jewellery, perfume, watches, fur coats (yuk) various types of designer clothes and shoes etc, and paraded around with her on their arm when out at swanky restaurants. She worked part time sometimes, and not at all sometimes, whilst being largely 'kept' by these men.

She had her last 'sugar daddy' when she was 48-49, and he dumped her last year, when she was 52, and she has not been able to find another one. When she hit her early 50s, her looks went downhill very quickly, and she went from looking early to mid 40s to looking more like late 50s over a 1-2 year period of time. Like the woman you know, she hasn't got the same appeal now to these men. The one thing she did have was her looks, and they've faded dramatically. She has nothing else.

She is actually working all the hours she can get now as a carer, to try and support herself. Zero hours contract, but some weeks does 30 hours. Inexplicably she has tried it on with several husbands of women she knows, in the hope of stealing them, so she has a new man. None of them are rich, but at this point, any man will do.

These men have all laughed at her. They are not interested in a lazy gold digger in her mid 50s who has lost her looks. Like your friend, she is penniless, and has no savings. Always depended on men to bankroll her.

I think she will be alone for a long time now.

I will be accused of sounding 'gleeful' about this.

I am.

.

@patooties , has this post triggered you!

It would need to be very generous to compete with her supposed £100k job, even with rent and other 'expenses' paid. Especially as the 'allowance' is entirely conditional on him still wanting to shag her. She has absolutely no legal rights and he could dump her the second he finds a younger, hotter piece. And then what has she got?

You do you. I’m the same age as you.

If I didn’t have dc, I would probably do the same. Almost every single ex (oldest has been 10 years older) have either cheated on me or used me. Not saying a sugar daddy wouldn’t cheat either but at least you get the benefits of him being generous.

I remember when I lived abroad at 21, I had a slightly older friend at work from a country where this is common. She was in a similar arrangement with a 72 year old. I remember thinking wtf at the time. Wondering how on earth she could do it.

Now as I grow older, I realise they probably aren’t that bad.

Actually I think he’s more wrong than her. She’s just deluded, she seems to think she can become wealthy out of this, when it’s clear he’s no intention of this, he’s just paying for the current service, so she always needs to be on, available, happy, she even wants kids and is deluding herself him or someone else will pay for that. Like it’s a real relationship whilst at the same time saying she knows what it is.

he knows this, he’s paying to shag a young woman, I assume she’s attractive, panders to his ego, makes herself wholly available, he isn’t deluded. He doesn’t appear foolish, he’s not even putting her in the will. He’s just parading about his paid for woman,

the sheer level of delusion she has is off the scale. She even thinks she’s like his kids,

Let's say he's 61 and she's 29, that's 32 years difference. If each person had a baby at 16 then yes it's possible. But she says early 60s which could be up to 64, so that's another three years to add into the equation. It's definitely possible given that people generally had babies younger in previous generations.

Daft decision to chuck what was obviously a good job, where you could have doubtless progressed to an even higher salary and bought your own nice things.

Your position is very precarious. You say you'll just move on to the next rich old codger when this relationship ends, but remember, you'll be competing with women in their twenties, which if the old codger is only looking for fun and arm candy, may not be easy as you age.
ETA if this is even true, of course.

That’s harsh, friends with benefits, they are fond of each other

She quite clearly says in her OP that they have sex.

But why are you assuming this will ever happen? He's made no mention of marrying you I presume? You're not engaged, there's no date set? Because anything else is just words anyway. So no divorce settlement when he gets bored. No inheritance because his DC will get it all.

You were earning £100k. So unless he's paying you £100k plus loads on top (not in the form of perks like taking you on holiday, actual money that you can do whatever you want with), then you're losing out and have not made a good financial decision.
Neither is it a good financial decision if you couldn't just walk back into a £100k job tomorrow should you wish to.

If you were a minimum wage worker, being in this relationship for 10yrs and leaving with nothing other than the gifts you were given and the money saved from your allowance, would not be a bad deal necessarily. But in your circumstances, I think you're going to lose out.

You're going to make yourself unemployable potentially and also lose out in love, just for having given the last of your youthful years to what is essentially a prostituting situation. That isn't a good business decision.

You can think you'll continue to sell yourself but you're not factoring in the menopause years and the run up to them. They can batter a woman's looks, meaning finding someone who wants you for that reason becomes harder. Those years can take away all that oestrogen currently making you feel cuddly and wanting sex, meaning it goes from a situation of not really fancying your partner but still having a sex drive so overlooking that, to a situation where you really don't feel like having sex anyway and now you've got to do it with someone unattractive who you grow to resent for it and end up can't stand to have him touching you.

If you're going down this route as a career, which realistically you are if you've given up your job, you need to be a lot more business minded about it and push for marriage, as well as milking him for all you can get. So that when he dies or gets bored of you, you've amassed wealth more than you would have if you'd stayed in the £100k a year job. Otherwise you're effectively placing yourself in a situation where you're losing out, since you probably can't just walk back into a £100k a year job the next day if he dumps you after a decade. If you're not able to make that much off him, you should have kept the job and just seen him as a side hustle/boyfriend who was never going to marry you and kept your financial independence.

Like I said, if you were a minimum wage worker you'd likely be quids in regardless and could easily go back to a minimum wage job when this all ends, for a start nobody to judge you because nobody (except your minimum wage friends, who have no influence) would have known what you've been doing. But if you can command £100k for not being a prostitute and having a stable job, then that's your starting point. Since prostitute is an unstable job with no employees rights or redundancy package, you need to be "earning" way more than £100k a year to make it worthwhile for you. At the moment you're probably valuing the "benefits" of the job, the holidays etc, too highly - those won't pay the bills if he dumps you.

Don't underestimate how difficult it could be to get a job again if you've got a negative reputation too. People absolutely will judge you for this relationship situation and it could cost you roles in the future. If he's well known, his DC are bad-mouthing you all over the place and basically everyone knows you're in this for the money (which is what they'll think due to the age gap even if it wasn't true), then you're building up a negative reputation for yourself amongst the general population who'd never consider doing something like this. Earning £100k you could be moving in circles anyway where your peers will now get to hear of this situation you're in and it affect your employment prospects when they judge you for it. You won't be able to get a minimum wage job either, you probably sound too posh and are way too overqualified and maybe don't even have minimum-wage-job type skills. So you'd be fucked.

I think you need to wake up a bit TBH. Accept the situation for what it is and make decisions accordingly. At the moment you're selling yourself a lie that this isn't prostitution and is some kind of love affair, to make it more palatable. In doing so, you're leaving yourself wide open to exploitation.
Either wake up, treat it as a sabbatical and go get another high paying job sharpish. If he doesn't like you being less available and dumps you, who cares? Obviously not him!
Or wake up to your new reality and start treating yourself as the commodity that he is treating you as, valuing yourself and your time accordingly. You say "it's not as transactional as it sounds" - well, if this is what you do in place of employment now, then it should be, so get on it.

FWB situations don't normally involve one person being given an 'allowance' by the other. And usually the 'benefit' in question is sex which both of them enjoy. Whereas the OP has basically admitted that she wouldn't so much as kiss this guy if he weren't rich.

Gurrrrl, this ain’t it! I feel so sorry for his kids! Being the same age as you and you’re effectively flaunting it in their faces. If anything, it should at least be a discreet arrangement.

I guess my question is why give up work? Why not continue to earn and save/invest everything? Within a few years you'd have a portfolio that would give you long term financial security long after your arrangement ends....

Nah, they are as wrong as each other. She's an almost 30 year old woman, not a child - she's just as responsible for this shitshow as he is.

OP, whatever about this morally which is completely your own business, you need to be a lot more sensible than you are being financially.

If this ends, where are you for housing and paying your bills?
With a large gap in employment?

That would be my biggest concern for you.
Should he drop dead, where would you be?

Start thinking and planning as if it could suddenly end.

Anything else is spectacularly foolish IMO.