I’m new to papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan).

If it’s genuine love through a relationship club, then it’s a bond where both people become inseparable through money. Would that be what you call genuine love with an allowance? That said, if it’s only one-sided, it can turn into delusion. A lifelong connection is possible whether you meet through a club or somewhere else. I believe the people who are meant to meet will find each other. You might chat with someone who just happens to sit next to you for two or three minutes, and before you know it, you’re going on a date a few days later—or they’ve become your girlfriend. It’s like a paper airplane.

I feel like my papa is genuinely in love with me. It feels like something beyond papa-katsu—more like being his mistress. I care about my papa too, but I’m not genuinely in love with him, and I’m always free.

I’m also voting for “a mistress from the Showa era”! > I see terms like “serious relationship” and “genuine feelings” in this Q&A forum. To me, my papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan) feels more like a “contractual mistress” arrangement.

As everyone has said, I suppose it’s somewhat like the image of a mistress from the Showa era. Even though the relationship is based on money, you’re still irreplaceable to each other. Writing it out myself, I realize that this sense of being “irreplaceable” really is the key. No matter whether outsiders try to mock it by calling it an affair or saying I’m someone’s mistress, that’s what my papas are to me.

“Gachi-koi” is, from a woman’s perspective, a certain type of man. ① **Chuunibyou-style gachi-koi** At the root is the belief: “I’ve still got it. I still have what it takes to attract women.” His goal is often to turn the arrangement into a relationship without an allowance. ② **Lying gachi-koi** He constantly says things like “I want a serious relationship” or “I’m going to quit too, so you should quit as well.” Of course, he has no intention of quitting himself. He’s simply a possessive man. Once he gets the woman to quit and focus solely on him, it’s like reaching the goal and ending the game. The women who get discarded afterward are truly pitiful. ③ **The genuine gachi-koi** A single man over 40 who has never had a girlfriend. He may be inexperienced with ordinary women—or genuinely still be a virgin. Beginners and ordinary PJ girls tend to find him creepy, but in the hands of a femme-fatale-type PJ, he can apparently be made to pay huge amounts: 100,000 yen per dinner date on a pay-per-meeting basis, or even a million yen with a little emotional manipulation. A gold mine. ④ **Divorced or autumn-of-life gachi-koi** He’s lonely, or wants to experience one last passionate romance in his life. This is the second-richest vein after the genuine gachi-koi. You have to be careful not to pull too much money from him, or he’ll cut you off. ⑤ **The married-but-still-gachi-koi type** He wants to experience one last passionate romance in his life. But in reality, his family is important to him—or at least, he has built part of his identity around being “a man who values his family.” You could also say he lacks the courage to get divorced. It’s not so much that he’s stingy; he genuinely doesn’t have much money. He might as well just have an affair, but when push comes to shove, he plans to defend himself with the theory that “papa-katsu doesn’t count as cheating.” ⑥ **The mistaken-identity gachi-koi** He looks gentlemanly and acts the part, so the woman mistakenly assumes, on her own, that “this man wants a serious relationship with me.” She may even say, “You don’t need to give me an allowance,” leaving the man bewildered. Some men think, “Lucky me!” and enjoy the freebie, though. That’s about it. **P.S.** There’s a reason women have trouble understanding men’s “gachi-koi.” When men fall seriously in love, it’s strongly connected to one of two outcomes: the allowance disappears, or it becomes dramatically larger. For women, romance and an allowance are like a meal and dessert. The allowance—dessert—goes into a completely different stomach from romance—the meal. They occupy separate spaces.

I’m also puzzled about how these terms are supposed to be sorted out. People throw around “gachi-koi” so casually, but if a woman genuinely falls in love, I don’t think allowance can simply paper over those feelings. Isn’t being able to compromise because of the allowance basically the same as a married couple who’ve grown cold toward each other? Would you call a couple who compromise for money and stay married a “gachi-koi couple”?

In my case, I absolutely adore my papa (a male supporter) now, so I see him without accepting an allowance. However, when we met for the second time, he gave me the money upfront because he didn’t like handing it over at each meeting in a banded stack. He also gave me a gift worth around ¥300,000, and this year he bought me a car. So when you add it all up as a pay-per-meeting arrangement, I’ve actually received quite a lot. It’s been almost two years now. We meet every week and have sex every week, but I never get tired of it. I don’t know what I’d do if my papa were gone. No one else could fill the void—he’s someone I need, both emotionally and physically. A Showa-era mistress Marika

Serious dating or “gachi-koi” is somewhat similar to the old-fashioned idea of a mistress relationship from the Showa era. There’s an allowance involved, but the person is still someone important to you—does that make sense? It’s also a little different from pseudo-romance. It may help to think of it as the opposite of a transactional relationship. That said, some people apparently ask for a romantic relationship without any allowance. They’re probably just men who have misunderstood the arrangement, so I think it’s best to say goodbye.

That’s not quite right. Even in a serious relationship, there can still be financial support. When people say “an allowance-based relationship,” it tends to imply “having meals or sex in exchange for money.” In that sense, I think it’s a term that leans more toward the sex-industry side of things. When people say “a serious relationship” or “a committed relationship,” I think it implies, “I genuinely like the other person, so I want to see them and be intimate with them. The money is simply an expression of the man’s feelings.” It has more of the connotation of giving your spouse money for living expenses, so I feel it’s a term that leans more toward marriage. When someone says, “Since this is a serious relationship, you don’t need an allowance, right?” they’re trying to make it look like a serious relationship so they can get cheap access to the sex industry. I don’t think the two should be confused.

I have the same question. I understand “gachi-koi” to mean genuine romantic feelings. If that’s the case, wouldn’t the allowance start to get in the way for the person who’s genuinely in love? The person giving the allowance may often wonder whether the other person is only seeing them because of the money, while the person receiving it may often feel that the relationship is being reduced to a financial transaction. If both people develop genuine feelings and come to resent the allowance, they might agree to continue dating without it—but I think that’s actually quite rare. What exactly are people being serious about when they say “serious relationship”? In my own way, I feel that I’m seriously involved in a genuine allowance-based relationship. Does that mean it qualifies as neither a serious relationship nor a genuine one?