I’m the one who asked about White Day yesterday.

White Day isn’t really an occasion worth bringing up two or three days in advance. Especially if it’s your first White Day together—or if it’s the kind of relationship where you’d care that much about it. Honestly, aside from the first White Day, you probably won’t even remember what gifts you gave each other. After several years, just birthdays and Christmases alone will add up to double digits. And from the perspective of club dating, if there’s even that slight a mismatch in communication, you should end things. It’s best to be with someone who doesn’t feel like a burden.

Are gifts supposed to be given with the expectation that something will come back to you? I feel like that’s where things are already off. If you care about the other person, then that feeling itself is already a gift. Put simply, it’s like giving up your seat on the train to an elderly person or a pregnant woman. Of course, feelings aren’t visible, so once you become close, you start converting those feelings into tangible things and giving them to the other person. Spiders do this too, though lol. But for spiders, it’s for reproduction, not affection. When you think about it that way, a papa-katsu relationship without love—giving an allowance in exchange for intimacy—could be called the most biological kind of behavior (albeit simulated). When you make your gratitude and feelings easier to understand by putting them into tangible form, they simply become objects. If you give a gift while thinking about getting something back from the start, that’s nothing more than an exchange of goods. Is there any point in doing that in a human relationship? In that case, you’d be better off buying yourself a treat for the same amount of money—it would be more reliable. And since people have different values when it comes to both possessions and money, it’s honestly impossible to “exchange” objects that represent exactly the same amount of feeling. If you don’t use your feelings as the measure, but instead “return” something based on the amount of money you received from the other person—I’m deliberately saying “return,” because it isn’t merely accepting something—can you really say that it’s equal to what you feel toward them? That also raises the question of whether you even have a way to put an exact monetary value on your own feelings. Of course, in society, this act of “returning” something exists in the form of obligation, and returning favors is convenient for maintaining relationships, so it’s probably worth doing. But when you think about whether there’s an obligation or not, I think there are really only two possibilities: either they aren’t someone you feel obligated to return a favor to, or you don’t return it precisely because you have a relationship built on enough trust that such obligations don’t matter. Ideally, the best thing is to return feelings with feelings. From a papa-katsu perspective, though, it isn’t a relationship based on a contract like marriage, so the allowance and other things simply make up for that. That’s all I think it is. If you don’t have that original concept of a gift as an expression of your feelings in the first place, then I think you’re better off not giving the other person gifts. Especially if you’re dating a man while receiving an allowance from him—particularly if it’s an amount you could never easily earn on your own. Socially speaking, if you put a monetary value on yourself, the amount you can earn on your own is your current value in society. So when a papa gives you an amount you normally couldn’t earn and helps transform you into someone who feels valuable, all you can feel is gratitude, right? Wouldn’t it be okay to express that gratitude freely from time to time? That’s just my personal opinion. This got long lol. A gift is one-way. That’s all.

If you gave him the gift because you genuinely liked him—not because you expected something in return—then maybe he noticed your feelings and deliberately ignored them. It’s the same as when women are put off by a guy who develops genuine romantic feelings for them. Especially if he’s a good-looking, married papa (a male supporter) with no intention of destroying his family, he’s probably very sensitive to that sort of thing. But if you’re simply thinking, “I gave him a present, so why didn’t I get anything in return? This isn’t fair—my pride is hurt,” then you still have a lot to learn. If you like someone, then you like them—that’s why you gave them the gift. If you can’t give without expecting anything back, you’ll probably continue to struggle, not only in papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan), but in ordinary romantic relationships too. These are the ABCs of love. P.S. Every now and then, people write in saying, “I’ve only done papa-katsu and I’ve forgotten how to have a normal romantic relationship.” But love is about falling for someone, and there’s no guarantee whatsoever that you’ll get anything in return. It’s not so much about refusing to expect something back as it is about “giving up” on expecting it. Once you can accept that, things become surprisingly easier. papa-katsu isn’t love, so it’s natural to expect something in return. But once you get used to that mindset, romantic relationships can start to feel awkward. Have you heard the saying, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry”? If you had no feelings for that papa and were simply disappointed because your expectations of getting something in return didn’t pan out, just click your tongue, forget about it, and move on. But if you’re sad because you had even a little affection for him and it wasn’t returned, then you should really take those words to heart.

How important people consider special occasions varies from person to person. Some people immediately suspect cheating or assume their partner’s feelings are fading if they can’t meet on their actual birthday or on Christmas Day. It also depends on their job. When I was dating a flight attendant, she was scheduled to fly on Christmas, so not being able to meet was perfectly normal. So rather than focusing solely on the fact that “he didn’t give me anything in return on White Day” and using that to measure his feelings, I think it’s better not to jump to conclusions. The fact that he didn’t give you anything on White Day is one fact—an unpleasant one for you—but try to look at your relationship from a broader perspective as well. How often he contacts you, how quickly he responds, his facial expressions when you’re together, the content of your conversations, and so on—all of these can convey messages like “I like you” or “I’m no longer interested in you.” If, in addition to not giving you anything on White Day, his replies have gotten slower, the places you go have become cheaper, and he seems distracted during conversations, then you should take it as a message that he’s no longer interested. But I think it would be a shame to think negatively based on that one thing alone.

So, since you weren’t planning to meet on March 14, you thought you might receive it over the weekend, right? It’s possible the man believes he doesn’t need to give you anything unless you meet on March 14. Unlike Christmas, White Day doesn’t really have the concept of an “eve” or “eve eve.” Seen that way, it’s not that you didn’t receive a White Day gift—it’s simply that you didn’t meet on White Day. You might be wondering, “What does that mean exactly?” I think it means he sees this as a normal arrangement with an allowance. He likes you within the scope of that arrangement, but probably doesn’t see it as anything beyond that. The fact that he continues seeing you means he does like you. However, I think he simply isn’t considering anything more than that. In other words, although he likes you and continues the relationship, it’s unlikely to develop into romance, and the chances of marriage are practically zero. That said, he does like you, so I recommend continuing the relationship as it is. Of course, some men in allowance-based relationships will buy their partner a car or expensive bags. That may indicate that, although they don’t intend for the relationship to develop romantically, they’re starting to feel that they want to do more for her than just provide the usual allowance. Ultimately, it depends on the man’s stance. If that bothers you, I think you’d be better off looking for someone else.