Which is worse: having an affair or papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan)?
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I’m a college student living with my mother. She’s having an affair with a married man and boasts to me almost every day—her own daughter—about complaining to his wife and what happened between her and him.
And this isn’t the first or second time she’s had an affair. My father passed away when I was in middle school, and my mother became emotionally unstable around then. Since that time, she’s continued having affairs, seducing various men herself, including her doctors and supervisors at work. She’s shown me emails like that countless times.
Apparently, she’s been seeing her current affair partner for a long time, and she talks to me about their relationship every day. I got so fed up that I blurted out, “I’m doing papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan) too because you’re poor and won’t pay my tuition!”
My mother yelled, “That’s disgusting! Stay away from me,” and we’re currently living separately under the same roof.
Personally, I find someone who repeatedly seduces different men and habitually has affairs far more disgusting than someone doing papa-katsu for money. What do you think?
Do you want everyone to judge that your mother is the one in the wrong for having an affair, so you can feel reassured?
You’re a college student, right? You’re not a toddler who wets the bed and sucks their thumb, are you? You got fed up with all the relationship talk, finally told her exactly what you thought, and now you’re living separately. Good for you.
This may sound harsh, but you’re trying to find a way—whatever it takes—to pay for your own tuition. That in itself is admirable. However, even if you’re not financially dependent on your parents, you still haven’t emotionally separated from them. That’s why you kept listening to things you hated until they built up like magma underground—and then erupted.
It’s not as simple as saying that living together means you haven’t become independent, while living separately means you have. If you had established a solid sense of self as an adult and could interact with your mother as one adult to another, you should have been able to clearly say, “Mom, I hate talking about things like that, so please stop.” And that should have been the end of it.
There are no completely perfect people or parents. Instead of spending your time asking everyone to decide who is more at fault, grow up emotionally yourself and learn to look at both your mother’s good and bad sides objectively, from a step removed. Then you should be able to say, without hesitation but without picking a fight, “I don’t like that.”
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Thank you for your question. I’ll share my thoughts as well.
Which one is worse depends on how you look at it.
For example, if we set aside the legal issue of marital infidelity, you could view an affair as pure love if you believe the two people genuinely love each other.
By contrast, papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan) is based on meeting in exchange for an allowance, so you might see it as lacking love—or involving very little love.
From that perspective, being intimate with someone you don’t love, or barely love, might seem “gross.”
On the other hand, if you believe that following the law is a given and that respecting the law is what matters most, then an affair constitutes marital infidelity and can be grounds for claiming legal damages.
With papa-katsu, however, if it involves a specific person, it isn’t considered prostitution, so it does not violate the law.
From that standpoint, it also makes sense to see an affair, which violates the law, as “far more disgusting” than papa-katsu, which does not.
So ultimately, I think it depends on what standard you use to judge the situation.
And even in papa-katsu, feelings of love can sometimes develop.
When you look at it that way, I don’t think you can make a blanket statement about which one is worse.
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Since her mother and father have both passed away, isn’t she free to date whoever she wants? Her mother was a woman in her own right, after all.
I think you probably shouldn’t have called it papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan). It’s easy to imagine that your mother would be hurt by that.
Relationships between men and women are ultimately a matter for the two people involved.
But can’t you imagine feeling disappointed if you were told that your own child was doing papa-katsu? You could have just said you were dating an older, wealthy person...
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They’re both as bad as each other.
Still, you seem slightly better, since you understand that some things shouldn’t be openly shared with people in everyday life.
Marika
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