It’s pretty difficult for an allowance-based relationship to develop into something more. That said, I’ve seen reports of people even getting married, so I’m sure there are couples who’ve made it work.
Speaking from personal experience, there was one man relatively close to my age who came on very strong from the first meeting, asking things like, “Do you plan to get married?” and, “I’ve actually fallen in love with a man I met through a club before!”
It made me uncomfortable, so I stopped seeing him after just one meeting.
That’s “Sekai wa Sore o Ai to Yobundaze” by Flag Maker, right? From 2005—what a throwback. I ended up listening to it on YouTube.
So the former is convenience-store coffee, then.
I know exactly what you mean. I’m an older guy myself, so it’s hard to be loved like a boyfriend by someone in her twenties. If it lasted two years, wouldn’t you call that a success? Even with married couples, if things are 70% good and they stay together, that’s pretty decent. Perfection is impossible.
I hope you’ll use the power of money to make another woman happy next time, too.
As the number of relationships increases, so do the happy and sad moments. The painful experiences became too much for me, and I stopped making offers altogether. In my case, I’m happy with my monthly arrangement that’s now in its eleventh year, but I feel like I’ll get rusty if I don’t get a little stimulation now and then.
What does it really mean for two people to be emotionally connected?
She only meets me because I give her money, so what exactly am I supposed to expect? As long as she plays the role of my girlfriend while we’re together, like actors in a romantic drama, that’s enough for me.
**Addendum**
You can build a relationship of trust through business dealings too, right? But that’s trust—it doesn’t mean you’re emotionally connected.
I do believe I have a relationship of trust with the women I meet through the club, but I don’t think we’re truly emotionally connected.
I think the allowance can actually help two people understand each other.
The relationship may end up being nothing more than an allowance-based arrangement,
or the fact that money is involved may allow it to grow even deeper…
Of course, it’s a relationship that probably never would have begun without the allowance in the first place. But if the man understands that, I think it can develop into a relationship that becomes indispensable to both of their lives. Beyond their emotional and physical compatibility, their financial bond—something people usually find difficult to talk about—can continue to deepen the relationship.
In the end, neither of them will want to let the other go.
I’ve had it happen twice.
Looking back, both of them were reverse offers through this Q&A site. Since the relationships started with them approaching me, I may have had this naïve feeling underneath it all: “She likes me, so I should respond to that.”
To be honest, neither of them was really my type. That doesn’t mean they were generally unattractive or low-level. One was Gold, and the other was Platinum (later upgraded to Black).
The first one suddenly declared something like, “Now that I’ve paid off my debts, I’m only going to continue papa-katsu with people I actually like!” Then she said—or rather, wrote—something along the lines of, “Flame and Seattle are fine, but I don’t think I need to see Mac anymore.”
I thought, “Hold on—did I ever invite you myself? Weren’t you the one messaging me every time saying, ‘I’ll be stopping in Nagoya during a business trip, so you don’t need to cover my transportation. I’d really like to see you, Mac!’?”
It really made me angry. She would message me things like, “I’ll be in Nagoya on such-and-such a date, so please make arrangements!” and I would even rearrange my schedule to accommodate her.
If I had been the one making the offers, I wouldn’t have complained. But treating me that way after all that was simply too disloyal.
The lesson I took from it is that many women start papa-katsu because they’re struggling financially, but once they’ve paid off their debts and achieved their goal, they seem to start rewriting their own past from that very moment.
That girl began writing columns and answers here about the strange papas she had met and the unpleasant experiences she had gone through. She rewrote her memories as though she alone was the victim, the tragic heroine. I learned that the human mind is fascinating in that way, so I suppose that was the one good thing to come out of it.
When I write about the second one, she also turns out to have some similarities to the first. She had started papa-katsu in her first year of university because she absolutely couldn’t afford her tuition. She was uncomfortable with adult relationships and had asked, “How can I learn to enjoy intimacy?” I responded by saying that perhaps we could meet and try various things together, and that was how I received her reverse offer.
We continued for nearly four years. She graduated from university and got the job she had always dreamed of. Once that happened, I suppose she wanted to erase the fact that she had ever done papa-katsu.
A lot happened over those four years. I think we were intimate more than 300 times. During the last six months, we even lived together in an apartment I owned.
In the end, we had a major fight—although it felt more like she was the only one getting worked up—and the police became involved, after which we broke up.
I’m not writing this out of bitterness or resentment. I’m simply recording the “facts” as I saw them. If I don’t include some concrete details, my conclusion won’t be convincing if all I write is abstract wording, right?
So here’s my conclusion: women who start papa-katsu because they are genuinely struggling financially are desperate at first. They try as hard as they can to make the man like them.
From the man’s perspective, that desperation can create the illusion that their hearts have connected somehow.
But eventually the debt gets paid off and the goal is achieved. After that, they begin the process of erasing the memories and traces of their past.
The more seriously a girl approached papa-katsu—meaning, the more desperately she worked at it—the more desperately she may work at rewriting that past as well.
That’s how I’ve come to understand the phenomenon.
So perhaps the lesson is: “A papa-katsu girl who has paid off her debts or achieved her goal is dangerous, so it’s best to distance yourself quickly.”
From the papa’s side, even though the allowance is technically compensation for an intimate relationship, there is inevitably a feeling that “this is the result of my support.” So you want to celebrate together and say, “I’m glad things worked out for you.” How naïve.
It’s a sad story in a way, but that’s how it is.
I’ll end with one comforting thought. I asked myself, “Would I have been better off never meeting these two?”
The answer was, “No, I’m glad I met them.” They made me angry and left me feeling bitter at times, but they also added color to my life.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m grateful. Even now, I still feel that I’m the one who deserves gratitude.
Rest in peace. All I can do is pray that the memories I carry of myself may finally find peace.
In other words, women start papa-katsu for all sorts of reasons. Some genuinely have strong sexual urges they don’t know what to do with, while others want to stop being a virgin. Those reasons do exist.
Among them, women who are truly desperate for money are easier to match with through “support,” because money is the man’s strongest bargaining tool. The more a man pays, the more he feels that he is helping the woman, and at the time, she probably does feel grateful too.
At least on the surface.
But when you really think about it, we papas are buyers in human trafficking. The women are selling themselves by reducing themselves to slaves.
Women who are struggling financially are easy to support, which makes it easy for a man to enter their hearts. Like the questioner, he may come to believe that they share a special relationship.
But perhaps, somewhere in the back of her mind, the woman feels hatred or disgust toward the man who bought her as a sexual slave.
That may be why he feels he “can’t sense any affection from her” and that “their hearts never truly connect.”
I think cats and dogs from pet shops become attached to their owners because they don’t know that they were “bought with money.”
I get it. That must have been really painful...
There’s a lyric from one of my favorite bands that goes, “It’s a sin to lock someone away in a world where they can remain beautiful forever.”
In other words, you didn’t look at the sides of her you didn’t want to see. You thought there was no need to. You were seeing your ideal image of her, not her as she really was. I think that may have been where the problem on the man’s side lay.
Looking at it from another angle, Sambomaster sings something like: “If the you of yesterday was the you who betrayed me, then I’ll simply forget the scenery from yesterday.”
Try watching some Sambomaster live videos. I recommend them when you’re having a hard time.
It’s actually pretty remarkable that it’s lasted two years with a woman you don’t have a genuine emotional connection with.
The women I met through Universe Club and have continued seeing for years now feel almost like family. We know nearly everything about each other’s private lives. There’s definitely a mutual emotional connection, and with some of them, I’d even say we love each other. Technically speaking, I’m also in a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship with three of them.
That said, it’s completely different from romantic feelings.
I believe it’s a kind of trust unique to papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan): papas help the women by continuing to give them an allowance, while the women help me by continuing to offer their bodies. Through that process, affection develops and a genuine emotional bond forms.
A relationship like this could never come from romance. I find relationships formed through papa-katsu far healthier and much more trustworthy.
Nothing is more precarious than a romantic relationship. Even if two people genuinely love each other, romance doesn’t last forever. Eventually, one of them will lose interest.
By comparison, trust built through papa-katsu is much less likely to waver. At least, I genuinely trust them, and I can strongly feel that they trust me as well. I’ve even made up with one woman after things nearly turned into a difficult situation, so everything seems to be stable now.
I’ve never felt that way.
