I’m だて◎ゆめ, a male member.
That’s a good question（笑）
> When Mr. Saito said, “I had always thought that going bare was the norm,” I found myself thinking, “Yes, that’s how it used to be…” That was what being a mistress once meant.
> Now that we’re in the age of papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan), should we change the way we see it? I wonder if that’s the trade-off for the collapse in allowance rates.
Actually, a woman I’m currently seeing once brought this up.
She said, “Our relationship is closer to being a mistress arrangement than papa-katsu, don’t you think?” and “Papa-katsu is more like having tea, eating dinner, and then saying goodbye.”
I listened beside her, impressed that someone who had only recently turned twenty was thinking about these things.
That said, I can’t definitively call her my mistress. We’ve never discussed things like financial support in her daily life, what would happen if she never got married—as Mac-san mentioned—or what we would do in the event of a pregnancy or a child being born. To be honest, all I had really thought about was that our relationship would inevitably come to an end someday.
On the other hand, I can say with certainty that this isn’t papa-katsu. Regardless of whether we’re intimate or not, I think she also recognized that this wasn’t “papa-katsu.”
I feel that our relationship currently lies somewhere between a mistress arrangement and papa-katsu. If we became more deeply involved, it would move closer to being a mistress arrangement; if things became more casual, it would probably become papa-katsu.
At the same time, she has goals of her own, so there’s probably a part of her that doesn’t want to become too deeply involved with me. But I also imagine she doesn’t want something too casual and purely about money, either.
With women becoming more independent and active in society, I wonder whether these social changes have also affected women’s perceptions—and changed the forms these relationships take: “I want to be independent, but I’m just a little short, so please support me” (hence the collapse in prices).
I’m Saito, a column writer♪
Well, people are all different, so I think it’s best for each person to enter an arrangement they’re comfortable with.
That’s what today’s dating clubs are like—there are all kinds of people. There are definitely women who are fine with going without protection, even for little or no allowance.
It’s a sensitive subject that doesn’t come up in girls’ gatherings or show up in any reliable data, so I don’t think anything I say can really be considered credible, though…
