What shade is your grey**?

**Sorry to disappoint, it’s not about BDSM.

In the vanilla world, the different levels of intimacy and commitment can generally be viewed as:

One-night stand → casual dating (Tinder/Grindr) → FWB → exclusive dating → committed relationship → engaged → married

In the sugar world, things can be much greyer, as we can see here on this forum, but I believe there are some candid similarities of these sugar segments to the vanilla spectrum:

Pump-and-dump → casual arrangement (passport bro/random travel) → sugar arrangement (PPM) → sugar dating (allowance) → sugar relationship (complete and full support) → cohabiting/engaged → sugar/trophy marriage

The basic dynamic of the first three segments: meet up whenever either party feels like it and schedules align. There may or may not be other SBs or SDs in their lives. Financial support (and, to a large extent, the relationship itself) exists primarily when both sides meet up for sex, perhaps with a meal or an outside-the-bedroom activity added to make it feel less transactional. Then you go your separate ways until the next time... if there is a next time. Sometimes, as we can all probably attest to having experienced it at least once, it’s genuinely hard to say whether there will be a next time.

Whereas in the latter segments - exclusive dating, committed relationships, engagement, and marriage - there tends to be deeper emotional involvement, greater expectations outside of sex, and a stronger sense that the two people are actually in a dating relationship rather than merely meeting for physical/financial encounters.

In other words, the earlier segments seem to be more of an arrangement, while the latter segments are more of a relationship.

Some people prefer the casualness, flexibility, and nonchalant nature of a PPM structure and are perfectly happy to keep it that way indefinitely. Others prefer the commitment, sincerity, and intentionality of an allowance structure from the start.

Neither is inherently right or wrong, it's your life and your choices. But make sure you know what you want and what you’re getting into and never assume that the person you’re seeing has the same ideals or alignments you do, or necessarily has your best interests at heart.

It's worth mentioning, however minuscule: just as there are rare people who date in the vanilla world and do not engage in sex until marriage, there also exist rare platonic sugar dynamics in the sugar world.

What shade of grey do you have? And what do you actually prefer?