It’s a modern kind of romance—or at least a modern kind of arrangement. On dating apps and sleek websites, older, wealthy individuals are matched with younger companions, exchanging financial support for intimacy, connection, or companionship. These “sugar relationships,” while controversial, are increasingly visible in today’s digital dating landscape. But what drives someone to enter into such an agreement? Is it shaped by how they grew up—or how they’re wired to love?
A new study published in Evolutionary Psychology offers the most in-depth exploration yet into the psychological roots of sugar relationships. And its answer might surprise you. While our early-life experiences matter, the study finds that what most strongly predicts openness to sugar relationships is not childhood scarcity or family chaos—but rather a person’s comfort with short-term, uncommitted sex.
Not Just Transactional: The Psychology Beneath the Surface
Led by psychologist Norbert Meskó and his colleagues, the research aimed to uncover whether sugar relationships are better understood as a reflection of life history strategy—our evolved response to environmental stressors—or as an expression of individual mating orientation.
Life history theory posits that people raised in unstable or resource-poor environments may adopt “fast” life strategies—seeking immediate rewards, acting impulsively, and investing less in long-term bonds. By contrast, “slow” strategists, raised in more predictable environments, are more future-focused and stable in their relationships. Given the apparent exchange of resources for intimacy in sugar relationships, the researchers questioned whether such arrangements reflect adaptive responses to early-life hardship.
But there’s another theory too: perhaps sugar relationships are just another flavor of casual, short-term mating—more about sexual strategy than survival instinct.
To test these competing ideas, the team turned to data.
Digging Into Desire: How the Study Worked
The study surveyed 312 adults aged 18 to 50, most of whom were university students in Hungary, with women making up the majority. Participants completed a battery of psychological assessments exploring their relationship views, childhood backgrounds, and mating preferences.
Among the key tools was the ASR-YWMS—the Acceptance of Sugar Relationships in Young Women and Men Scale—a nuanced measure of how open someone is to engaging in sugar-style partnerships. Other instruments measured participants’ sociosexual orientation (comfort with casual sex), life history strategy, family resources during childhood, and perceptions of how unpredictable or chaotic their upbringing had been.
The researchers also tracked variables like current relationship status, sexual orientation, and number of past partners.
The Dominant Force: Short-Term Mating Orientation
The results were clear and consistent: a person’s openness to sugar relationships was most strongly and reliably predicted by their comfort with short-term, uncommitted sex.
In other words, people who already lean toward casual sex are more likely to view sugar relationships positively. This link remained strong even when controlling for background factors like age, gender, or relationship status.
Interestingly, life history strategy—the broader framework that ties personality and behavior to early environmental pressures—had only a small role to play. People who leaned toward slower, more investment-focused strategies were less inclined to endorse sugar relationships, but this effect was weak compared to the influence of current mating orientation.
For Women, Childhood Matters—But Indirectly
While men’s attitudes toward sugar relationships were shaped almost entirely by their short-term mating preferences, the picture was slightly more layered for women.
The study uncovered an indirect path linking childhood scarcity to openness to sugar relationships—but only in women. Those who reported growing up with fewer family resources were more likely to adopt fast life strategies, which in turn made them more open to sugar relationships.
This pathway suggests that for some women, sugar relationships may serve as an adaptive response to instability. The logic is evolutionary: in uncertain environments, securing resources through nontraditional means—like sugar relationships—may offer a strategic advantage. Still, even in women, this developmental pathway was less predictive than their current sexual preferences.
Gender Isn’t the Whole Story
One of the more surprising findings was that biological sex alone did not predict openness to sugar relationships once other psychological traits were accounted for. This challenges common assumptions that sugar relationships are primarily driven by male desire or female financial strategy.
Instead, the researchers argue, it’s not your gender that matters—it’s your psychology. Whether male or female, people who favor casual sex were far more likely to endorse sugar relationships, regardless of background.
Life History Theory Faces Limits
The study also highlights a broader issue within evolutionary psychology: how to accurately measure early environmental influence.
Rather than using hard data like mortality rates or neighborhood crime statistics, this study relied on participants’ own memories of childhood unpredictability and family resources. While these self-reports offer valuable insight, they may not fully capture the complexities that life history theory aims to explain.
Still, the research represents a rare and detailed attempt to test both evolutionary frameworks—life strategy and mating orientation—side by side. And in this case, mating orientation came out on top.
More Than a Moral Debate
In popular culture, sugar relationships are often dismissed as shallow, exploitative, or taboo. But this study invites a more nuanced view.
For some, sugar relationships may reflect genuine preferences for low-commitment intimacy. For others, especially women with challenging childhoods, they may represent a resource-seeking strategy in an unpredictable world. In either case, these arrangements can’t be reduced to simple morality plays. They are rooted in psychology—shaped by desire, context, and adaptation.
The Bigger Picture
This research offers more than insight into one type of relationship. It taps into a deeper question: How much of our romantic lives are shaped by who we are now—and how much by where we came from?
In the case of sugar relationships, it appears that the heart follows not the hand that raised it, but the mind that craves freedom—at least when it comes to intimacy.
The study’s implications go beyond sugar dating. They underscore the importance of recognizing diversity in mating strategies and questioning assumptions about gender, morality, and motivation in modern relationships.
And for curious readers—and perhaps for anyone who’s ever swiped through a dating app wondering what drives attraction—this research adds a valuable piece to the puzzle of how humans seek connection in a world of endless options.
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