from www.torontosun.com – Without speaking to Holly Hill, it would be easy to dislike her.
Hill, author of the juicy memoir Sugarbabe (recently released in Canada and the U.S.), takes to the page to dish on her time as a well-paid mistress to a handful of extremely wealthy married men and, in doing so, she’s definitely stirred up the marital pot.
While the 40-something Australian does believe in relationships, her stance on monogamy is a lot looser. In fact, she doesn’t buy into the notion of fidelity at all.
Dig a little deeper and it’s easy to understand why.
Growing up, Hill’s father was a womanizer, frequently cheating on her mom. Eventually her parents divorced and her dad, by the time of his death in 1999, had been married five times.
Needless to say, an impermeable – and rather cynical – imprint was likely left on the former ‘sugarbabe.’
“All of these things created the person that’s sitting here right now,” says Hill, who is both charming, well-spoken and actually quite likable.
“It doesn’t matter if half the world doesn’t agree with me.”
Through her eyes, men are biologically designed to bed multiple partners and it’s an idea that has strong science behind it. However, it also dismisses a rather important factor – that men, with the big power of their brains (no, not the ones below the belt) can choose to be faithful.
That said, Hill doesn’t buy the romantic concept of staying true to one person. Instead, she feels that fidelity ultimately destroys what could’ve been a satisfying union between two people, who also happen to enjoy some occasional flings on the side.
Hill’s basic message is this: If you want to keep your relationship intact, you’ve got to allow cheating. Of course, hers is a largely unpopular and unacceptable view, but fascinating nonetheless.
“You just have to read the science,” Hill stresses.
“Everything in the world has been telling us this for centuries, but women are still shocked when their partner sleeps around … We’re programmed to think that if our man sleeps with other women, they’re going to leave us, but the reverse is true.”
Is it any wonder that the brunette with the girl-next-door looks came to be a pampered mistress to four well-to-do gentlemen?
The sugar daddy attraction started after she fell in love with a married man who urged her to quit her job as a psychologist and take on the role as his full-time mistress.
She did, but then things went bust. In a curt email, her lover swiftly ended their arrangement, returned to his marriage and took Hill’s gravy train with him.
Suddenly Hill found herself in the lurch. She had a broken heart, no job, a mortgage she couldn’t afford and a decision to make – she could say goodbye to the plush lifestyle she’d grown accustomed to, or go out and find a new sugar daddy to fill the vacated spot.
She chose the latter.
Shortly after posting an Internet ad, she was flooded with responses.
“Attractive, professional, well-spoken 35-year-old woman seeks sugar daddy,” she wrote, touting her benefits, from her love of sex, listening skills, knack for cooking and her building’s desirable underground parking for ultimate discretion, all for a minimum of $1,000 a week.
“I probably interviewed about 100 men,” said Hill.
“There were three types – young men who were too busy and successful to go out and find a girlfriend; middle aged men who were just like my dad, and then the third type, where the wife tends to look the other way … they are just happy with their allowances, being able to spend time with their girlfriends and get their Prada purses.”
In her book, Hill changes certain details about the men who hired her to protect their identities, but she certainly hasn’t been publicity shy.
“I was so nervous about what my mom would say (about the book),” she admits.
“And then she told me, ‘It’s given me a reason why dad slept around for all those years.'” She was too busy looking after two teenage children and working a full-time job and the last thing she wanted was sex.”
Hill now lives with a handsome non-sugar-daddy boyfriend named Phil Dean, but their union is far from the norm. Yep, you guessed it – they’re both free to shag other people.
“When I told him ‘I don’t believe in monogamy,’ he thought he’d won the lottery,” she laughs. “He was relieved he wouldn’t be enslaved to a life of porn.”
But, even in this unconventional setup, the couple created some hard rules.
For instance, under no circumstances is Dean allowed to spoon other ladies.
“Spooning is for me probably the best thing in the world,” Hill says.
“Cuddling up to each other in the winter, it’s just the best feeling, but he can’t do that with another woman … What woman is going to fall in love with a guy who can’t spoon them?”
They also can’t see other people when either of them are sick with a cold or flu, and for Hill, she can’t have sex with rich men.
Hill says her ‘sugar-babe’ days are behind her.
“It would be like trying to scramble my way back into the cocoon and become less communicative and less honest,” she says.
“Now I am anti-mistress. A mistress is someone who encourages a husband to lie to his wife. That is wrong. What I advise is negotiated fidelity – which is not about cheating and lying. It’s about turning to your partner and saying, ‘darling, are you getting enough sex?’ Why haven’t couples everywhere been asking that question? I am against people having affairs and you can’t truly condemn something you don’t know anything about. I know a lot about being a mistress, having sugar daddies and being a part of the lying.”
Who’s straying?
Attached folks can let out a big collective sigh of relief.
According to a joint survey by Cosmo and AskMen.com of more than 100,000 men and women earlier this year, the majority of us steer clearing of cheating.
Less than 2% of women said they’d cheat even if their partner wouldn’t find out and just over 5% of men said the same. Meanwhile, less than 3% of men said they have cheated on their partner.