What began as a velveteen dream has become a prickly cactus. Sugar Daddy is not financially coming through like he should, or quite possibly Sugar Baby is starting to act more like a spoiled girlfriend than a playmate.

In Sugar terminology this is referred to as the “dip.” The question is whether to fire them or fire them up. This is a highly personal decision and no one can tell you what to do, but we’ll try anyway.

If the dip is going to occur, you’ll see it about 120 days into the arrangement (give or take). Telltale signs include, but are not limited to; lack of social spontaneity, plans being broken at the last minute, lame excuses for not seeing you, a generally distant demeanor, a misplaced creative spark, decline in quality of appearance, decline in party time, decline in frequency or intensity of sex, and decline in cash flow. The basic rule of thumb is that once the word “decline” rears its ugly head, you’re into the dip.

Believe it or not, you’ve got more options in this situation than you may think.

Widen the Rotation

Sugar Daddy or Sugar Baby may not be a total write-off at this point. After all, the definition of a “dip” is something that declines but that may still rally back to its previous, or even higher, level.

Set your existing Sugar Daddy or Sugar Baby into a wider rotation and incorporate some new blood. Dips are usually caused by overexposure; two people spending too much time with each other. Familiarity breeds contempt. Odds are if you’re into a dip you’re probably doing a one-on-one with Sugar Daddy or Sugar Baby and it’s time to invite some new players to the party.

By recruiting new Sugar Daddies and Sugar Babies into the mix you’re taking the pressure off of any single person to satisfy your needs, whether they are financial, sexual, social or any combination thereof. New players mean new forms of excitement, new music, new nightspots, new experiences, new entertainment, and the entire Sugar Daddy / Sugar Baby dynamic has been effectively revitalized.

After a few months you may come to realize that your original Sugar Daddy or Sugar Baby is looking better than they used to (maybe the grass wasn’t greener), or maybe they’re just making more of an effort once they’ve realized you’re a hot commodity. Either way, you just beat the dip.

Make a Clean Break

Once again, total judgment call on your part.

Men and women get into Sugar Daddy arrangements to avoid the humdrum complications of ordinary dating scenarios. If you’re rocking the NSA attitude and suddenly you find yourself mired in boredom and malaise, congratulations, you now have a boyfriend or girlfriend and a stale one at that. The entire Sugar lifestyle has just been undermined; time to cut and run.

Use this situation as a learning experience. Was the chemistry lacking to begin with or did it die a slow and agonizingly painful death over a period of time? Change your tactics to make sure this doesn’t happen again. There’s no reason for it.

Sugar Daddy dating is about having fun, red hot sex, five-star restaurants, travel, entertainment and no hassles. It’s a sybaritic (luxurious) lifestyle so don’t weigh it down with and compromise or complacency.

The minute you’re not totally captivated about hooking up with your Sugar Daddy or Sugar Baby, step back, gain some perspective, and remember what you posted in your profile to begin with.

The only dip you should accept is the one you take in the hot tub at the ski lodge in Aspen.

There’s a new joke going around. It goes something like, “Tiger Woods hit a tree with his car and a bunch of women fell out.”

Sounds cute, but now the poor guy is knee deep is allegations of infidelity with about a dozen Sugar Babies, there’s talk of hush money that he doled out by the wheelbarrow and even speculation that he’s paying his wife Elin Nordegren $5,000,000 just to stay with him. How can this story get any worse? Well it can.

Mindy Lawton, a busty Florida brunette and one of Tiger’s Sugar Babies is quoted as saying that “Sometimes I looked like a rag doll after we’d made love.” She also divulged that Tiger was “well-endowed” and into marathon S&M romps.

As if that weren’t bad enough, she went on to say that “He really did like it rough. He wanted to spank me and loved pulling my hair as we had sex,” she told the News of the World. “He also liked me to talk dirty to him, but hair-pulling was what really turned him on.”

These are details that we can all live without, but that’s not the point. Lawton broke the Sugar Baby code of silence and by betraying her beloved Tiger she betrayed every Sugar Daddy, past, present or future. She also betrayed Sugar Babies as a collective, leaving the world to believe that any Sugar Baby will spill the beans on her Sugar Daddy if the price is right.

How do we move on from here? One step at a time people, one step at a time.

Most Sugar Daddies are not Tiger Woods, and consequently are not nearly as susceptible to exploitation by the media. Secondly, Tiger has to eat a little of the blame here. It sounds like he may have promised his Sugar Babies a little more than he could deliver.

More than one of Tiger’s Sugar Babies was convinced she was going to be the next Mrs. Woods. Whether he really lead them on or not is difficult to say. But even if he did make some shaky promises in the heat of the moment, that still doesn’t give any Sugar Baby the right to break her vow of silence.

When a Sugar Daddy affiliates with a Sugar Baby he has the same expectation of confidentiality as when he deals with his an attorney, psychiatrist or barber. What goes on in Sugar Daddy land, stays there, or at least it’s supposed to. However, with the aforementioned debacle in mind, it’s important to make sure your Sugar Baby truly understands the code of silence she is supposed to maintain, whether you two are together or not.

Sugar Daddy Soundproofing

The term “gag order” is a little harsh, so we’re going to refer to Sugar Daddy confidentiality as “soundproofing.” The best time to start process this is at the beginning of the arrangement. Get started on the right foot so you don’t have to change direction after things are rolling. Be prepared to ask the tough questions.

For instance, “Honey, if you found out I was dating a dozen or so other Sugar Babies, would you go to the press or release a YouTube video about our sex life?”

Sure, there’s maybe a few different ways to couch this question but it does get the point across. You can tell by Sugar Baby’s answer if she’s going to hold up under interrogation at a later date. If she can’t give you a straight answer or you see that her pupils have dilated (nature’s way of telling you you’re in danger) it may be time to find a more discreet Sugar Baby.

Sugar Baby’s response to this question should be rather unemotional, borderlining on tepid. She has to be able to look you dead in the eye without even the slightest hesitation, and assure you that whatever transpires between the two of you, no matter how twisted, she is willing to take it to the grave.

People are people, and when feelings get hurt everyone has the impulse to lash out. The question is whether or not we act on that fleeting impulse.

In closing, confidentiality is a double edged sword, it cuts both ways. However, rest assured that the Sugar Baby code of silence is not dead; it’s just a little bruised.

25,000 B.C., Tuesday

Cave paintings discovered in Lascaux, France depict two cave men. The first one is being berated by his unruly cave wife for being a lousy hunter and the second one is draped in animal pelts, surrounded by adoring cave hotties (also draped in animal pelts) who are ambitiously working to satisfy his primitive Sugar Daddy needs.

Ironically, a second set of cave paintings from the same region depict the aforementioned disgruntled cave wife living large in the upper west side after her divorce attorney got through shellacking her non-pelt-providing cave husband.

134 A.D., The Golden Age of Rome

Roman Emperor Antoninus kicks Sugar Daddy dating up a notch when he commissions the city’s top engineers to invent the hot tub, the smoking jacket and Vodka. Following in his steps future Emperors go on to pioneer the creation of the convertible, the American Express Platinum Card, the cigarette holder and Jello shots.

922 A.D. Feudal Japan

Japanese men realize that the guy who can afford the best rice wine and fish heads is the same one hogging all the best women. They band together to form an elite ruling class called the “Sake Daddies” and vow to win these women back by showering them in silk robes and pearls – the Geisha is born!

The Sake Daddies also hire artisans to carve thousands of small ivory sculptures in order to immortalize their exploits. Go figure.

1522 England

Henry VIII showed western civilization how a real Sugar Daddy lives by initiating what will later become known as “the rotation.” Henry kept so many Sugar Babies waiting in the wings that HBO eventually gave him his own series. He had a good run but died, not from loneliness, in 1547.

1790 America

Yes indeed, George Washington was a PROLIFIC Sugar Daddy. He was also so adept at keeping his arrangements on the down low that the only things history remembers him for is chopping down the cherry tree and having wooden teeth.

George’s single greatest contribution to the Sugar Daddy lifestyle was establishing the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. After a few pints he was known to quip to friends that “What Martha doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” Washington also pioneered the concept of Brown Sugar which the Rolling Stones later immortalized in their classic hit.

1876 Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

Once again, sex is responsible for the greatest invention of the 20th century, the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell realized that if Sugar Daddies were to live the lifestyle with any degree of convenience, they were going to need a quick and easy way to contact their Sugar Babies without dispatching a loose-lipped courier or taking a high-profile carriage ride across town.

Although married to Mabel Hubbard for more than 45 years, Bell learned early on that tech geeks make the best Sugar Daddies. Legend has it that he preferred the pay-as-you-go approach for his Sugar babies as opposed to a fixed monthly budget due to the fact that he was busy fighting off more than 600 lawsuits that challenged his patent on the telephone. However, it should be noted that he later went the extra mile and invented the metal detector after one of his playmates lost her custom broach during a romp in on Mass beach.

Whoever said you can’t have it all was probably the same person who said money can’t buy happiness. These are two legendary rationalizations designed to keep everyone suspended in a state of perpetual malaise. In reality, you can have the best of both worlds without sacrificing your integrity.

Our parents raised us to believe that you can’t buy love, well you can’t. But unless you’re able to get out there and interact with a variety of people, love isn’t going to miraculously roll up upon your doorstep. But whether it’s love or a scorching NSA thrill ride that you’re looking for, the fact of the matter is that things cost money.

Sir Mix-A-Lot, probably one of the greatest philosophical minds of the 21st century, put it best when he wrote, “The honey gets runny when the money gets funny.”

So who are you going to listen to, your parents or Sir Mix-A-Lot?

An old business cohort of mine was one of the shallowest, narcissistic pigs ever to walk the earth. He had medium good looks, liked to work out so his body was solid, but he was completely unremarkable. However, he always had the hottest looking girlfriends. His secret; spend, spend, spend.

Howard (maybe his real name, maybe not) paid for EVERYTHING. He was the first guy I ever knew who bought a car for a girlfriend. It was a lease actually (the car not the girl) but that was only a small part of his largesse. He bought so much jewelry for his dates that a rep from the jewelry store would come into the office once every couple of months with a suitcase full of baubles and booty for Howard to stockpile. His spending was grandiose but completely premeditated.

There were weekends in Cabo, $700 dinners in the middle of the week and NUMEROUS shopping sprees. We all thought he was nuts.

Ironically, his money served as an effective vehicle that allowed him to gain repeated exposure to some of the classiest, most sophisticated women in the city. After years of pushing misogynism to the absolute limits, some class and manners actually rubbed off on the guy. He eventually hung up his six guns and married an Elle Macpherson look-alike.

Last I heard they had two kids and were doing just fine.

The point is that Howard wasn’t looking for love, and the girls who dated him were just into him for the money and the excitement, but the dynamic he created (unintentionally) set the stage for an inevitable romance. You can only rub two sticks together for so long before they catch fire.

So the moral to the story, if there is one, can be interpreted a few different ways.

One way to look at it is that Howard was a schmuck who burned through a lot of cash because no woman in her right mind would date him. The fool was repeatedly separated from his money in an irresponsible spending spree that lasted through three presidential administrations.

Another way to look at it is that Howard was lucky enough to be able to pay for an Ivy League education in how to treat a lady right.

Not every man needs to run out and embark on a wild Sugar Daddy spending spree like Howard, but maybe, just maybe, if a guy repeatedly complains that he can’t get a date, he just might be spending his money in all the wrong places.

Live a little and the possibilities are infinite.