kept women

Kept women are women financially supported by a wealthy lover, typically in exchange for companionship and sexual availability.

The arrangement implies dependency and often secrecy, with the woman maintained in comfortable circumstances—an apartment, allowance, gifts—while remaining outside the man's public or family life.

The term carries connotations of moral judgment and suggests the woman has sacrificed independence or respectability for material security.

She lived as one of his kept women for nearly a decade before he tired of her.