Hidden in the shadows of online connections is a silent cultural phenomenon. A playground, where men after commitment free relationships flick through the profiles of young, glamorous woman known as sugar babies. Their sugar is expensive, and their currency is time.
Mutually beneficial arrangements are arguably more the norm in today’s world of flexible romance. From thirty-year age gaps to swiping right for a date, what even is a conventional relationship these days? Currently 8.7 million sugar babies and 2 million sugar daddies are registered on one online site alone. When reading those figures, it feels like this trade is happening everywhere yet nowhere - perhaps part of its appeal? Discretion is a contract signed from the moment you upload your profile. The sugar baby wants to protect her integrity while the sugar daddy may want to keep his marriage. As for safety? From what I gather speaking to sugar babies, the site is hardly sending out security guards. You base your decision to meet on a profile picture, brief bio and hope for the best. One girl described it as “tinder with benefits”.
Despite its worldwide appeal, the choice of a sugar relationship is far from acceptable dinner conversation. Eyebrows are raised by assumptions that those choosing to trade youth for money are at best gold diggers or simply sex workers dressed in silk. As for the gents, it ranges from power hungry to delusional. While sugar arrangements can come in all varieties from platonic to superficial romance, what do the girls say about the idea of this being sex work? I speak to Kelly, a 28-year-old student who became a sugar baby last year on the advice of a friend. she casually tells me, “It’s nice to think of it more of a gift than a sexual transaction though that is part of it”.
Who are the real people behind the profiles who are driven to give this a go? I talked to many people involved in Sugar Dating when working on my novel set in that world, The Sugar Game.
For the ladies, you might not need look too far. They are not tottering around on five-inch heels with a face full of lipstick, they could be the girl sitting next to you in English class or even your hairdresser. Every sugar baby has her own call to temptation.
Take Anna, 26 - she had a browse on the advice of a friend who recommended finding one or two arrangements to help her with tuition fees. However, the game became quite addictive. Seems she was a hit, sugar daddies loved her and she says, “It’s like living the jet set lifestyle of an actress without ever setting foot on Broadway”. She has currently given up the auditions for handbags.
Then there is Danielle, 35, a former sugar baby. She traded sugar for time for two years, giving up when she developed a severe drinking problem. “I stopped seeing my friends to cover up my secret life, and despite the men I was dating I felt so lonely," she says. "I don’t think I could have put up with most of them without drinking.”
Every sugar baby I have spoken to tells me it’s head over heart-driven choice. These girls are smart, they must know, deep down in that place every woman knows things, wealth won’t lead them to happiness. Still Chanel and champagne makes for nice paint. What motivates such a wild choice for these women?
A sugar baby sides steps the need for boundaries and pretending
This is where we find that as different as our paths look on paper, our struggles and aspirations that lead us there often share common ground. Among the reasons women shared with me that many may relate too are; ultra-independence from carrying a fear not met in your childhood into adulthood, a way of using femininity as power in “a man’s world” and growing up against a backdrop of parents' divorces and breaks ups splashed all over the media. I mean even Brad and Jen didn’t make it? Somehow all the noise makes love the enemy.
As for the men, what is their story? I speak to Richard who joined Seeking Arrangement (an American sugar baby and sugar daddy dating website) after his second divorce blew out his desire for marriage. What was he looking for? “Fun without commitment, though more than that," he says. "I am a private, wealthy man. It’s hard to find someone in the real world who has the energy I am after. Most of the women closer to my age, I felt were a bit jaded by life, looking for what I had already done twice. A sugar baby sides steps the need for boundaries and pretending.”
Richard gave me the impression he had given up on real love and was happy to settle for something less intense. Not that things can’t go that way. James first met his wife as a sugar baby for a Martini in Claridge’s hotel bar after she sent him a message on a site. They had an arrangement for six months before it moved onto something deeper. The pair are now married. In the sugar world as in real life, anything is possible, the heart is a hard organ to tell what to do.
Is it really that surprising that more and more profiles are being added to sugar dating sites? Let’s go back to the flexible romance I mentioned before, when we consider the relationship backdrop of 2021, it looks very different to the days marriages lasted forever. There is a new lease of freedom to romantic situations. As pointed out by one sugar baby, “seeing parents break up and the media full of one break up after the next, love has in the traditional sense lost its stability.” When this is introduced from a young age as just the way things are, is it any wonder many lose their faith and look for alternatives to meaningful, long term commitment? Fun trumps loyalty, temptation trumps truth and money trumps love.
Speaking with Danielle shines a light on the sugar tax that comes in with the long-term effects of sugaring. She tells me, "Sobering up financially and emotionally was a process that takes work without instant gratification. You have to be ready to stop running from the past. Many girls that are looking for sugar daddies have deep rooted insecurities of being left.” I feel she is on to something. Sugar babies are gifted to pamper to egos and men who are far more experienced in life financially and emotionally. For every handbag is a loss of identity, a drift from their own dreams and sense of self.
Jessica Stebbins, a marriage and family therapist has observed: "The trouble with sugar relationships is that they do not allow for feelings to develop naturally, but rather around the promise of money. This can affect morale and self-view, and lead to other negative consequences."
As for the men, the impact of knowing that they are only being dated for their wallets must hit them somewhere in the dark? To answer whether sugar life is living the life or living the lie there is no black and white answer, it will forever remain fifty shades of grey. Although it is tempting, addictive and lucrative, it can also be dangerous, lonely and destructive. Whoever wins and whoever loses, everyone learns, and as Danielle told me, “you only see the lie when you have left it”.
Ashley Brown is the author of The Sugar Game and Job Slut.