Who wants to be a sugardaddy?

Several “SugarDaddies,” on the website are affluent men with high profile jobs. For them, SeekingArrangement provides a convenient method of dating.

“I do not have time for the tribulations that come with a normal relationship, or marriage for that matter,” a divorced “SugarDaddy,” a 47-year-old New York Contract Research Organization employee, said. “With the girls on SeekingArrangement, there isn’t jealousy or the bouts of attitude when you can’t spend enough time with them. Emotionally, I can have someone for when I feel lonely and need a companion to bounce ideas or stressors off of.”

This “SugarDaddy,” who requested to remain anonymous, has two “SugarBabies.” One is a student who lives in the United Kingdom and the other a 26-year-old in New York. He pays the former $2,700 a month, and has been seeing her whenever he travels to London for business for the past year. His New York “SugarBaby” is more like a “regular girlfriend,” he says. He takes her out to his apartment, dinners and shopping. He has been dating her for four months.

“Being of a certain age and divorced, there’s expectation that you should remarry and live a certain way. That has never rubbed me right, so it’s nice to see that I can be brutally honest about what I want and still have healthy relationships,” he says.

His son has also been introduced to his “SugarBabies.”

“I am very close with my son,” he says. “He understands and sees them as my girlfriends, not as ‘sugar babies,’ I suppose.” Julia says that most of the “SugarDaddies” who tried to connect with her initially were married. “I had to specifically add in my profile that I was not looking for married men, because it was all I was getting in the beginning,” she says. “Most of them wanted the whole hook up and leave idea, but that just didn’t feel right.”

Each “SugarDaddy,” Julia said, has his own request or preference for the date.

“A lot of the men are A-personality males, so they are used to having the last word and having their way,” she says. “They don’t have time to waste and know exactly what they want. Some of them might say, ‘I like a girl that’s always going to be dressed up in tight dresses and cleavage. I want to make sure you are always sexy, is that a problem?’ A couple of guys when first talking to me would even request that I not wear panties.”

Paniz Bagheri, the youth and Transition-Age Programs Coordinator of SAGE, says that while “SugarBabies” may think they are merely profiting from a mutually beneficial arrangement in order to retire their debts, Bagheri says they are, in fact, helping to promote the victimization and exploitation of women and children.

“We normalize the objectification and hyper-sexualization of children of younger and younger ages,” Bagheri says. “So, sometimes, young women in college are capitalizing on this to survive.”

But some former “SugarBabies” caution against becoming entangled in what they describe as a dangerous web of dependency.

“I honestly would encourage others to not start or think about engaging in this dangerous activity,” one “SugarBaby,” who started at the age of 15 and is “currently struggling” with ending the lifestyle five years later, says. “Never let anyone control your mind, brainwash, or manipulate you.”

This article was originally published in the pages of Wingspan, Issue 2, Vol. 1 on May 23, 2015.