Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
My high life as a sugar baby
Why are so many young women with good jobs selling their bodies? Here Elizabeth, 23, reveals how her sugar daddy, 37, puts £800 into her account every month and lavishes her with luxury gifts & holidays…and why she’s always wanted to be a ‘kept woman’
ELIZABETH and Steve seem like many other couples. Yes, he’s a bit older than her and, yes, they met online – but so many do these days.
Yet these two are far from a conventional couple, as the website they met on was Seeking Arrangement.
That is the site used by Rebecca Tott, 20, who was suspended from her job as diary secretary to Tory Minister Dominic Raab after the Mirror revealed she sold sex to men she met through the website.
MI5 was urged to investigate after we told how she spoke freely about knowing her boss’s “every move” to our undercover reporter, who posed as a potential client.
Elizabeth, 23, is another “sugar baby” who likes to be spoilt by men she meets through the site. Her full-time salary from her office job in London is supplemented by sugar daddy Steve, 37.
He pays £800 into her account every month, as well as lavishing her with expensive gifts and holidays. She estimates he has spent over £15,000 on her in the seven months since they met.
“I’m naturally interested in rich, successful, established men,” she says.
“I had a bit of a fantasy about being a kept woman who got spoilt. Men my own age just don’t appeal to me.
“So why not get paid for going out with the men I date? At first I started using it as a dating site – the alternative is Tinder.
“I always used to say I wish you could filter by salary on Tinder – but that’s unfortunately not an option.”
Before Elizabeth met Steve, she “dated” two other wealthy men from the website.
The first was an American consultant in his early 40s who took her to Chicago after meeting her just three times.
The second was a millionaire hedge fund manager who Elizabeth says “fancied himself as Fifty Shades’ Christian Grey” and gave her strict instructions on what to wear.
They went to an expensive restaurant in Chelsea, West London, before going back to his house for a kinky “playdate”.
“It was the nicest, most stunning house I’ve ever been in,” she says. “I thought he was really sexy. He told me what to wear: all black, a formal dress above the knee.
“My hair had to be tied up and I had to wear very little make-up. He told me to kneel down and ask to be dominated.
“I got into it. But he was looking for something too intense for me, so we parted ways respectfully.”
Elizabeth was not paid for that night because it was a one-off, and not a long-term arrangement.
Then last September she met Steve, a finance worker who lives in Central London and subscribed to Seeking Arrangement for £80 a month. They started “dating quite normally”, she says.
He paid for everything and bought her “little treats”, but no money exchanged hands. But that soon changed.
Elizabeth says: “One of my friends told me: ‘He’s getting his side of the deal, and you’re not getting yours.’ So I wrote him a message saying: ‘I signed up to this website for a reason.’”
Steve starting paying £800 into her account every month and they have not mentioned it since.
“He buys me everything,” she says. “He bought me an Yves Saint Laurent handbag and a new phone, and two sets of flights to America. He pays for every theatre trip, every dinner, every concert.”
And now she says she has fallen for a man she originally met for the money.
He recently flew her out to New York where he was on a work trip “because I
I’m naturally interested in rich, successful men. Why not get paid for dating them?
ELIZABETH WHO IS PAID £800 A MONTH BY WEALTHY OLDER ‘BOYFRIEND’ STEVE
rang him crying saying I missed him”. She has even told her parents he is her boyfriend, though they do not know how the couple met, or about the money.
Behavioural psychologist Jo Hemmings says women like Elizabeth “believe they are being empowered” by these arrangements, which can “get quite addictive”.
She adds: “Some would be shocked to hear themselves compared to prostitutes but that’s exactly what they’re doing.”
Elizabeth says: “I’d never describe myself as an escort. I’d say I used Seeking Arrangement as a dating site if anything.”
Seeking Arrangement has more than 10 million users across 139 countries, with hundreds of thousands in the UK alone. The average sugar daddy is 43 and most are CEOS or entrepreneurs, with average salaries of £105,000 a year.
The typical sugar baby is 26, usually works as a student or nurse, and – like Elizabeth – earn less than £30,000 a year. The site has come under fire after some users arranged “pay-per-meet” deals, as Tott did with our undercover reporter, and some auctioned off their virginity.
“Sugar babies are supposed to just get allowances, like I do,” explains Elizabeth.
“But of course there is no way of controlling what people do once the conversation has turned to Whatsapp.”
Seeking Arrangement says: “Sexual arrangements and pay-per-meets are not allowed or promoted on Seeking Arrangement. We do not allow prostitutes or escorts to join the site.”
Elizabeth is just grateful to the site for introducing her to Steve. She says: “We think we’re a success story, but we’re not when you look at what the site is designed for. We’re just a happy accident.”
Names have been changed.
I’d never describe myself as an escort. I’d say it was a dating site if anything ELIZABETH ON SEEKING ARRANGEMENT