I’m a Sugar Baby—Here’s What It Taught Me About Relationships

When my first sugar daddy held my hand, I wanted to throw up. Not because he was an old ogre that gave me the creeps, but because my 22-year-old college self simply never fathomed being with an older man. I was a ball of nerves on our way to dinner, already thinking about the obligations I had at the end of the night.

Given that I met this man on a relationship arrangement site, I felt an unspoken sexual expectation. I thought I prepped myself well for our first date. I looked up sugar baby articles to learn the dos and don’ts, made sure the restaurant stayed within an area of the city that I was familiar with, and put myself through the most thorough everything shower I’d experienced. It was a time before location sharing, so to justify not telling my friends where I was going, I convinced myself that this was just a regular date with a regular guy.

So many questions entered my mind when he picked me up on campus. Does this make me a prostitute? How will he respond if I don’t want to have sex? What if he kidnaps me? But my nerves calmed as we drove closer to one of the most popular French restaurants in the city. Even though he was only in his late 30s, he felt lightyears older, yet he found me witty and “impressive.” I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like the side eyes from nearby diners as we walked to our patio table. We sipped wine while sharing stories about our crazy families and laughed when he didn’t understand my very Millennial references. The sense of gratification I felt with him in the restaurant surprised me. I did not feel like the dirty secret I thought I would be to him.

The only tense moment was when he decided to discuss our terms. In my aforementioned research, I saw so many ranges of agreements. There were options from being treated to shopping sprees and fine dining to paying off school tuition. Listening to his wants made so transparently boosted my confidence to be just as audacious with my requests. Our date ended wonderfully. I felt accomplished and excited about the direction this strange new world of sugaring would take me.

I used to judge sugar babies until I became one

My friends eventually caught on that something was up. I was ditching dinner in the cafeteria more and sleeping in my dorm less. They pushed me into coming clean—having a double life as a college student was stressful. They reacted exactly as I expected, asking me questions like, “So, you’re having sex with him? Aren’t sugar daddies gross and old? Why don’t you just get a job if you need the money?”

At the time, I felt like they were judging me for choosing to live an unorthodox lifestyle. Now, I understand that their interrogation came from ignorance because of cultural misconceptions about sugar babies. We’re perceived as naïve women who sacrifice our self-esteem and power for financial gain. Ironically, sugar babies are seen as manipulative yet taken advantage of—once upon a time, I held the same assumptions. It took me becoming a sugar baby to realize how wrong those ideas are.

“There’s no shame in sex work. It’s an extremely respectable business that requires a lot of tolerance and strong will.”

Pop culture has blurred the lines of what a sugar relationship typically looks like. Love & Hip-Hop: Atlanta’s Kirk Frost and his wife, Rasheeda, shared their seven-year storyline following Kirk’s infidelity and parenthood with a woman named Jasmine. The mistress-turned-baby mama only promised not to tell Rasheeda about her husband’s double life in exchange for a monthly allowance. When Rasheeda and her friends uncovered the truth, I shuddered every time they referred to Jasmine as a “sugar baby.” What she did was extortion—she was never a sugar baby. Hearing her mislabeled as one felt discrediting to sugar babies in general, as if we’re a monolith. It was like an open invitation to categorize any woman incentivized by financial assistance as unhinged and ill-intentioned.

I can’t count the amount of times I was compared to a prostitute when I told people I was a sugar baby. The real insult was not the comparison to the profession, but rather the tone of people who tried to make me feel like I was less than human because of how I was earning money. There’s no shame in sex work. It’s an extremely respectable business that requires a lot of tolerance and strong will. The nuances of the terms used to describe women who did what I was doing got in my head. I had to set boundaries of my own before I could realize that sugaring was actually entirely what I made it.

There’s no problem with selling a fantasy, as long as I maintain my reality

Now, as a sugar baby, my personal intention is to retain a long-term relationship with a consistent sugar daddy who prioritizes my well-being. I’m extremely clear with my boundaries, from demanding respect for my time to not going beyond my physical limits. For me, these relationships are mutually beneficial with a low tolerance for mistreatment. Essentially, it’s a business partnership.

When a past SD and I first started communicating, he was always very short with me and disengaged over the phone. One day, I made a comment to him about it, and he immediately got defensive. The moment his tone changed, I simply hung up. Why? He needed to realize I didn’t deem him worthy of arguing or reasoning with—that I valued my energy more than his dollar. Regardless of the amount of money my SD spends, my attention is earned.

Part of keeping my power has also meant staying realistic about the relationship. Setting myself up to fall for a sugar daddy is the definition of self-sabotage. I must keep a firm grip on reality by being aware that I’m selling a fantasy. If I ever get too wrapped up with an SD, I’d open myself up to a whirlwind of confusion, manipulation, and heartache. I learned this the hard way.

I had an arrangement that started off very clearly. He took on more of a mentor role, and I was sharpening my skills in the marketing industry. In between, we had fun, but his main pleasure came from feeling like he was teaching me something. This didn’t stop me from dating guys my age, and I was open about that. The more time we spent together, the more he asked why I was wasting my time with “losers who can’t do anything” for me. I looked up to him in a professional sense, so when he questioned my taste, I felt insecure. I thought he was looking out for my best interest when he was only manipulating me to keep me to himself. In a nutshell, he robbed me of healthy dating habits because it was a threat to his ego.

“From the outside looking in, sugar babies look like young, naïve people who exchange sex for extravagant lives they can’t afford on their own. People think we’re materialistic, easily manipulated, and carry a certain level of shame about our jobs—but that couldn’t be further from the truth.”

By contrast, in my current partnership, I consider myself a safe haven for my SD. A “break from the real world,” as he calls me, but I don’t allow it to go further than that. I respect the little that he shares about his home life. It sounds harsh, but that has nothing to do with me. The last thing I’d want is for him to get caught up in a fake world designed for him—because that disrupts my real one.

These might sound like simple things I could do in a typical relationship while dating, but that’s not always the case. Dating involves a level of vulnerability that being a sugar baby doesn’t entail. I rarely give my SD the benefit of the doubt on an emotional level because I expect a good business partner to deliver on what he has promised.

As a sugar baby, I am a businesswoman

My fears of the sugaring lifestyle came from a mixture of pride and misconceptions formed by people’s assumptions. From the outside looking in, sugar babies look like young, naïve people who exchange sex for extravagant lives they can’t afford on their own. People think we’re materialistic, easily manipulated, and carry a certain level of shame about our jobs—but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

In my experience, sugar arrangements are no different from the day-to-day business deals every executive makes with partners of a company. It’s transactional on both sides, just as much as it is beneficial. Both parties have a duty to advocate for themselves, come to an achievable agreement, and proceed accordingly. If anyone feels disadvantaged at any point, they’re free to leave the deal to find a better-suited partner.

I live by the saying, “What he won’t do, another one will.” It took living the sugar baby life for a number of years to know I don’t have to settle for the bare minimum because there’s someone out there begging to go above and beyond. It taught me that our worth is only as much as we demand—and there’s great power in being able to recognize your worth. While I may have begun my journey terrified of losing my power to a sugar daddy, instead, I’ve gained everything from material goods to valuable business skills. Becoming a sugar baby in college made me a force to be reckoned with today.