This might be the case because the terms “sugar baby” and “daddy” originated over a century ago in reference to wealthy men with young brides or mistresses, and to the women who sought them out. Instead, they may use more direct phrasing and general language - for example, “forming relationships with other men for cash.” They don’t always know or use sugar dating terminology when they talk about their experiences either, notes sexologist Susan Block. Instead, they find each other on dating apps like Grindr and OkCupid, on social media sites like Tumblr and via in-person connections. The prevalence of gay-for-pay sugar babies may also be difficult to detect within the sugar world because many straight men find daddies outside of sugar sites like Seeking Arrangement. Joe Kort, a therapist who specializes in male sexuality, believes “this is more common than we know.” “It’s underreported because of the stigma around straight men having sex with men, and around exchanges of cash for sexual relationships,” he explains. Likewise, sex therapists tell me they’ve met a number of straight men who’ve had sugar daddies. Forums like Let’s Talk Sugar actually have a standard term for men like him: gay-for-pay sugar babies. Likewise, Maren Scull, a leading sugar dating academic, says that neither she nor any other scholars she’s aware of have studied male sugar babies’ demographics or behaviors, so it’s impossible to say how prevalent this sort of dynamic is.īut dig into the bowels of the internet and you’ll find many tales like Hal’s. Even insiders like Kimberly De La Cruz, a spokesperson for Seeking Arrangement, one of the biggest sugar dating sites, tells me she’s never heard of an arrangement like Hal’s. It can be hard for some people to wrap their heads around the idea of a straight man with a sugar daddy. Except for one detail, that is: Both Hal and his friend are, as he puts it, “pretty much 100 percent hetero. This is a pretty archetypal sugar dating story, down to the sums Hal earned every month. “It was a little for someone making millions.” “At the time, $500 was a lot for me,” Hal, a pseudonym, recalls. Though his description paints this daddy as demanding and not always pleasant to be around, those dates usually ended in sex. He made an account on a purposefully unspecified sugar dating site, and found a guy who was willing to pay him $500 per date, on the condition that they’d chat regularly and see each other once a week. He’d been struggling to make ends meet while searching fruitlessly for a job, so as a fairly handsome and fit man, he figured he’d give it a try. This friend, a man who dated both sugar daddies and mommies, made sugaring sound like “a way to make easy money.” That appealed to Hal, then in his mid-20s and fresh out of a stint in the military. In 2016, Hal learned that one of his friends was a sugar baby, someone who goes out with usually older and wealthier individuals in exchange for gifts or regular allowances.

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