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Life as a sugar baby
Stevens said she began the sugar lifestyle when she was a freshman in college. The TV show ‘Diary of a Call Girl’ was an inspiration.
“Of course she [the show’s character] is an escort and I am not an escort, but I was like ‘Wow, that’s such an amazing lifestyle that you lead,’” she said. “I am not a fake person but I love to play a part. So if I can do this and don’t have sex with people and I can make money, oh my God, that’s the best thing I can possibly do.”
Stevens doesn’t solely depend on sugar daddies to give her money, which she uses primarily to pay off student loans. She also works another job. As a sugar baby she said she is only selling the girlfriend experience.
“So I definitely see it as a business and that’s the only way to go about [it]. I make it very clear that I am somebody who background checks who you are,” she said.
Finding Sugar Daddies
Stevens said she is registered on about 10 websites including SeekingArrangement, Established Men and Hero Dating.
Out of all the websites she said she likes how SeekingArrangement is geared towards sugar relationships. However, she doesn’t like how the main thing on their mind is sex.
“So the vast majority of men on SeekingArrangement are looking for sugar babies but there is still going to be a big chunk of them that are like ‘Oh hey. Can I pay you $200 to masturbate in front of me?’ And I’m like ‘What? No,’” she said.
Stevens also said she has had six serious sugar daddies in which involvement has lasted from eight months to a year and a half.
Types of Sugar Daddies
Stevens said her sugar daddies have worked in politics in Washington D.C., the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Michigan government. She also said she has been a sugar baby for lawyers, doctors, business men and computer industry men.
Out of all of the occupations, she said she liked doctors the most because she said she feels they are naive and believe they are in love.
In addition, there are three different types of sugar daddies, which are salt, splenda and straight sugar/cane sugar, according to Stevens. (See Lingo Box to read more on terms.)
Salt are the worst types of sugar daddies because they are reluctant to pay their sugar babies and are hyper-sexual, according to Stevens. Splenda on the other hand, are men who are new to the lifestyle but are trying to learn.
Stevens said the best type of sugar daddy are straight sugar / cane sugar because they know what they are doing and do not hesitate to provide a sugar baby with what they are requesting.
Benefits of being a Sugar Baby
Stevens said she charges $800 per date and prefers to be paid in cash. On these dates she usually goes shopping or to dinner.
Recently, she said the most expensive gifts she has received from her sugar daddies was five months of rent, a vacation and Louis Vuitton heels worth approximately $2,000.
She also said during a shopping trip, her sugar daddy permitted her to spend $5,000.
Stevens said these dates generally end in a kiss, unless she becomes comfortable enough with the sugar daddy to be sexually active.
She also said before sex she has the sugar daddy discuss their previous sexual history and provide her with medical paperwork.
“I have to tell them I am not here to sleep with you unless it becomes truly like a relationship where you are dating them,” she said. “Then money [isn’t a] factor anymore.”
How she does it
Stevens said she attributes her success in obtaining sugar daddies to being a really good liar.
“I cover my tracks very well and make sure that I am an invisible person so that no one ever knows the real [me] or anything about me,” she said. “So I lie about what my parents do for a living. Sometimes I make up that my parents are dead. Sometimes I am an only child. Sometimes I am one of six kids. Sometimes I’m Alice. Sometimes I’m Maria. Sometimes I’m Nicole. Like who am I? I don’t even know.”
She also said she lives out approximately three story lines.
“So if I am Kate, I am Kate. I know who Kate is,” she said. “Kate lives on Cabot Road. If I were to be Kate right now, I have three siblings, I live [in] Cheboygan, Michigan [and] my parents own a four wheeling company. I can be that person,” she said.
To keep track of the different roles she plays, Stevens said she keeps a Mac Word document with sugar daddies numbered with their names, personal information and pictures.
“So I number men off. I have their picture that they have sent me. I have all their information that they have sent me. I go online. I look up their Linkedin. I look up their Facebook. I find their wife. I find their children’s names,” she said.
She said she also records when and where she has her dates with the sugar daddies and sends the document to her best friend who is also a sugar baby to ensure she is safe.
“If I don’t send her a text saying goodnight or call her by midnight then she knows to call me. And if I don’t pick up the call, then she calls the police and gives them my information. I never deleted any information of the people I have been with ever,” she said.
She also said she likes to hold a conversation and is knowledgeable about politics, sports and psychology.
“Men like to bitch about their wives. Knowing some psychology stuff is great so you can just fake connect with them and they think they have a connection with you,” she said. “In reality they don’t. At the end of the day when you strip away me as a person [and] who I really am, I do not give a shit about these guys.”
A sugar baby’s No. 1 rule
The No. 1 rule for sugar babies is to never fall in love with their sugar daddy / momma, according to Stevens.
“This is so finite. It can end at any moment in time. You are the other woman and you will never take the place of a wife, an ex-wife, with children,” she said. “You will never ever, ever, ever be that person and you really have to wrap your head around it and realize that you are so insignificant in their lives.”
However, Stevens said she is currently in love with one of her sugar daddies. Despite this, Stevens said she could see herself marrying her vanilla boyfriend.
A vanilla boyfriend is an average individual in a relationship, according to Stevens. Vanilla friends are those not associated with the sugar lifestyle.
“It’s very hard when you are in a real relationship with somebody — like this vanilla relationship — with somebody who truly loves me for what I am,” she said. “I feel very conflicted and I am to the point where I am not sleeping with any of my sugar daddies right now. I am only sleeping with my boyfriend, but it is very hard to not tell him about my lifestyle. And I know if I told him he would not be OK with it.”
Stevens said she met her vanilla boyfriend through her vanilla friends.
“The guy I am with right now, I know he is my person, like he is the person I am going to marry. I have divulged all my secrets to him except for this one,” she said.
Stevens said none of her vanilla friends or family know she is a sugar baby.
She also said the way she regains her sense of self after being a sugar baby is by remembering that her lifestyle pays for her college tuition and other luxuries.
“You become a different person,” Stevens said. “When I get home and put that money in the bank and put it on my loan or something, like, that grounds me. It makes me realize, ‘OK ,I am doing this as if it’s a job.’ I am separating myself in a way.”
*To continue reading, click the “Read More/Show Less” button below.
PART II
The Sugar Mamma’s Perspective
Michelle* is a lesbian Atlanta-based sugar momma working in the information technology field. She began the sugar lifestyle because she lacked free time three or four years ago.
“Outside of my normal job, I am on the board of directors for a non-profit. So, that takes up even more of my time and at the end of the day, I don’t have a lot of time to go on dates and to have someone in my life,” she said. “I have always been kind of the person who would buy things for the person I am with in a relationship — that kind of became this natural progression of, ‘Well I am lonely.’ I want to go out on a date, but I don’t have the time unfortunately to develop a traditional relationship.”
She also said she has had a total of six sugar babies, four of which were serious relationships.
There are four types of sugar babies Michelle said she has come across.
“There are the ones that seem very desperate… there are ones that clearly don’t know what they are doing and just heard about this and is giving it a try and that’s fine. I would say generally they don’t stick around. They are short term,” she said. “The type of sugar baby that I see kind of more rarely that I am more interested in are the ones who are more lifestyle oriented.”
Michelle said she only gives her sugar babies an allowance of $1,000 a month.
“I’ve gone all the way up to $2,500 and that was pretty extreme,” she said. “That was a longer term relationship, so there was a lot of intimacy that had built there.”
Michelle said her sugar babies ranged from an artist, exotic dancer and students.
“Often times they are students. Living in the city is expensive. School is expensive. I totally understand that,” she said.
Michelle also said she uses SeekingArrangement, Craigslist and What’s Your Price to find sugar babies.
“SeekingArrangement is probably like the number one. It’s like really hard because I’m this huge outlier. There are no other lesbian benefactors… people in my position,” she said. “I have weird responses on there because like 99 percent of the women I message assume I am someone’s wife, you know, like a guy’s wife or like we are looking for that. Or they think I am a part of a couple and I have to [tell] them ‘No. No. No. I’m single. I’m a lesbian. I’m OK.’ And [the other] 10 percent of the time they are like, ‘No, I’m not into that.’”
The benefits of being a sugar momma is having a shortcut to going on dates with attractive women, according to Michelle. Also, the relationship has less of the give and take than in normal relationships.
“Well, in a normal relationship you have to work together to spend time together, to do things together and you know, stuff like that. But in my situation, if I am like ‘Hey, lets plan to go on a date’. It’s going to be three weeks away and that sucks. I don’t want to have to schedule my relationship,” she said.
The drawbacks are that sugar relationships tend to be short lived and shrouded in secrecy, according to Michelle.
“I was recently seeing someone and I really liked her and she no longer needed financial assistance and I stopped hearing from her,” she said. “So that was a shame. I also have to hide. I feel like I need to hide facts about it to other people. You know, I am openly lesbian, but it is hilarious that I don’t tell anyone the nature of the relationships I have.”
Michelle also said she thinks no one knows about her sugar relationships, but people might be suspicious of how she only dates extremely attractive women.
“I don’t tell people because I feel like most people would react really negatively [and] very judgmentally and you know, not take a moment to try to understand why I am active in these types of relationships, because people tend to be really negative towards lifestyles they don’t understand,” she said.
Michelle also said has met one or two other sugar daddies/mommas and heard from sugar babies that sugar daddies are more interested in physical relationships.
“Not necessarily exclusively but wanting the physical part to be a much bigger aspect than I personally care about.
They are also more interested in keeping things shorter term, you know, seeing someone for two months, three months then moving on to the next best thing,” she said.
In the future Michelle said she would like to have a long term relationship with marriage.
“I would definitely like to have a long term relationship where we are building a life together,” she said. “ I don’t think that’s mutually exclusive to me pampering. I would definitely like to find someone to have that eventually.”
* Names in article have been changed to protect the identity of those in this story. Names used are aliases.
Student VOX
Roger Krick
What do you think of sugar baby relationships?
I think it’s bound to happen. The older people, the older guys work non-stop and so they really just kind of want someone to be with them when they go out of town. And you have these younger people that want that lifestyle so they jump on board but it usually doesn’t work. I think it gets all messed up when they try to make it a love relationship because when there’s that big of an age difference it doesn’t really work.
Would you consider being a sugar baby?
No. I’ve kind of been around it but no. It’s not a fun game. You feel like their property. Cool if you want to treat me to certain things, but it’s a messed up game, a very messed up game. You really just become their property. I’ve been with a guy that was older and he had a lot of money and after a while I decided I’m not about this.
Why do you think Atlanta is seeing an increase in sugar baby relationships?
I think it has a lot to do with the gay community. Do you know Tenth and Piedmont? I swear, nowadays I don’t go there as much but you always see the daddy and the little twink boy next to him.
Mychelayne Rattes
What do you think of sugar baby relationships?
I think it reflects, in school, girls that are in school. I think it reflects how people don’t have money these days and sometimes they do anything that’s possible to get it. I don’t think I disapprove. I don’t think it’s bad unless you’re doing something illegal.
Would you consider being a sugar baby?
No, because I’m too independent but the work I do being in school and being a [Portuguese] teacher I do have a lot of guys proposing that idea. I think it’s a modern nickname for prostitution. I think it’s prettier name for it but I do understand that sometimes when you are in need you will definitely accept gift from people and sometimes you don’t think about the consequences, I would say. When I teach, I teach older guys and they definitely propose that and being in school definitely raises the flag ‘she doesn’t have any money so it’s easy for me to offer and for her to accept,’ but I’ve got offers, yeah.
Why do you think Atlanta is seeing an increase in sugar baby relationships?
I don’t know about Atlanta but I know Georgia State is pretty diverse. You get a huge range of people from different incomes. It’s an international city and so you see everything.
Steven Morgan
What do you think of sugar baby relationships?
I think it’s strange. I’ve never had that situation in my life. I’m more on the conservative right so I feel like it’s my job to make money and marry the woman that I love and take care of her. Other than that, I’m not into that other stuff. It’s not my league.
Would you consider being a sugar baby?
No, I don’t think it’s masculine.
Why do you think Atlanta is seeing an increase in sugar baby relationships?
A lot of people make a lot of money in big cities and most big cities are moving toward being socially moderate. Weak people like to have a strong companion. In the city you’ve got major wage-earning gaps. You could make $400,00 and your partner might make $35,000. There’s just wage discrepancies and differences. Part of it is probably political and sociological.
Signal news staffer Matthew Wolff also contributed to this report.
