Three months ago, I found myself tossing and turning in the middle of the night.
After a painful divorce in 2014 that left me cash strapped, I found my modest little nest egg had dwindled down to the last twigs. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to pay the next month’s rent in my sunny Tribeca studio. As a single 31 year old woman and freelance designer I knew I needed to take immediate action. I was in a dire situation for sure, but how would I dig my way out of the hole and back to financial breathing room?
In my mid twenties I had a sugar daddy that financed my entire life for the brief two months we were together. It was heaven. I didn’t have a care in the world and had all my needs met and then some. A spontaneous trip to Gucci for flashy accessories and wads of cash being shoved into my purse became the norm in those days. Wide awake at 4am, I found myself suddenly longing for that kind of financial freedom again. Being in my early thirties now, I would surely be more responsible with the money, right? After all, I was older and wiser and knew that relationships of this nature were fleeting.
Wired but determined, I Googled “how to find a sugar daddy in NYC.” To my surprise I found several websites that matched wealthy men to attractive ladies in need of monetary assistance. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was an entire online market devoted to meeting the needs of financially strapped, attractive gals like myself. I had hit the jackpot.
Too excited to sleep, I went to work on setting up my profile on Making Arrangement, a website where you can keep your photos private, request a certain “lifestyle budget” allowance per month, and many of the men are background checked. I made sure to fill my bio with key words like “free-spirited” and “drama-free” that I knew would attract lots of suitors. I sat back and smiled at my carefully crafted profile and clicked to confirm.
By noon that day, my inbox on the site had over fifty messages. I weeded out the messages with overtly sexual tones and skimmed down to five or six possible sugar daddies. By the end of the day, I had three dates lined up for the next week. In my mind, I began to imagine juggling two or three of these relationships at a time, socking away money and building back my cushy nest egg. I pictured hosting my friends at my summer share in East Hampton, with maybe enough extra cash to hire a private chef for a weekend here and there. It would all be so easy...