When Soraya was 21, she met an Australian man in his mid 40s on a sugar baby dating website.

It was one of her earliest introductions to the world of being a sugar baby, where young women trade their attention and sexual favours for the financial sponsorship of a rich, older man, the sugar daddy.


She was staying in Ghana at the time and he was in Cape Town for business. Soraya says he fell for her straight away and flew her to South Africa to stay in his private villa.

Instead of a typical relationship, they struck up an arrangement where he gave her Christian Louboutin shoes, diamond bracelets, gold rings and a weekly allowance.

"He was very rich. He didn't bat an eyelash making sure that I was always comfortable in any way possible," she says.


Soraya is now 26 and has been a sugar baby since she was 19. In that time she's learned a thing or two about how the game is played. She gave this man the full "girlfriend experience", but for a price.

"[It's like] being with a boyfriend. From where you're going to eat tonight, to jokes and to laughing," she says.

"[But] I choose when we're gonna have sex. I choose when you give me money, I choose everything."

Soraya lives in South Africa, a country with one of the most unequal wealth distributions in the world, and she was raised by a single dad who told her: "It's better to be poor in a rich neighbourhood, than rich in a poor neighbourhood."


Soraya learnt from a young age about the power of money and isn't shy about bringing up the subject when she first meets her "daddies".

" Usually I say, 'Okay, darling, we're having such amazing time, let's talk about my favourite topic: Money'," she says.

"When it comes to money, that's when you have to be serious to make sure that no words are missed.

"Money's great. It's amazing. It's freedom, I suppose. Money is a stubborn element, so you have to be stubborn too."

In some ways, the world of sugar dating mirrors the regular world of dating and matchmaking, with lessons in clear boundary-setting and communication. Sugar babies are also hard workers, which is part of the reason Soraya can't see herself dating any time soon.

"Why do I have to put myself through normal dating with emotions that I don't even like, like putting this much energy in and needing to deal with all of these men? I think I should be compensated for it."

The world of sugar dating

Srushti Upadhyay is a PhD candidate at the University of Buffalo in the US who has interviewed hundreds of sugar babies in order to understand their motivations. She has found that most sugar babies do not date men in their personal lives.

"If they're going to be dating men, they want to be rewarded for it because men hold a lot of power in this patriarchal society everywhere they go. And so to them … putting in this time and energy into relationships with men is something that they don't want to do for free. It's just a lot of work."


Soraya says she maintains her power by stroking their ego and making them the central character.

"Men also want to be loved like a fairytale," she says.

"They too have not felt passion since they were a teenage boy, and they've gotten used to not feeling butterflies in their stomach when they speak to a woman.

"But when they can find a woman who makes them feel like a little boy again, where they can't wait till she texts them, that is what you want. That is where the money is.

"And then he doesn't know why he's starting to fall in love with me but it happens. Every time."


Ms Upadhyay first became curious about sugar dating in 2016, when she was a graduate student. She has since spoken to women ranging from 18-year-olds to 60-year-olds looking to supplement their income.

"A lot of them actually have full-time jobs," she says.

"[Some younger sugar babies] described how their sugar daddies helped them get internships, and taught them how to invest money.

"[It was] essentially like a pseudo-mentorship."


Sugar babies provide emotional, sexual and physical intimacy, Ms Upadhyay says, while sugar daddies are the ones who have resources and who want companionship.

There are also sugar mommies, where the gender of the arrangement is flipped, but these transactional relationships are overwhelmingly between attractive young women and rich, older men.

For sugar daddies, Ms Upadhyay says a lot of them are wealthy men who want certain things they can't get from their marriages.

"They want to be able to have these sexual relationships with younger women where they themselves feel young, no strings attached.


"These sugar daddies are looking for somebody who just wants to listen to what they have to say. So think about it as having a therapist that you're also attracted to."

There can also be a darker side to sugar dating.

"[Sugar babies] talked about different degrees of 'unsafeness' that they might have felt, whether it's emotional or physical. It's always something that they are mindful of," she says.
Stuck in Thailand

Charlotte was working full-time in admin in Melbourne when she started an arrangement with an older doctor in 2023 — her first as a sugar baby. He was in his late 50s and married with kids.

At 32, she was earning enough money to get by, but not enough to live the life to which she aspired. That's when she signed up to a sugar baby site.

"[I thought], how do I make extra money? I have Asian heritage and I have been fetishised my whole adult life and it's such a red flag for me," she says.

"Going into this, I actually was like, 'I'm gonna take that back a little bit and use that to my advantage'."


After a couple of months of seeing each other, Charlotte and her sugar daddy started talking every day. They would hang out, go on dates to expensive restaurants, and often have sex.

"He wasn't physically that attractive, but he was so lovely to me and so polite," she says.

"And then it all came to a head when we went overseas."

Three months into their arrangement, Charlotte was onboard for what she thought was going to be a fancy Thailand vacation. Her sugar daddy paid for Charlotte's flights and accommodation, telling his wife he was on a cycling trip.

Charlotte packed her bikinis but not her wallet, expecting him to pay for everything. Beaches, great food, shopping: Charlotte could see it all ahead of her.

"And then I reckon I kind of got the ick a little bit when I landed and he met me at the airport. I was like, 'Oh, you look really old. You look like you could be my grandfather.'"

Charlotte put these thoughts aside, and for the first couple of days in Bangkok she had a good time. But then her sugar daddy started getting too much.

"He was forcing his affection onto me, and wanting to hold my hand in public all the time. And so I would either walk ahead of him quicker, or I would just cross the road.

"I was starting to really feel like I was being judged because … he looks old and I look a lot younger than my actual age.

"I could see the looks on everyone's faces when we went somewhere. And so it was just adding more and more to this ick that I was getting."


And then there was the straw that broke the camel's back: Charlotte's sugar daddy started getting stingy, refusing to buy her things in the Bangkok markets.

"Even trying to ask for a hat was so difficult. And then I just was like, I'm done. I don't want to be here anymore," she says.

The next day, Charlotte came up with an excuse as to why she needed to get home, but without her bank cards she couldn't leave the country easily.

"Once he realised that I'd made my mind up … he made zero attempts to try and help me get home," she says.

Eventually, another sugar daddy she'd been seeing wired her the funds to get on a plane back to Australia. But even after Charlotte's hasty exit, the older doctor wasn't ready to let go.

"I had like 75 unread messages over a number of weeks," she says.

"There was a moment where I did feel scared because he knew so much about my life. I was looking over my shoulder constantly.

"And then I remembered that he's married with kids and I have a lot of evidence and that I could blow his life up, and that it would be in his best interest to leave me alone."

Rules of a sugar relationship

Soraya has been in sugar relationships for seven years now and has learnt some things along the way.

"I do have one rule. That I must always be able to afford travelling back on my own, if necessary."

She also never goes home with a sugar daddy on the first date, and has an upper age limit of 60.

"That's too much. It's giving retirement. Retirement means too much time and I don't want to spend too much time with them."

Soraya actually ended up marrying the Australian sugar daddy she met when she was 21, although it didn't last long.

"[Being married] actually felt a bit like a cage," she says.

Ms Upadhyay, who has interviewed hundreds of sugar babies, says it is not uncommon for sugar daddies to fall in love with their sugar babies.


"Many of them shared [that] their sugar daddies became fascinated with them, or were very interested in turning a sugar relationship into a romantic relationship. And to a lot of the sugar babies, that was the first sign that they want to not pay for the arrangement."

Soraya and her sugar daddy got divorced after a couple of years, but she walked away with a trust fund, which means she only has to work when she wants to.

"That's where my net worth skyrocketed into the many zeros," she says.

She now devotes most of her time to investing and advising fellow sugar babies on TikTok.

As for Charlotte, after leaving her sugar daddy behind in Thailand, she found a new (married, with kids) daddy in an arrangement that works much better for her.

"He's really lovely and is so respectful and so kind, and [it's] the experience that I wish that I'd had. I think he's in better shape than I am. [The sex is] probably better than a lot of the sex that I've had with people that are my age by choice and for free.

"I get money from him. It's a set fee. And then I go off on my way and then I'm like, 'See you next time'."

Written by Tamar Cranswick and Elsa Silberstein for Ladies, We Need to Talk, ABC News.