It boasts that it’s the leading sugar daddy dating site for those seeking “mutually beneficial arrangements.”
And according to website founder Brandon Wade, more and more Carleton University students are looking to get in on some of that sugar.
Seekingarrangement.com is a dating website where financially successful men, or “sugar daddies,” can meet “attractive, intelligent, goal oriented” young people, called “sugar babies,” who are looking to be pampered.
The site claims it allows people to be brutally honest about who they are and what they want from a relationship.
Members understand that successful romantic relationships are not only about love, but about getting as much as they put into the relationship, Wade said.
“We hope to help like-minded people become more successful with their lives, romantic or otherwise,” he said.
According to Wade, about 26 students from Carleton University registered as members of the site in 2012, nearly double the number who signed up the year before.
There are approximately 10,000 registered members in Ottawa, Wade said, with a ratio of one sugar daddy for every 10 sugar babies.
The main motivation for students to join the site? High tuition fees.
“It has everything to do with the cost of tuition, and the fact that tuition has risen so sharply in recent years when compared to inflation and the cost of living,” he said.
While tuition may be a stress for many students, he said that sugar babies come from good schools such as Harvard and McGill, and that they join the site by choice, not by circumstance.
“The members of our website understand this is a romantic relationship between two people where chemistry is an important and necessary component,” he said.
But Susan Johnson, relationship expert and director of the Ottawa Couple and Family Institute, disagreed.
“Relationships based on a contract are relationships that are commodities,” she said. “They are not relationships, they are deals.”
Engaging in this behaviour will change how women feel about themselves and how they engage in relationships in the future, she said.
The idea that sugar daddies can “pamper and empower” women, as stated on its website, is “ridiculous,” according to second-year Carleton student Lisa Casselman.
She said the site might promote the idea that women need a man to handle their financial responsibilities.
“I have no doubt that 99 per cent of students in university are financially stressed,” Casselman said. “But these days there are so many [other] options to help ease that stress or pressure.”
Taking on a smaller course load at school in order to work or applying for OSAP are safe and viable options, she said.
Sophia Mirzayee, a Carleton first-year human rights student at Carleton, echoed the sentiment, arguing that the site undermines the idea of working hard for what you have.
Having to pay for her own tuition showed her the importance of finding a good job and making the most of every resource and opportunity available, she said.
“If love was the primary reason for the union, the fact that one was being pampered by the other would be justifiable,” she said.
“But when we have someone who just gives us everything, how can we know the value of it?”
