Real Relationships or Hardcore Hookups?
Many detractors opine these students are leveraging money for sex, with the lure of quick financial reward being difficult to resist under the suffocation of tuition fees and consumer debt. That was never the site’s intent, De La Cruz says. It all started with a Massachusettes Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate.
Brandon Wade, the aforementioned MIT alum, initially founded SeekingArrangement in 2006 for his own personal use. “He was well-educated with lots of money, but no time to meet people,” De La Cruz says.
Wade’s app is the perfect solution for dating in the modern age. While young clients on the site are actively seeking well-established, upwardly mobile men, the relationships are carefully negotiated. There’s no guessing if someone will call back, no misunderstandings about whether either party is married.
“This isn’t a ‘client and customer’ interaction,” De La Cruz says. “These are real relationships where people want to be open and honest.”
While De La Cruz emphasizes that the relationships “are not transactional in nature,” there is usually a financial exchange. “There are financial benefits; gifts and money come naturally in any relationship,” she says. “There’s almost always a dynamic where one partner earns less. In these relationships, one person earns more than the other, but the connections are real.”
This also begs the question: Who is the sugar daddy of today?