Sugar Babies Cost Me $8,000 And My Marriage

Death, Sex & Money

• Episode: Sugar Babies Cost Me $8,000 And My Marriage
• Website: Death, Sex & Money
• Feed URL: http://feeds.wnyc.org/deathsexmoney
• Duration: 00:31:57
• Published: 2020-03-04 18:00

A few months ago, a listener we're calling Ethan sent us an email. The subject line was: "Sugar babies cost me $8,000 and my marriage." 

Ethan told us that he hired sex workers from the website Seeking Arrangement for over a year, while also going to couples counseling with his wife as their marriage struggled. "My justification for it initially was, you know, I'm going to have a good time so that I can have more energy to try and fix my marriage," he told me. "'Cause I think, you know, when I first went on to Seeking Arrangement, I was exhausted. But I wasn't ready to give up on the marriage yet." 

Ethan says he started going on Seeking Arrangement after hearing more about it on our show, from our episode "When 'Daddy Dates' Pay The Bills." And while we aren't proud that this story of the end of a marriage includes our show as a key plot point, we wanted to hear more about why Ethan decided to cheat⁠—and to understand what hard conversations he was trying to avoid.