WHY MEN RENT GIRLFRIENDS

A year in the making, this investigation goes inside the world of a man speaking publicly for the first time about why he rents relationships — a pursuit that has cost him more than £50,000. Ben Zand meets an anonymous British man in his 20s, T, thinking that he will discover loneliness and isolation but reveals something more concerning: a belief system shaped in online forums where resentment towards women has hardened into ideology of entitlement.

Convinced that modern dating is “broken” because women have the freedom to choose who they want, and don't choose him, T rents girlfriends in search of what he feels he is owed: a partner who won’t say no.

In an attempt to understand the hidden market behind this “girlfriend experience”, that T himself believes is exploitative, Ben travels halfway around the world to meet a woman who sells intimacy on her own terms, and who says the income has helped her escape an abusive past, even if all of her clients need to go to therapy.

Returning to London, Ben brings T into a conversation he has never had before — a transparent and uncomfortable dialogue with real-life-women — to explore whether radicalisation can be confronted before it becomes set in stone.