I’m a 24-year-old girl who feels that if cheating is inevitable, and most men have paid for sex, then there’s no way that I can ever be in a healthy relationship. While I support sex workers and want them to work safely, I refuse to marry a man who has paid for sex; I would rather be alone than do this. How can I pursue a healthy, honest relationship if I can’t trust men?
If you define “healthy” as “unrealistically perfect”, then you’re correct that you’ll never be in a “healthy” relationship. Human beings are not perfect, and men are not women; if you expect perfection, and furthermore define that perfection as men behaving like women, then you are indeed doomed to disappointment. Healthy relationships aren’t those in which both partners meet and never fall below some unrealistic standard of behavior; they’re those in which each partner recognizes that the other is a flawed human being who will inevitably do upsetting, disappointing, hurtful or infuriating things, and that he or she is really no better no matter how much he or she might like to think so. “I refuse to marry a man who has paid for sex; I would rather be alone than do this” is just as unrealistic (and, frankly, as immature) as “I refuse to marry a woman who is not a virgin; I would rather be alone than do this.” If you insist on controlling your partner’s past, you obviously mean to control his future, and any self-respecting man in his right mind should run screaming from such a danger sign (just as any self-respecting woman in her right mind should run screaming from the counterpart).
Note that I’m not telling you that all men will cheat, because that wouldn’t be true; what I’m saying is that many will, and that it’s foolish to throw out a man you profess to love merely because he has a fairly-typical flaw. I might point out that many a client comes to sex workers precisely because he is wise enough not to discard a woman he loves merely because she has the correspondingly-typical female flaw, namely losing interest in sex after a few years of marriage. Everyone agrees that good relationships need to be based on more than sex, so why is it that so many people believe that a sexual disagreement is sufficient grounds for ending an otherwise-good relationship? Even if a man cheats on you, applying some mechanistic “zero tolerance” rule like a guillotine to sever a connection you find beneficial in every other way is cheating both yourself and him.
(Have a question of your own? Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)
Ouch!
That simile had me crossing my legs.
On a ‘hobby board’, I quoted that paragraph, including, “I might point out that many a client comes to sex workers precisely because he is wise enough not to discard a woman he loves merely because she has the correspondingly-typical female flaw, namely losing interest in sex after a few years of marriage. Everyone agrees that good relationships need to be based on more than sex, so why is it that so many people believe that a sexual disagreement is sufficient grounds for ending an otherwise-good relationship?”
It receive a lot of praise, but got this contrary, “IMO the flaw in this argument is that one must accept that most women lose interest in sex after marriage. I’d argue that is not the case in a lot of cases. They more often lose interest in sex with a husband in the absence of romance. If men bring back the romance their wife will often respond. I think deep down a lot of men know this but still go the provider route because they desire strange and/or have a sex addiction.”
Another counter argument raised the issue of honesty in the relationship. Its one thing if one is up front and another if the man is hiding his activities.
That would be a flaw in my argument IF I had said “most clients”, which I did not; I said “many a client”. They’re not remotely the same thing. And the “honesty in the relationship” argument is spurious: nobody is completely honest in relationships; we just like to pretend otherwise.
God, how often are we even remotely honest with ourselves?
Especially about relationships.
“Immature” or not, at least this lady knows how to separate her feelings about sexual fidelity from her attitude to whores. And unlike some others she doesn’t hide the whole thing under a dungheap of political ideology and generalised moralising.
But she doesn’t know enough about men to realize that having sex with other women, especially hookers, isn’t her main “enemy”.
Her main enemy – as a wife – will be if he FALLS IN LOVE with another woman.
And any guy can do that … not just ones that paid for sex at some point in the past. In fact, I know good “Christian” men who never did anything wrong … but who fell down that hole.
And the biggest danger that comes from “falling in love with another woman,” in today’s culture, is the magical thinking that says, “If you fall in love with someone, then you must marry that person.”
And … if you are already married to someone else, then you must divorce your existing spouse so that you *can* marry that person.
(Personally, I think this is the reason why so many “swinger” couples insist that what they do with other couples is sex — *not* love. Because (in this view) if one of them fell in love with a member of another couple, both couples would *have* to get divorced, so that the lovebirds could get married.)
The heterosexual romantics who persuaded American society to define marriage in these terms, in the 20th century I think, had no idea what consequences would arise. One of the loudest consequences is gay marriage! After all, if two men (or women) **LOVE** each other, then what else are they SUPPOSED to do?? 😉
I don’t think society says that you MUST divorce a spouse that you’ve fallen OUT OF LOVE with and MARRY one that you have fallen IN LOVE with.
In fact, I imagine just the opposite. I would think that if a man went to a Christian minister or a Jewish Rabbi for advice about this … the advice they’d get would be … “do what you need to do to stay with your current spouse.”
You’re right about what the clergy would say, of course. But I think that that is advice from an earlier era, when “marriage” and “being in love” were not considered to be the same thing.
My first wife was absolutely buffaloed when she found that a male friend of ours was becoming her very best friend. She was a church goer, and her/our pastor would have given the very advice you’re suggesting.
But she didn’t ask him for advice. She left me, divorced me, and married the guy. *shrug* It was incredibly painful, not only because I could not imagine that someone would be so insane as to have that kind of thinking. But at least she freed me so that I could marry my present wife, about 24 years ago.
Unspoken cultural imperatives can override a lot of the ancient advice and the ancient thinking.
Damnedest thing I ever saw. And when I listen to swingers talking about that possibility … damnedest thing I ever heard. But they do talk about it that way.
A–mazing.
“(Personally, I think this is the reason why so many “swinger” couples insist that what they do with other couples is sex — *not* love. Because (in this view) if one of them fell in love with a member of another couple, both couples would *have* to get divorced, so that the lovebirds could get married.)”
I’m 58, been contentedly married 35 years to my (first and only) wife. She and I became lifestylers (“swingers”) and have had (what for lack of a better label I’ll call) an open marriage for the past couple decades.
That word, “love”…
Regrettably, language, definitely English, employs the same word “love” to express amazingly varied and sometimes contradictory qualities, situations, interactions, relations, and emotions.
In contrast to English in which the word “love” is used so unspecifically, the ancient Greek language was less generic about indicating various kinds of love. Greek used different words including, for what in English we might roughly label, ” ludic love”, “erotic/romantic love”, “familial love”, “comradely love”, “selfless/universal love”, “healthy self-love”, and “long-term marriage/relationship love”.
The Greeks’ ancient acknowledgment of a specific love they termed “long-term marriage love” (“pragma” in Greek, from which derive the English words “pragmatism” and pragmatic”) bears on the “swinger” question you raise, I think.
I can’t speak for other than my wife and myself and for those in the life-styler/open married circles whom we’ve personally known for decades, of course. But, many of us in long-term marriages permitting extra-relational-sex readily recognize by fact and by personal experience the clear distinction between “erotic/romantic love” and “long-term relationship/marriage love”.
The former is short-term passions and idealization; the latter is enduring familiarity, sensibility, and interdependence. “Romantic love” cannot sustain nor even really develop the relational intimacy that bonds two people. In contrast “long-term love” involves active honesty, objective evaluations and criticisms, concession, deliberate vulnerability, trust, rationality and reason, mutual concern, shared goals, shared core values, and shared experiences.
People such as us (in long-term committed relationships/marriages who consensually engage in non-professional extra-relational sex) recognize that even if strong romantic feelings develop, those feelings ultimately amount to a very narrow range of certainly pleasant but merely temporary feelings.
We accept any incidental erotic love as a to-be-basked-in-for-the-moment, but we know erotic love does not equal the satisfaction we enjoy in our long-term committed relationship, within which more-important needs and desires are ongoingly fulfilled. So, even if we “fall in (erotic) love with” sexual partners outside our long-term relationship, we do so without wanting to leave our long-term partner and without losing the long-term love we feel for our committed partner. (I’m not saying it never happens that someone leaves a long-term partner for an extra-relational partner, but it’s not typical.)
By the way — we DO enjoy sex with our long-term partners too; at least, my wife and I definitely do.
I think that, due to the intra-conflicting needs/desires our biological wirings for both “animal” instincts and “self-awareness/higher reasoning/volitional psyche” gives each human, the most-nearly optimal situation for most people would be some variety of “one long-term committed relationship with permission for extra-relational sexual partners”.
However, I realize that, for several reasons (including the difficulty of overriding biologically-instinctive but unnecessary jealousies), even the many people for whom such an arrangement would serve well cannot and/or will not even condone it, never mind ever attempt it.
Consequently, I don’t “evangelize” others to try consensual extra-relational sex. I don’t even think some of those who do swing should — I’ve only observed consensual extra-relational sex to enhance lives when it’s integrated into a secure, stable long-term relationship (and I opinion less than 10 years as too soon to develop such a solid relationship) .
So, I think your speculation is essentially correct if rightly understood. Because Western society still resists distinction between relational commitment and sex, and because English uses the word “love” so indiscriminately; therefore swingers, whether tactically or unwittingly, don’t label any “erotic/romantic love” that might incidentally develop toward their extra-sexual partners as anything except “sex”.
Thank you for your feedback! 🙂
Very, very true.
I suspect if she makes many demands regarding moral purity, past and future, its more likely she will find someone who will tell her what she wants to hear and act differently.
I think it would be better that she demand honesty in a relationship.
Like Cabrogal, I wish to commend the letter writer for her support of sex workers despite her feelings about men who purchase sexual services. I’d like to point out that there are men who not only cheat but divorce their wives because they make the same mistake that the letter writer does—assume that the desire to have sex with someone is the same thing as love, and therefore if their wife no longer wishes to have sex with them it must mean she doesn’t love him anymore.
I highly recommend that she reads Sex At Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, And What It Means For Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan and Cecilda Jetha. It’s not a “how-to” book which explains how struggling couples can save their relationships but rather a realistic picture of human sexuality. Both men and women have been lied to about what sex and love are all about, and not have thousands of sex workers been sacrificed to the altar of this lie, but so have millions of American marriages. The belief that “cheating is never justified” no matter what common sense or observation tells you about the sexual nature and differences between men and woman is a product of this lie.
The primary focus of Maggie’s blog is advocating human rights for sex workers, but she several of her columns talk about relationships and what both men and women should expect if they want marriages to work. (Forgive me if I don’t cite specific columns, although “A Whore In The Bedroom” comes to mind.) The letter writer might also want to read the work of sex advice columnist Dan Savage in his column Savage Love for the Seattle alternative newspaper The Stranger. I wish her the best of luck in finding the man of her dreams and not a man who ONLY exists in her dreams.
Maggie … have you ever written about how men “compartmentalize” sex? I mean, we’re not like women (apparently) … or most women who seem to always link sex to emotional attachment.
Women need to understand that a man’s sex drive is quite different from theirs. Men CAN have a romp in the hay, and then walk away from it like it’s no big deal. We tend to emotionally bond with woman … but are capable of having sex with many.
Women need to know – it’s the EMOTIONAL BOND they need to maintain and not get wrapped around the axle with sex.
I would like to point out that men wanting to have sex with a variety of women isn’t a flaw, it’s just a product of human evolution. Just like out closest relatives, the apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas) where the males have sex with many different females, so do human males(or at least they’d like to).
κύδος, Maggie, kύδος. Which is, of course, a single noun not a plural noun. 😉
Women cheat in high percentage too.
I don’t think that they cheat to the same extent that men do, and I’ve heard that studies that try to show that women cheat as much as men do fudge the surveys. (Maggie can give more information on this.)
If women cheat, it’s usually because for some reason they are dissatisfied with their partner and choose to cheat. Men—even if everything is going fine at home—are biologically DRIVEN to cheat.
My guess is that Eddie’s generalisation is more or less correct, but it’s probably worth mentioning that when they first rolled out genetic parentage testing on a large scale in the UK the proportion of kids whose Dads weren’t who they think they are was several times greater than most people assumed it would be (about 3.5% from memory). This was from validation testing on the kits, not from people who were tested because they already suspected something like that (that runs to 15-25% in Australia, depending on which testing company you talk to).
I was once contacted by an Australian guy who had been arrested and forcibly DNA tested because his Dad’s DNA profile was a near match to one recovered from a murder scene. The results not only cleared him of murder, they cleared him of being his ‘Dad’s son. He wanted to sue the cops for revealing it to him. Fat chance. And if they hadn’t they might have sat on it to use as leverage over his Mum instead. His Dad was a repeat violent offender.
Just as others have pointed out, the letter writer deserves praise for sticking up for the rights of others even though she doesn’t like the process. And Maggie of course deserves praise for her well- reasoned response. I’ve tried to get this same point across for years but to no avail.
I wonder why it’s so damn hard to get people to admit that most men can totally separate love and sex. And to be honest, it doesn’t even have to be actively separated. They exist separately naturally, from the get- go. They intersect when certain circumstances (I’m not attempting to define what those are) exist.
In high school I didn’t have to separate love and sex during the small number of awkward ( and I’m sure unsatisfying for the female) flings I had with girls in my peer group. There was never any ” love” to begin with. And though childish infatuation existed it was only in certain instances.
Men can have sex with blow up dolls- I don’t get why this concept is so controversial to people.
My 2 cents.
“Note that I’m not telling you that all men will cheat, because that wouldn’t be true; what I’m saying is that many will, and that it’s foolish to throw out a man you profess to love merely because he has a fairly-typical flaw.”
Is it really that foolish? I wouldn’t advise anyone to hold onto a cheater. It’s different for everyone, but for many it’s a big breach of trust and can’t be gotten over. And it’s not even necessary to tolerate it, as many men wouldn’t cheat. Get a trustworthy man and don’t alienate him by constantly suspecting and accusing him (and don’t deny him).
Also, why are men who ever paid for sex, and cheating, connected?
In the minds of some women, any sex for a reason other than “love” is suspect. And they feel (justifiably so, I think) that if a man has paid for sex once, he’s more likely to do it again.
Yes, I agree it means he is physically capable of doing it again. But I still think it’s important to remember that one of those things involved deceit of someone he is supposed to love, and another does not. One is morally wrong (and hurts the conscience, unless his woman stopped having sex with him or he doesn’t care), and the other is not.
As rationally as this 24-year-old woman may be able to view sex work, regrettably, human emotions, especially in most women, don’t originate from nor easily subordinate to our human wiring for higher reasoning and rationality. Feelings often simply “are” and can’t be ignored nor discarded.
So, while this emotion does put her in an impossible trap, all the objective reasoning and reality-facing in the cosmos isn’t likely to make her emotion about this evaporate. And, if she’s unable to not let this feeling dominate her, then she’s wise to remain unattached.
Makes me think of this counterpart, though : since most women will substantially decline in their sexual interest (at least toward the current partner) after 2-4 years of marriage/committed relationship; therefore, shouldn’t this woman likewise conclude that, because her likely-inevitable loss of sexual interest will likely cause pain to any man who commits to her , then no man should trust her for “a healthy, honest relationship” anyway?
Love and relationships are only idyllic in the escapism of disneyesque movies and harlequin romance novels.
I’m glad the response in this case, considered the plight facing many males, which is the humiliation and rejection we inevitably feel after being turned down for physical intimacy time and again, as relationships go on. The males feelings are rarely discussed. I’m wondering how the asker feels about putting forth extra effort in a relationship to make sure her partners needs are met.
So the letter writer wants a virgin male.
I recall having a conversation with a male friend who bragged that he’d “never paid for it in his life”. I called bullshit. I told him this: “You’ve NEVER got it for ‘free’, you’ve ALWAYS paid for it. Every woman you’ve had sex with you either 1) spent social time with (investing time for sex) 2) took on a date where you paid the expenses (so you didn’t hand her cash, you handed her dinner and a movie) or 3) did a “favor” for, like working on her car (he was an auto mechanic)”. Payment might not be in cash, but if a guy gives a woman anything of value, which includes his time, and then he got sex, he paid for it.
The only man who doesn’t “pay”, in some manner, the woman he has sex with for that sex is the rapist.
Heheheh…well, not quite “the only man who doesn’t pay…”
I’m a 58-year old who’s been contentedly married 35 years. My wife (who is definitely an atypical woman) and I have been lifestylers and have had, for want of a better label, open-married for the past two decades. I’ve been a lifelong (drug free, “no steroids”) bodybuilder since I was age 16, so still have a washboard and the sort of “athletic-but-not-schwarzeneggerish” build that many women find attractive.
Making a long explanation as brief as possible…for years, I’ve had profiles up on dating sites which allow marrieds (I’m always immediately full-disclosure honest about my marital status in my profiles). However, the last few years, I never pursue any women — rather, I wait for women to approach me. To those that do contact me and are interested in casual sex, I outline, not arrogantly but calm matter-of-factly, a frank “terms of involvement” which essentially says I’m “available” only and completely on my terms.
The few women (in their 40s to mid-50s) who do take me up do all the traveling, pay for any and all accommodations such as motel rooms for meet-ups, get no dinners from me, receive no “favors” like mechanic work (although I’m a building contractor), get no gifts nor cards. I spend zero money or labor on them. The only time I invest besides time together sexually is what’s necessary to initially communicate when they contact me(which is of course equally “payed out” from their end as they give their time to those initial communications), and that’s given via texting, skyping, and/or an initial brief face-to-face in some public place.
And, yes, these casual arrangements typically go on for many months — I never have to do the requesting to meet them subsequently because these women always take the initiative and invite me back repeatedly.
My case is exceptional, rare, for several unusual reasons, that’s true; and, I’m sure it would not have happened before I was age 50; my age, fitness, and the age of the women figure largely in the exceptionality. But, my point is — it’s not ABSOLUTE that a man always pays.
I think most of us can cite examples of sexual relationships in which we didn’t pay (for example, I was once essentially ‘kept’ by a well off Danish girl in an expensive hotel in Delhi for nearly two months) but as a generalisation it’s fair enough to say that the guy picks up the tab.
Agreed.
She has it backwards.
The men she should avoid aren’t the ones who seek out sex workers to get what they want. The problematic men are the ones who are dishonest with “civilian” women and lie about wanting a relationship to them to get them into bed. Because those are the ones who leave emotional messes and really don’t care about women’s feelings.
The ones who pay for sex via prostitutes or “arrangements” are most likely doing it to avoid the emotional upheavals that come from being a jerk. In other words, they’re sensitive enough to know you “don’t go around breaking little girls’ hearts” to quote an old song lyric.
Looking back at my college years, there were easily over a dozen girls I knew who I could have slept with but didn’t because I knew they’d want “something serious,” which I had no intention of giving them. I did this once and ended up feeling so guilty and put-upon I vowed “never again.”
But if I had been a a-hole, I could have just bedded these girls and not returned their calls the next day. I see this as a much worse transgression of civility than seeking out a woman who is willing to do it for money.
As you know, I totally agree with you. But our twisted society has decided that being pragmatic and sensible about sex is a worse offense than lying to get it.
…I agree with you essentially. However, this 24-year-old girl’s impasse seems to root in her emotional need for any man with whom she can establish a relationship to view sex as some sort of “reserved-for,-and-only-enjoyable-with,-that-special-woman” interaction.
Remember, she listed not only paid-for-sex but potential cheating as her concerns; I take this to indicate she consciously distinguishes paid-for-sex (which she realizes could have occurred before a guy knows her) from infidelity to her (which she seems to imply to include any and all kinds of extra-relational sex he might have once he establishes a relationship with her).
I suspect that, while what you’re saying is rational and logical — that is, that a woman should realize a guy who’s paid for sex in the past yet now desires a relationship with her has no ulterior sexual motives, because in the past if all he wanted was sex, he’d just buy it — even knowing that about a guy won’t help this 24-year-old. She’s likely hung up on needing to feel that any guy who wants sex with her views sex so “transcendantly “(?) or “specially” that he’ll only engage in sex when the girl is “that Special One” (in this case, her).
I tend to think that the differences between men and women are misunderstood both by the ‘theoreticians’ (left- or right-wing defenders of whatever moral principles they favor, from ‘hedonists’ to ‘abstinentists’) and ‘pragmatists’ (those who believe their own personal experience with men and/or women is sufficiently vast and deep to give them a perfect view of what said differences are).
I don’t claim to know what these differences are. I do enterain the hope that biological studies (maybe especially evolutionary biology and psychology and nature-culture co-evolution) will throw some light on the issue, and clarify which of our old (or new) beliefs do have truth in them.
Specifically, I’m not sure it is really all that clear why it is that men cheat, or that women cheat, and that they always do it for different reasons. First of all, because it goes against my own experience, both with men and with women (I’m bisexual); but, more importantly (since my personal experience, being personal/anecdotal, can be flawed, and probably is to some extent), because while arguing about such issues people tend to have ‘agendas’ or ‘worldviews’ that they are trying to protect and validate.
Maybe I’m being too psychological-individualistic, but the cases of cheating I have come upon are very individual: the motivations were remarkably different, and mostly suggest to me that often neither men nor women really know what they are and what they want.
“If you insist on controlling your partner’s past, you obviously mean to control his future”
This is absolutely key. A man who has paid for sex in the past is a man who cannot be controlled by withdrawal of sex, because he knows that he has options. Maybe the OP doesn’t intend to control her future relationships by regulating access to sex and physical affection, but any sensible man is going to assume that this is the case, and will take a “Run, Forrest, run!” attitude.
The root of the need to control one’s partner is, of course, insecurity. It’s needy, insecure people who treat their partners the worst. The root of insecurity is immaturity.
…”immaturity” is a common root of insecurity, but not the only root. Insecurity can also be the consequence of trauma or damage.
And, immaturity itself isn’t necessarily avoidable nor inexcusable; some, through no choice of their own, have experienced environments and circumstances which seriously hinder maturation.