I recently started dating an escort that I’ve been seeing professionally for a while, but I found out that all of her escort friends are warning her away from me. Why are they so skeptical about my feelings toward her?
Relationships with escorts are fraught with complications for a number reasons, including but not limited to:
- Clients trying to get free sex by promising “love”, just as men have done to amateur women for millennia;
- Clients who are turned on by whores qua whores, and not really attracted to the women as individuals;
- Guys who really think they love a whore, but are not prepared for the social stigma or the burden of having to keep her secret from employers, family, friends, etc;
- Men who really are in love with whores, but let jealousy destroy the relationships;
- Men who fancy themselves pimps and try to manage their girlfriends’ work, even to the point of abusive and controlling behavior;
- Boyfriends or husbands who demand that the sex worker give up her work and either become economically dependent (“barefoot and pregnant”) or go to work in a shitty non-sex “straight” job that will wear her down;
- Clients who think they’re in love with a woman, but are actually just infatuated with her business persona;
- Guys who imagine that sex workers’ sex drives are higher than those of amateur women, or that they’re always more open-minded about preferences and kinks that they’re not being paid to indulge.
Those last two are probably the most insidious, because they may be hard for either party to tell apart from real affection and only reveal themselves once the couple is cohabiting and he discovers that he doesn’t like her relaxed, yoga-pants-wearing, housework-hating, menstruating, bad-hair-day-having, moody, personal-problem-suffering, family-drama-experiencing, opinion-expressing, not-always-in-the-mood, idiosyncratic self. And this is just a start; if I sat here for a while I could probably think of half a dozen more, and I invite sex workers to include others in the comments. I’m not saying a relationship with a sex worker is impossible; most of us do indeed have intimate partners, most of whom are male and some fraction of whom were formerly clients. But there are special difficulties inherent in such relationships that require patience, wisdom and love to overcome or circumvent, and because several of those only apply to partners who started as clients, many sex workers are of the opinion that it’s better to minimize problems by eliminating those potential avenues of difficulty through the strategy of never, ever becoming emotionally involved with clients in the first place.
(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.)
Jeez Maggie, does every guy in the country who falls for a whore write to you or is it the same guy over and over?
There’s a difference between free sex and love?
Clients falling in love with whores is more common than the prohibitionists want everyone to believe, and given my own personal history of marrying a client I don’t think it’s all that surprising that I attract correspondence from so many of them! Also remember, I get email from all over the world; only about 40% of these letters come from readers in the US.
I think the cohabitation disillusionment is pretty universal to all relationships, amature beginings or otherwise.
The one I was in love with – and I lived with her for a couple of years … turned down at least a half dozen marriage offers from me.
One of her demands was … “I’ll marry you if you tell your mom what I do.”
Which – if I had to do it over again – I would call that bluff and tell my mom. But back then, in my early 20’s – I just knew it would DESTROY my mom, so I refused to do it. But it’s not like we “hid” it – all my friends knew what she did for a living. I didn’t have a problem with everyone knowing – I just didn’t want my mom to find out. And no, I wasn’t a “momma’s boy” … it’s just that, being from the South, you are supposed to REVERE your mom above all other humans and if you hurt her, even unintentionally – you are just the gravest form of SHIT on the planet!! LOL
I guess that was her little “test” to see how much I was in love with her. I failed it.
Also – can’t tell you how many divorced hookers I’ve seen who told me … “Yeah, when I was married, I kinda neglected my husband’s sexual needs.”
Just like many straight women.
Most “insatiable” girl I ever dated – wasn’t even a hooker. She was a Navy chick. She got knocked out COLD when a lead heaving line hit her on the pier as she waited for my sub to tie up after being out to sea for two weeks. I was radar operator and one of the guys topside ran down to control and said … “KRULAC! Your girlfriend was KNOCKED OUT on the pier by a heaving line and the EMT’s are treating her!!”
I got off the boat … and when she could stand, I walked her to her car and put her in. I got in the driver’s seat and said … “Look, when we get home, you just go to bed.” She looked at me with a cold determined face and said … “HEY BOY!” Then she pointed at the huge bump on her head and said … “DO NOT think for a second that this is going to keep us from FUCKING tonight!!”
It was almost down-right scary the way she said it. And when we got home … she had put sheets down on the floor in the living room … and even “wrapped” and “taped” them about six inches up the walls!!! I knew whatever she had planned … was going to be messy!!!
(And it was!!)
I wouldn’t say that you failed the test. It’s a catch-22. If you refuse to tell your mom, your girlfriend says you don’t love her enough. If you hurt your mom just to please someone else, then you don’t deserve respect and are not worth marrying.
I have had this experience several times, maybe once in a dozen times… falling in love (a little) but infatuation and euphoria is part of the fun and welcomed by me as a bonus. Fortunately it does not last too long, not more than a few hours or, at most, a day. I love the glow of the after burn, but would never intimidate my partner by proclaiming my love for her. I always make it a point thank her and proclaim my appreciation. I know it is all play acting (adult entertainment) like enjoying a good singer, a show, a magician, a ball game (couldn’t resist that one) or an entertaining movie. It is not to be taken too seriously.
I’ve fallen in love with clients twice. One time it worked out and we had a years-long relationship. The other time, it didn’t (he lied about his marital status). I know lots of sex workers who’ve dated a client–usually only one time. The sad thing is, for all the reasons Maggie lays out, people usually get hurt.
And guys who never get sex outside seeing a prostitute, and fall “in love” simply because they are having sex with an actual live woman.
Having said that:
How did this dude find out that all the other escorts were warning her off? They told him? Unlikely. She told him? If that’s the case, then this woman is trolling for drama, stringing him along, and is best avoided outside a business relationship. I mean – how did this go down? Was it “Ohhh, I might consider it, but all the other girls say I shouldn’t …”
Alternatively, maybe she’s just unable to say “Dude, you are a customer.” and just made it up. Sex workers put on that traditional brassy, sassy front for good reason.
A worrying possibility is that *he* made it up, that it’s all the those other whores interfering with their love, whispering poison into his beloved’s ears, playing stepsister to his Cinderella (or Psyche, if you prefer the classics).
But a decent rule of thumb would probably be: if you have to ask, the answer is no.
[…] recently read Maggie McNeil’s awesome May 2015 article “Fraught With Complications” about Dating for Escorts and Sex Workers. It took me a while to stumble over it, i think it […]