I’m often asked how I feel about the fact that many of my clients are cheating on their spouses or partners with me. My clients are primarily men who are in relationships, if my estimates are correct, based on the clients who tell me so or who wear wedding rings during bookings. It’s something I think about often, especially when the client decides to use the last ten or twenty minutes of an hour long appointment to tell me all about how much he doesn’t like his wife while we’re post-sex.
When I first started, I did so with a certain amount of guilt at enabling their cheating. Back then I also had a lot of internalized issues around sex work and the guilt over sleeping with married men certainly added to that. Eventually I realized that these men would be doing so regardless of whether it was me, because it wasn’t an emotional affair where I was a specific target of their affections – if I wasn’t there, they’d have hired another sex worker instead. The blame is on the cheater, regardless. They’re the one in the relationship, the boundaries of which they might be disrespecting.
After sex with a particularly infuriating client who is demanding and rude and rough and generally bad at bringing me any pleasure, I don’t just feel an absence of guilt these days. I feel like I’m glad his wife doesn’t have to deal with him and that he won’t pester her for sex.
Some of my clients are decent men who just seem to want to get off. A significant portion are men who do not value their sexual partners and pay only for the discretion that hiring a sex worker provides compared to seeking out casual sex with someone else. They know we’re not going to track down their wives and tell them because that would be awful for our business.
A lot of men will justify to me why they’re cheating on their wives, at the end of a session. They’ll tell me that their wife hasn’t been interested in sex with them in a year, or that she occasionally agrees to have sex with him but is unenthusiastic (whereas I fake pleasure in a way that titillates him). From how they talk about their marital life, it sounds like their relationship with their wives has ceased to be romantic or sexual and yet they remain married for social reasons and convenience. Since they are unable to acknowledge this fact, men come to me for sex. I’m sure many of their wives are also cheating on them, due to the fact neither is willing to admit they have no relationship anymore. I listen only because they’re paying for my time and it’s slightly less annoying than having sex with them again for that time.
I idly think to myself that many of these men who treat me as little more than a masturbation aid are also the kind of men who would target vulnerable people to manipulate them into sex. I think to myself “at least I’m getting paid for this” when I encounter those men, and the cheating is entirely secondary. You know, I just hope that the fact he’s paying for sex means that his wife is able to find evidence of infidelity for the eventual divorce proceedings more easily.
I agree that given the fact that most of us are doing this for survival, the moral questions are a moot point because we often don’t have other options. However, if I don’t address it, then we have a hierarchy where “whores” are only given exceptions if we’re sufficiently desperate for money. It still positions us as a group who are doing harm, but suggests that we can’t help it. I reject that we’re doing harm at all. I’m not going to say that people can’t marry a misogynist if they want, but if they’re with a man who cheats and then complains to sex workers about it then he probably is one, and I’d wager the cheating is one of the much more minor worries.
Sex workers are not the problem. We’re not the reason anyone’s husband cheats on them, nor should we blame ourselves for their choices.
Hell, why should I feel guilty when I’m not even fucking enjoying it?
Jack Talks About Sex Work 