Sexual Autopilot

As is the case for many people who sell sex, my sex life is mostly clients. For long stretches of time, my sex life has been comprised entirely of clients. I started at 17, so there wasn’t a significant period of time before that where I had an active personal sex life and the opportunities to experiment and work out my preferences. I dabbled in dating when I first started escorting, but once I knew it was going to be become a long-term part of my life I wasn’t willing or able to hide it from potential clients and so I began to have trouble finding anyone to date. Combined with this, I became traumatized from an assault by a client and found the idea of a relationship terrifying and daunting.

I won’t get into all the embarrassing details of my ineptitude and commitment-phobia which have followed in the years since, or my failed attempts at relationships. I’ll succinctly slice things down to what I see as the primary issue that has been destroying all my relationship attempts since I began selling sex, and which clearly stems from me becoming a sex worker; I feel incapable of dating someone and also having sex with them.

Disclaimer from this point onward: I’m going to talk openly about my personal sex life, in a way that is probably humiliating and inadvisable for me to do on a public platform.

My issue of not being able to date someone and have sex with them isn’t an issue that all sex workers have, or that they’ll all get. I know many who have happy and loving relationships and wonderful personal sex lives. It is an issue I developed through doing sex work and not dating while I did so, until it became entrenched. I know that it is selling sex which has given me this issue, and that it is specific to it; I automatically slip into an agreeable mindset where I’m doing what the other person wants, as if I’m with a client, and I don’t know how to turn it off.

A partner may ask if I want to have sex. Let’s say I don’t feel any specific desire to do it, but I don’t feel negatively about the idea, and so I agree. I don’t voice that I’m up for sex but not specifically in the mood, I just agree and smile and say some sort of canned line about wanting it before I go quiet. I follow instruction but take no initiative. I dissociate.

Sometimes the other person notices and asks to stop and we do, other times we have sex and they reflect on my awkwardness with concern or confusion, sometimes it leads them to repeatedly asking if I’m okay, or they might get angry that I don’t seem excited enough. No matter the reaction, there’s always some level of concern or annoyance or (worst) they’re upset and worry they’ve taken advantage of me despite my open agreement and constant “yes” to any time they ask me if something’s okay or if I want it.

In a situation where I’m in the mood and want to initiate sex, I might ask a partner and end up in bed with them, but after I do I get too much in my head about it. I worry that I’m not doing things right, not pleasing them effectively if I’m thinking about my own desires, and then I feel terrible because it’s supposed to be mutual and if I put them in the “client” role in my mind I won’t enjoy myself and it’s not fair to them or to me… the thoughts become a spiral, I panic, I don’t know how to balance enjoying myself with making them feel good and eventually I slip into the autopilot I use for clients.

No matter the scenario in which I end up having sex with someone outside of work, this autopilot eventually seems to kick in. It’s less of an issue with hook-ups, because they can often be very enjoyable despite this if my interests align with the other person’s, and I don’t have to worry about the awkward expression of concern from a partner about my dissociation or their annoyance that I seem so meek and agreeable during sex in a way that is so different from my personality. I can have a hook-up and never see them again, and they don’t know me well enough to be worried about my behaviour during sex.

It doesn’t even make sex good for the other person, I don’t think, because I’m not doing all the things I’d do to please clients which usually go on top of my agreeableness to whatever they say that’s within my boundaries. With clients I lie, I talk about how attractive I find them or use techniques which I generically use for clients to make them cum faster or find me more appealing. I’ll play up my moaning, act like a different and more flirtatious person, and most importantly lean into their desires and let them have control which is generally what they wanted when paying for sex. I don’t want to manipulate someone I like or love, so the fake moaning and trying to speed things along would feel wrong, and because I don’t want to lie I go quiet. A quiet and half-absent sexual partner who takes no initiative isn’t particularly attractive.

I’m sure it’s not strictly true that I can’t have sex without slipping into what I think about as my sex autopilot mindset. There must be some combination of things I could do and a way I could find the right person to make it work. Either way, I haven’t found it. I don’t even think it’d be a problem for me that I feel this way during sex, because the little dissociation and the way I mostly follow the other person’s lead during sex isn’t bothersome to me in itself. It’s the reaction from a partner. I understand it, I don’t fault the ones who get sad or concerned, but the moment I get that reaction all I can feel is pity and frustration and the certainty that they deserve a better partner and I just can’t do it.

I don’t buy into this idea that trauma at a young age stunts your development at that point, but I do note that my relationships prior to sex work were all when I was still a teenager and involved minimal or no sex. My sex life developed within sex work, entirely separate from my dating life which fizzled out when I started escorting. So, when I think about dating or relationships, I picture them working the way they did back then. All anticipation, no sex, entirely romance. Not because I don’t want sex, but because I don’t want to ruin the romance with my fucked up way of processing sex and dissociating all the way through it.

What are the chances that I find someone who is not only okay with the fact I’m a sex worker, with the fact that I’m trans, with the fact I have so little to offer in terms of money or stability, with my mental health issues and quirks, who will also be happy with the idea that we might never have sex? People with that willingness certainly exist, but my chances don’t seem high.

How do you ask a partner to be okay with not having sex with you when you’re selling sex to other people? The most common way I hear sex workers talking about navigating sex with their partners and jealousy is by explaining that the sex they have for work is different to the sex they have with their partner and that work is different to their personal life. If I’m not having sex with a partner at all, how am I supposed to soothe that kind of jealousy?

It’s a conversation I’d have to have early on, dating anyone. Too early for that kind of vulnerability.

“The sex I have for work isn’t intimate to me and there’s no connection there, even if it’s sometimes physically enjoyable. Through selling sex, especially in some bad circumstances where I have experienced trauma, I’ve developed this sort of sex autopilot mindset where I dissociate when I have sex and I don’t want to do that with you. I still have sexual desires, I find you attractive, and I’m often going to actively want sex but tell myself not to because I know how it’ll end up. Is any of that a dealbreaker?”

Sex work itself didn’t ruin my ability to date, but the way I went about it in my personal circumstances certainly seems to have done that. I sold sex, with no love life to speak of and few hook-ups in between, until I conditioned myself to view sex exclusively as work. Undoing so many years of conditioning is a long process, and one I can’t expect a person I’m dating to handhold me through in the very beginning of a relationship.

I don’t know how to fix the sexual autopilot and at this stage I don’t know if I can.