I was in an abusive relationship with someone who never ever wanted to have sex, I think we must have had sex maybe a max 10 times... Yes, I know that is weird, and yes was very out of character for me, at that age, I'd had plenty of routine normal relationships and men had never found me unattractive, I was a magnet, always told I was sexy etc, so it was a very new experience for me. Problem is when this one happened my mum got a terminal cancer diagnosis at the same time, and didn't live long before she died. So life was really upturned when I was relatively young at 38, and anyway, long story short I ended up with this bloke, he seemed caring and nice in the beginning, and ended up having children - one a one hit wonder, the other through IVF as the sex was non-existent by that stage. Yes I know I should have left, I know I should not have had kids but as with any domestic abuse situation you get sucked in and duped by the lies, the abuse, the terror of leaving etc etc. but this is not what my post is about.
The constant chaos he still manages to create through post separation abuse, mostly through children now, is incredible. The latest is that he gave one child his old phone, I checked it had all the safety features set etc as there are no boundaries with him, and zero parenting, and I came across hundreds of messages going back years, to sex workers. It was his old work phone, so he's was doing it in work time, setting up appointments, arranging payments, content of appointments etc etc. I don't know if my child has seen the messages but he did alert me to the fact the phone hadn't been wiped which makes me think he has.
I guess I'm wondering, I've been out of the scene for 15 years and am wondering if this is just normal these days? The messages I've seen weren't from the relationship but the frequency of them makes me think he must have been doing it in the relationship too, I just never ever thought that was something on the radar. I just thought he was a repressed, buttoned up, covert narcissist with a problem with intimacy (which obviously he is) but I didnt think that he would have the balls to even smile at a woman (often thought he was gay, never said it) let alone arrange to be jerked off and have a one-off "s-extra" for £20. I never even checked his phone, which I now realise would have probably shown me what he was doing. And I would then have left straightaway - well who knows - but presumably I would have although I was financially tied and being economically abused too. Though now I also know where his money went, he was constantly in debt, and still is, and has just tried to drag me through the courts trying to get money but thankfully failed. He never makes the CMS payments and owes me thousands, lives in a caravan and earns £80k+ in construction project management which is presumably how he gets away with doing it during the day, between site visits?
I feel sick at the thought of it, but is this a puritanical reaction, not that it matters whether it is or not, but I was just wondering. Is this a thing people do these days, I know swinging is big for people in their 40s/50s/60s but is using sex workers routinely also big in this age group - he's mid 50s? At times he's seeing 4 or 5 in one week, one three times. He even tried to arrange for one of them to become an "au pair" and look after the kids over the summer a few years back. Thank god she was already back in Croatia. I don't know, what do people think? In my mind its so wrong, and fits well into what I now know about his personality, the domestic abuse and coercion I experienced, he's a misogynist for sure, has a big problem with women, so it looks like exploitation to me - their English is broken in the messages, their charges are really low, they move addresses constantly, but that's not what my question is about. Its more a general interest, has anyone else discovered something like this about their exes?