to dump my BF for going with a prostitute...

[snailfiddler]

... 24 years ago.

On a lads holiday to Amsterdam.

Lots of men go to prostitutes so they can do things to them that real women wouldnt put up with

Taken from Fortyplus link

Prostitutes are not real women?

I stand by what I said to the OP, but that has saddened and angered me beyond words.

Sorry, back again.

Interesting that the higher up the financial ladder these men are, the less likely they are to buy women. That suggests to me that they are still buying women but they are doing it in other ways, via paying the rent, expensive shopping trips etc. Those on a lower income cant afford to buy women so much so they have a lower percentage, but the middle income men (£20-50K) cant afford to have a "kept woman" squirreled away somewhere, so they use prostitutes the most.

I do wonder how many OW realise that they are prostitutes by any other name?

Not read all of the thread but I agree that you need to take time about this and decide if you can deal with this or not. Maybe try and find out a bit more first without leading him into what you want to hear (whether he thinks its acceptable, was pressured etc)
No judgement please ladies, I'm just trying to help.
My dp regularly used prostitutes before we got together. Once I found out, it was a MAJOR issue for about 6months - it would keep me awake at night, made me feel sick and I was very, very angry. We are two years in now and while I wouldn't say it was still an issue, it does still haunt me from time to time and all those old feeling come back.
I think what I am trying to say is, if you can accept it because he was young, maybe pressured into it etc and you know that you can overcome it and NOT hold it against him in the future, then fine.
But if you think that maybe it will keep niggling away at you and possibly break you up further down the line then maybe call it a day.
Thoughts are with you because I know how bloody horrible this is, and hope my input was useful

"When I was 18 I was pretty ignorant of the reality of prostitution so I assume that most of the blokes of my age were too."

Unless they didn't realise that prostitution meant buying a woman's body so you could fuck it, they knew enough.

I'm with Bupcakes. It's like finding out he has an embarrassing past as a racist.

You owe him nothing here.

All begs the question - is honesty the best policy after all?

'Lots of men go to prostitutes so they can do things to them that real women wouldnt put up with'

That is just one of the comments from men justifying why they used prostitutes and of course it's abhorrent.

However I stand by my earlier comment that OP's dp is expressing extreme remorse for what is apparently a one-off act that occurred when young and influenced by his peer group. He has now so clearly become a better, nicer person.

24 years to learn from his mistake. 24 years ago the world was a different place - sexist and racist remarks were commonly seen as acceptable in the workplace. We've all moved on.

Supposing he'd been convicted of drink driving 24 years ago but had since given up alcohol? An act that we would all despise but susequent action to address the fault. He can't 'undo' having sex with a prostitute, but he's so clearly very disturbed by it that I believe it doesn't make him a bad person. People didn't have the same awareness back then of the coercion/drug use/violence etc that we now know is often associated with prostitution.

It should be up to the op to judge whether or not she can live with this.

It's like finding out he has an embarrassing past as a racist.

yes it is. But honestly I still can't decide if, after 24 years, a person should still be punished for past mistakes.

Especially if the person knows it was wrong and a mistake.

"is honesty the best policy after all?"

Surely this man deserves a girlfriend who doesn't think buying other humans is OK when you're young?

It's not punishment though, is it?

It's just deciding not to consort with people who play fast and loose with consent.

To me its punishment.

Its saying 'i no longer want to be with you because of a mistake you made a quarter of a century ago'

buts ita up to the op. I can see both sides of the argument.

While I absolutely hate men who use prostitutes. I also think that people make mistakes. Good people make massive mistakes.

24 years ago... that's nearly my whole life time. How old was he at the time? I think that makes all the difference...

If my boyfriend told me this I'd be judging him on his current character. You can learn a HELL of a lot in 24 years. If it was in the last 5 years then I wouldn't even consider hearing him out, but 24 years... you need to discuss it seriously but I wouldn't be writing him off without sounding it out first.

AThing
That's why I commented on Pretty Woman as it would have been out around the same time. At 18 (in the late 1980's early 1990's) I think a lot of people would have bought into the "happy hooker" myth i.e. that prostitution is merely a lifestyle choice so going to a prostitute doesn't harm anyone. Pretty Woman grossed over $400m.

As a mature adult I see things very differently but I was trying to think back to how I thought as a young woman and given that my level of awareness was pretty low I assume that my male friends of the same age weren't any more clued up.

As for the racist comparative... A lot of my friends are heavily involved with anti fascists organisations, very politically motivated and liberal. Several of them have confessed they had a very brief stint with right wing racist organisations when they were very young. They were brainwashed as teenagers by the ring leaders who target them. They quickly realised that those beliefs were wrong and moved to the other extreme. I certainly don't blame them for that, but the older right wing leaders who target young teenagers because they can only recruit complete idiots or naive teenagers.

In the same way, young teenagers/naive young adults are targeted and under more peer pressure from the sex industry.

The thing is, I believe that he did think that it was a lifestyle choice, as portrayed in pretty woman. However, it hasn't sat comfortably with him, hence him keeping it a secret and begging me not to tell anyone etc. so I guess that deep down he knew that he was buying into a myth.

Things that I have done in the past, that I am ashamed of, I try to ignore/forget about and when they pop up I suppose I try to justify them in my own mind. I don't go out of my way to research exactly how terrible my acts were and I don't force myself to face up to the consequences. I try to forgive myself and get on with life.

I wouldn't pay too much attention to those on here definitely saying it would be a deal breaker, even after being with someone for years and breaking up a happy marriage or relationship. Easy to say all that behind a computer without actually having to do it. Depends on how strongly you feel about it and him. If he was very young and it was only once in the circumstances you described then I don't think it should define him forever especially if he feels bad about it now.

Sorry, it would be a no from me. I couldn't get rid of that from my head at all. Certainly after 8 months I wouldn't have enough relationship cement to make it worthwhile staying.

Give the guy a break and dump him. If you can hold a grudge about something that a person did 24 years ago when they were very young and under peer pressure and ignore all the bad things you did yourself in the past then he doesn't deserve the lifetime of misery that you will undoubtedly give him.

It's only punishment if your motivation is to punish, to cause some kind of suffering in retribution.

If you just don't want to date someone who paid to obtain a woman's consent, then that is about what you want in a partner.

If a woman chooses not to date a man with children, she is not punishing him for having children. She's just making choices about her own life.

It's a very male-centric view to see this in terms of punishment.

Good people do make mistakes.

But if a man I had previously thought was good told me he had raped a woman in the past, knowing he regretted it would not make it something I could overlook.

Some things put you into another bracket. And for me buying women is one of them.

Well for all their sakes splitting would be the best option. I am thinking the OP is looking for an excuse to dump him anyway.

And before anyone starts I would never excuse a rapist or anyone who had done that but consensual sex with a paid sex worker when very young once does not make it into the rapist category in my opinion. It makes it into the the 'was a teenage twat' category and people do grow up.

The "all women are prostitutes, at least the pros are honest about it" argument, bogey?

Really?

No, that some women may not realise that they are in fact being paid for sex, but under the guise of "love" or an affair. That the men who are providing for them think no more of them than they do a street walker, and that the problem is in the mens attitudes towards women, not the women themselves.

If you stopped for a moment and actually read it properly, you would realise that.

not all prositues are 'being used' ie slave workers or junkies. some are just ordinary women, housewives actually, doing it to earn some money, some actually enjoy it. i know this for a fact as my closes friend is one :)

24 years is a very long time ago. I would hate to be judged on the things I did or said ten years ago so I think YABU as long as he knows it was a bad decision and wouldn't do it again.

bogey - i don't agree, from what i know alot of very wealthy men use prostitutes

So if Pretty Woman made him buy women for sex what other 90s movies did he base his life and treatment of other humans around?