To tell friend her new partner was a former client of mine?

[Frienddilem]

Name changed for obvious reasons.

I previously worked as an escort, something I started during Uni and continued part time until two years ago when I finally stopped.

One of my friends who I live a couple of hours from these days but still message regularly and meet up at least twice a year, has been seeing a new man. She sent me a photo of him in the early days and I thought nothing of it.

However, on further inspection after my friend shared some specific details, I have realised he is someone who met me on a few occasions in my line of work. 3 or so years ago.

He was perfectly pleasant and polite so no concerns in that respect. However, I feel like morally, I owe it to my friend to tell her? But also feel terrible that she is really happy and I would come along and potentially ruin it.

Thoughts welcome please? If it helps, my friend is fully aware about my former ‘job’.

YABU - not my place to say anything
YANBU - definitely tell her

Exactly! I think I may become an escort if it means getting paid £200 per hour to stuff my face and chug champagne 🍾 is 56 too old? I still have my own teeth and can hold a conversation 🙃

It’s not your place but it could lead to you losing your friendship if he recognises you and you’ve seen his photos and not said anything.

You must be a prostitute using man then. Nobody has a problem with the prostitutes themselves, many of whom are sex traficked and/or vulnerable drug users and/or poor and the vast majority of them are corerced in some way. The OP hasn't said whether she feel she was coerced/vulnerable or not, but yhe concept of the 'happy hooker' is largely a male fantasy to justify their amoral habits of paying for sex I'm afraid.

Don't protect random men, only random women!! What do you all think this is, equal humans in society . . . . . .

I don't think its about the rights or wrongs of prostitution but if she's your mate it would be weird to not tell her that you've met him in the past and have a history.

I really agree with this. If she’s a good friend, you’re gonna bump into him at some point anyway. So you don’t have to do it in a big confession sort of way but it is worth letting her know.
I know most people have completely overlooked the fact that you were more of a Domme than anything else at this point. That might make a difference for her, and other people. If he’s been paying to be dominated or pegged some people might find that a bit different to paying for PIV.

You said you didn’t recognise him in the earlier photos so I would continue to not recognise him. He was a client in a previous period of his life in the same way that was your “job” in a previous period of your life. Leave it there

Tricky. Would he know the name your friend uses for you?

I think telling your friend you know him but not the precise nature of your relationship is the way to go - you could be vague and say you know him from work / uni some years ago. If he knows you by a working name you can tell her he'd know you as xxx because of where you met. There's enough plausible deniability - he might have been working at a venue / there with a partner etc.

I don't think it's ethical to out him / his kinks (unless you think he's abusive) and I don't think it's ethical to deny knowing him to your friend.

Sometimes the world's just a bit too small.

Really you want to be able to have a conversation with him and not have it be an awkward surprise if/when you meet him as her partner.

Excuse me? I’m not a man, tyvm. I’m also grown enough to understand that not every single woman who gets into sex work gets into it out of coercion.

What an unhinged reply.

Laughing emoji! You should add to that list GSOH

So you think its ok to judge prostitutes rather than the punters? Okay then .....

I'll reserve my judgement for scumbags that think it's OK to pay to use a woman's body. Whether or not the odd woman is actually OK with that (or thinks they are, many realise years later the damage done) makes absolutely no difference to me.

People are judging you for double moral standards but I don't see why. You know something about her new partner that she would want to know about. It wouldn't be you making the moral judgement on him, it would just be you telling her a fact, and it's up to her if she decides to conclude something moral about it.

If she's a close enough friend, I'd tell her. Because it's the right thing to do for your friend, who you have reason to believe would want to know about it, and also because if they end up in a LTR and he meets you and joins the dots, she'll be very hurt with you if she hears about your prior acquaintance from him rather than you.

If it was any other field of work I'd be more inclined to take client confidentiality much more seriously. In the world of men paying for sexual services, fuck em.

Personally I also think it's fine to judge men who pay for prostitution much more harshly than women who offer prostititon anyway.

I think you should tell her.

How does the escort/client relationship bypass sexual consent? It doesn't, so I don't see why it's a bad comparison.

So if her ex client tells everybody that she previously worked as an escort, that would be fine? After all, it would just be a fact.

Nothing wrong with being a prostitute; but, as I said, escorts did not fuck their clients.

So your opinion is wrong.

If he’d been vile, then I would say something. But if he was “normal” I wouldn’t .

I tragically have experience if this. I was dating a great man we were head over heals about 3 or 4 months in we bumped into some girls I vaguely knew through my close friend S, an ex escort it was all very friendly but he was clearly uncomfortable. At home I apologised for the somewhat loud wild behavior and he said it really didn't matter. The next evening very late he got a drunken phone call from a girl whose voice I sort of recognized and it slowly became apparent that he been to escort parties with these girls and his brother (married with a child) had slept with S although he desperately tried to whitewash it. My friendship with S never recovered as a heads up from her would have saved me a lot of humiliation. I couldn't get past them all talking about me. I was so happy and thrilled with my new man and the sleazy use of escorts was a deal breaker though we both tried to get through it. He was devastated said it was a brief mistake yadda yadda. So yes please tell her she can make up her own mind if it's a deal breaker or not.

Escort is a polite term for prostitute both S and my ex made that crystal clear despite both trying to hide the fact with obfuscation and murky language.

So you didn’t have sex with him but did tie him up /whip etc

I don’t think you should tell your friend as that’s in the past. Like your job is

he may have liked that.

who finished it lee joys of. You or him

Can't believe some of the comments .

I think id say something op. Not least because he's probably still paying for sex somewhere, that wouldn't have stopped and its important your friend knows he's a man who does thing like that and it could put her at risk of diseases as well . Most women wouldn't date a man knowing he's paid for services in the past

It's a commonly accepted viewpoint these days that the buyer is purchasing sexual consent, and so it's no consent at all. As in, she would not be sleeping with him if he wasn't paying her, so it's not freely given, enthusiastic consent. And that's the only consent that counts as consent.

For the record, I'm somebody who judges men who view women's bodies and consent as something that can be sold as absolutely beyond contempt. I'm also somebody who feels that the vast majority of women in sex services are trafficked and/or otherwise coerced with something more sinister than money and options. I agree that "I thought she was a happy hooker" is no defence at all, and that men who are paying for sex are extremely unlikely to go to many lengths to ascertain the freedom of choice of the women he is buying - and how the ever loving fuck would he be able to tell anyway?

However.

The real world is not black and white. It's full of nuance and people are complicated. It's a bit ridiculous to deny that there are likely some women (and we will never know the percentages) who choose it from a place of free will. There have been several posters on here over the years who have claimed to be exactly that. I think it even goes as far as misogyny to assume that women who are telling you that they were exactly these things that you claim don't exist, must just be deluded and were really victims.

Not your place.
If you were still working and he was a client, then yes you should tell her.
But what he has previously done is none of your business.
How many of your clients were married/in relationships?
I suspect most.
Men don't pay for sex, they pay for discretion.

Ummm and would you say the same if he was a guy that OP had dated a few times? No I bet you would say to tell her. I’d want to know if the guy I was seeing had seen a friend of mine - paid or not!

OP ignore the morality police

So you are a prozzy, sorry were one.

no you shouldn’t mention it, leave them be

its strange but customer confidentiality springs to mind…