Calling all prostitutes and former prostitutes on MN, as there seem to be a few around right now...

[Aitch]

I'm curious to know how it makes you feel to see threads on here from wives and girlfriends etc when they discover that their husbands etc have been visiting prostitutes? even if you are happy in your own jobs (and i hope to god you are somehow, because the alternative is intolerable), how does it feel to be confronted with the downside of your work on these pages?

(i think it goes without saying that the men are culpable in this scenario, but am looking for some insight into how your work squares with sisterhood etc).

SGB, the only people I can think of who simply have to have what they want, to the extent that you assert some people want sex, are junkies who want smack. What you're talking about is an addiction, not the behaviour of a reasonable, rational, dare I say normal person who can exert some self control, take the feelings and welfare of someone else into account, if not of his wife or partner, then of the woman who is prostituting herself.

UA's 'cups of tea' post was about what satisfies normal people, SGB. And if it doesn't exactly knock their socks off they are adult enough to realise that life is generally not all fireworks all the time. Most children have learned this by the time they get to the teen years, along with the idea of delayed gratification and the not unrelated idea that the world doesn't revolve around them and their wants and needs, and that the sun doesn't shine forth from their asses.

I agree with UA here: visiting a prostitute is not about the sex, it's about the demi-god experience.

SGB, a bit late in the day, after years of wondering what was wrong with (a) me and (b) my exH, I discovered his attraction to gay porn.

3 points:
I have seen the downside of differing libidos myself -- not different libidos actually, fact was we both liked men. Only he kept that fact from me because the suburban picket fence appearance was important enough to him to spend 17 years in a relationship he had basically no interest in.

Maybe not that different from what the punters are doing? Maybe the prostitutes are their real interest while wife and family are the beards?

I didn't go elsewhere because I thought we were in a relationship that could be improved if I tried harder (yes, sad sack I am.. I now know the sound of one hand clapping) and because we managed to have children together and I was thinking in terms of family unit and partnership, and not just of myself.

SGB what an extraordinary thing to say. I am almost speechless. But not quite.

I did not say men who want lots of sex are evil and should make do with cups of tea

You really can be so bloody patronising. You like to just take the piss don't you.

As for your second paragraph: "And the thing I still don't get (and which no one has offered any kind of explanation for) is why people with low libidos mind so much when their partners with higher libidos want to have sex elsewhere. If you don't want to do something with your partner why do you think they should be prohibited from doing it with someone else?"

I suggest you never post again (as you often do) on threads where wives are devastated because their husbands have had sexual affairs with other women/visited whores and then tell them when found out that they 'weren't getting sex at home' (age old trot-out line)

And if you do post, I shall be looking out for your sage words to her - that 'if he aint getting it with you missus, why should he be prohibited from fucking the OW/prostitute'

In my humble opinion Solid, you wouldn't understand it because you have never been married, you have never made marriage vows and you never will. You are quite happy to live alone - having had the child you presumably wanted but not within (in your view) the stupid, jurassic and sex-limiting confines of marriage.

So I am not at all surprised you don't 'get it'.

You clearly have the libido of a bitch permanently on heat.

You have no friggin idea

...and you make no mention of the 'I have found another bitch who let's me fuck her in the ass and swallows my cum' line.

Presumably the 'bitch' he dumped to move on to his next 'bitch' deserved to be so treated and talked to, as she clearly wasn't matching his huge libido. Perhaps she didn't like him fucking her in the ass or swallowing his cum?

In your book I guess he is just being very factual and honest and you can quite understand his need to find another prostitute more accommodating.

Mal is dead right, people's libidos do flucutate throughout their lives.

I've always wanted more sex than my DH. When he couldn't be bothered or wasn't in the mood, I was able to accept that without looking for a bit on the side or paying for it.

Now that I'm ill and going through some pretty gruelling treatment, I don't feel like sex at all. It's not just a physical thing, emotionally I need to get my head around my new body. I hope in time I'll be back to my old self and a healthy sex life will resume. I miss the intimacy of making love with my husband.

Luckily, it seems my DH loves me as a woman, as a human being, rather than as a mere receptacle for his cock. That's the basis of our relationship, of most healthy relationships. It's so much more than just fucking - to us both.

UA - your words are very powerful and your experiences have given you a unique insight into this ghastly world. What you are writing about is rarely in the public domain and your courage in standing up for women and 'love' is amazing!

I get real narked by this whole notion of 'if he's not getting it at home' or if you have differing libidos its OK to look elsewhere. In long term, loving relationships its all part of the ups and downs and the joy of the relationship is working it out - together.

I actually feel sorry for people who throw scorn on fidelity and on those who resort to sarcasm to get their point over.

UA is a treasure on this website as she articulates the real cost of being in a relationship with a total bastard. Her compassion for those touched by these issues is compelling to read.

Eaxctly bubbly - if I was going through breast cancer treatment or something equally nasty, DH would wait for as long as it took, whether it was months or years, for me to feel like sex again, he would never pressurise me and he would never seek sex elsewhere.
I would do likewise.

It's called being married and having respect for each other.

For a moment, I thought it was just me that thought sgb's words meant that if your husband had an affair/visited a prostitute it was all your fault because you didn't put out enough

Or I thought I had understood it wrongly

it seems I wasn't mistaken

OMG unlikelyamazonian - I cannot believe what you've been through.
What a disgusting, vile "man"
The fact that you can talk about it so candidly is inspirational

If someone refuses to have sex with their partner and refuses to discuss the issue and that partner then goes and has sex with someone else (whether or not it's paid for) then yes, it is the fault of the partner who made the unilateral, not-up-for-discussion decision that there was to be no more sex.
And (yet again) this is NOT necessarily a gendered thing, there are lots of threads on here from women who are bitterly miserable because their male partners will not have sex with them.

So, once again, if you don't want to have sex with your partner and are not prepared to make any effort to compromise, why do you feel you have the right to forbid your partner to have sex with anyone else? And if you (generic 'you') want to argue that a 'decent' partner would leave before having sex with other people, wouldn't a 'decent' person who has no libido be decent enough to let a partner who does have a libido, go?

sgb...are you seriously suggesting that every man who uses the service of a prostitute has a wife at home who totally refuses to have sex with him ?

I think that scenario is relatively uncommon...a completely sexless marriage

I am under the impression that most married men who use prostitutes do it as an "extra", because they can

If you are correct in your assumptions (and you do make a lot of assumptions about hetero-normative mundanity), there are an awful lot of celibate married women out there

And I don't believe that...

for that very small number of sexless marriages where one partner totally refuses, I agree with you

but the for the rest of us, there is no such excuse

It does come across as 'if you get married you sign over the autonomy of your body to your partner'

After all, if you don't consent to whatever, he has every right to get it elsewhere apparently

Personally 'submit or I will go to a prostitute' isn't v sexy to me, more coercive

CHibi: Yes, that's what people are saying - if you get married, you sign over the autonomy of your body to your partner and s/he now has the power to stop you having sex.

AF: No, I am not saying that every married man who has sex outside the marriage is totally deprived of sexual contact. Some are - and may reason that sex with a sex worker is less of a betrayal than sex with a colleague/friend/woman met through a dating agency. Some men have poor impulse control and are selfish and some are complete woman haters, sure. And some women are unreasonable and dishonest and selfish, too.

"But she's not taking part, is she? She's lying back and thinking of the money. Just like VIctorian women were forced to do with their husbands. This is 2010 FGS"

Is she not? why would you think that, many women go into prostitution because they have really high sex drives. Just because we are always "shown" an image of prostitutes being miserable and forced into a situation, doesn't mean that is the reality.

Ah now, that high libido reason to go into prostitution is just ridiculous. (And that thing about Victorian women is probably a myth too. Enjoyable sex wasn't invented in 1966.)

Even the most ardent chocolate lover would feel sick of the stuff if she had it for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

"If someone refuses to have sex with their partner and refuses to discuss the issue..."

What do you mean by refusing to discuss the issue? I'm not sure if you mean normal communication between two adults, or a refusal to be persuaded into having sex against your wishes?

If you mean the former, then I'd suggest that any breakdown in communication to that extent is a problem in itself. The lack of sex is surely a symptom of that, rather than the other way around?

If it's the latter, then

"And if you (generic 'you') want to argue that a 'decent' partner would leave before having sex with other people, wouldn't a 'decent' person who has no libido be decent enough to let a partner who does have a libido, go?"

If my DH told me he wanted to leave me because he wasn't happy with our sex life, then I'd pack his bags for him. I'm an all round good egg me.

The myth of the frigid Victorian wife feeds the madonna/whore problem though. How handy for men to have an actual madonna at home who wouldn't/couldn't/shouldn't have sex -- justifying the existence of so many prostitutes, the rape of servants, the casual prostitution of so many young single women, abandoned wives, widows when income or pension fell short.

Yes, women were basically chattel, and the risks of death due to complications of pregnancy and childbirth were very high, but basically the madonna/Victorian wife thing is another way of saying the men weren't getting it at home so they went to prostitutes.

How can we be sure that the frigid Victorian wife notion isn't the creation of someone or of a whole society with a raging madonna/whore complex? The prostitutes were also in danger of becoming pregnant, dying from disease or from complications of childbirth after all, and they knew it. How different were their lives and their psyches really from those of the 'respectable' women? Is is reasonable to assume women in general could possibly have been so completely different from each other?

Wiki (sorry) article here on the work of Clelia Mosher, an American doctor who studied women's sexuality among a small group of 47 women during the late Victorian era in the US. Quote from Wikipedia (again sorry, but from my own research this is fairly accurate) "It is the only known existing survey of Victorian women's sexual habits, and was initially controversial because of its frankness and the overwhelmingly sex-positive views of the participants, even including the use of "male sheaths" (now called condoms) and "rubber cap over the uterus" (either a diaphragm or cervical cap) birth control. {one woman reported using cocoa butter, but didn't reveal how} All this stands in high contrast to other existing historical literature of the time which holds that women have no sexual desires and sex should only be used for reproduction."

Actually, the big issue and the big problem is the way a lot of people view sex: as a commodity, when it should be viewed as a collaborative performance.
Have a look at this which is one reasonably short summing up of the theory.

I've been meaning to link to something on the performance/commodity viewpoint but have only just managed to dig out the piece I originally read (which was in an actual book, not online) and find the relevant terms to google...

I don't understand the ability of people to get worked up over what other people get up to in private.

If you like prostitution, visit one, become one, or don't. If you don't, don't.

It's that simple.

Venting your spleen against SGB belittles you and suggests (to me, at any rate) that you fear her attitude for all too obvious domestic reasons...