How many of the men in your life have used prostitutes, compared with how many who haven't? I'd like to ask for help or perspectives on this?

[aliasforthis2]

I'm a semi-regular poster but obviously have name-changed for this.

I feel sad and like I've seen things I cannot un-see.

So if you can be reasonably sure that your husband or partner or ex or other male in your life has NOT used prostitutes post please post here.

Likewise if any males in your life HAVE used prostitutes please post here too.

And also if they gave reasons for either doing it or not doing it or given their views on the sex industry please post them.

Hopefully it will give me a more balanced perspective than my current "all men are johns who did these things" and help my recovery.

I worked as a prostitute for 4 years and stopped/exited nearly 18 months ago. The reason I started working as a prostitute was because it was sold to me as a glamourous and easy way to make money. At the time I had many debts and was working minimum wage and living totally hand-to-mouth with no room for manouvere,if an unexpected financial burden hit like a bank charge, we would be screwed having to choose between food and electric. A friend worked for an agency and I'd seen Belle du Jour and naively thought it would be like that.

Anyway, I am now out as I just couldn't handle it anymore. A very small percentage of the men were ok but the vast majority did things like -
-try to take the condoms off
-have poor hygiene and refuse to shower first worried it would take up their 'time'
-try to get service for less money or even steal back the money
-try to force services i did not offer like anal
-be unashamed about the fact they were partnered or had a wife at home
-speak to me disrespectfully and patronising, saying things like "I want to get the most for my money" etc
-scrutinize my body and give me advice on how to look better or compare me either positively or negatively to other ladies
-try to take up mush more time than paid for deliberately
-sometimes maybe once a month i was assaulted leaving bruises or spat on or held in a house
-a lot of phone or text harrassment
-most wanted young women the younger the better ie 18-20. i'm serious when i say that this is what most men wanted - young and naive. I answered the phone for the agency sometimes and i'd say three quarters of the men specifically requested 'young' ie 18-21 , 25 at a push.Which I think is disgusting given most are in their 40s wanting as close to 18 as they can.

Obviously not every man did ALL of the above but I'd be hard pressed to find a man who did not try at least one of those things. I don't know any other way to describe it.

I have been single for a while, I had a relationship with a genuinely lovely man I met at my new work for a while (no red flags) but it ended as he became a complete workaholic when starting a company and we drifted apart and split 6 months ago.

Anyway the point of this thread is for me to get a more balanced perspective on men. I had counselling on the NHS for 12 weeks which was helping but they wouldn't fund any more. I have been told by sympathetic friends who are also ex prostitutes (not told anyone in 'real life') to remind myself that it's only a v.small percentage of men who use prostitutes/escorts. But I just cannot see it like that. Every man I see walking down the street I view as a potential customer of prostitutes and treated a person how the customers treated me. I feel like punching them sometimes for no reason. Every married man I know I wonder if they have went to a prostitute with their wedding ring happily on moaning about their wife. I find myself wondering if I will ever have a relationship with trust again. I don't live in a particularly big place or a travelling business place but the sheer hoardes of men calling the agency every day and booking was unbelievable. And more than half would have unsuspecting wives or gfs.

I feel sad and like I've seen things I cannot un-see.

So if you can be reasonably sure that your husband or partner or ex or other male in your life has NOT used prostitutes post please post here.

Likewise if any males in your life HAVE used prostitutes please post here too.

And also if they gave reasons for either doing it or not doing it or given their views on the sex industry please post them.

Hopefully it will give me a more balanced perspective than my current "all men are johns who did these things" and help my recovery.

Thanks x

OP - you sound articulate, strong and resourceful and you will survive this. You've had a shit time, but you found the strength to remove yourself - congratulate yourself for that! Seeing the worst of men, as you have done, is bound to be damaging, how on earth could it be otherwise? Give yourself time to live and permission to move on, and learn to love yourself again. As you've seen from this thread, there's loads of decent blokes in the world, but don't focus your recovery on men - this is about you, and you'll get there, I promise you. You've done the hard bit (and well done for that!), now just enjoy making a new life away from it. You deserve every happiness.

As an aside, kerry - your posts on this thread are despicable, and I can't really understand why you posted. If you're at all interested, it's fairly widely accepted that the men who visit prostitutes do so because of the 'power of paying', and a mysoginistic view of women as a commodity, not because they're too ugly, or 'not getting it at home'.

Sigh. Moonferret. You said, "reduce my respect for women even more than it already is " which to me (and I could be wrong, had a or five ) implies that your respect for women is already lowered and I was merely wondering what your reasons for that would be.

The Poppy and Scarlet projects were set up, along with others, by a London-based charity called Eaves which I have supported for some years.

Any research into numbers of males who use the services of prostitutes or numbers of women who have accepted payment in cash or in kind for sexual services has to be viewed in the light of whether or not answers given to any surveys etc are truthful. IMO any study which shows that 1 out of 10 men have been 'johns' errs on the low side.

I have met/known hundreds of men through work and play; I can think of maybe 6-8 that I believe have never, and would never, use the services of prostitutes including my dp and one of my dbs. As for the remainder, I keep a realistically open mind.

Unfortunately, Pretty Woman and Belle du Jour have glamourised an industry that treats girls/women and boys/men like meat and which relies on a continuous supply of fresh product. To this end, female prostitutes and male 'rent boys' are a commodity; used like tissues and discarded when they have outlived their usefulness.

However, there are many instances where the services of prostitutes are invaluable; for the disabled/housebound and for those who, for varying and sometimes complex reasons, may not be able to form long-term sexual relationships with the opposite or same sex.

I would support any legislation that seeks to legalise prostitution and ensures that those who offer their personal sexual services for money receive the same protection in law against sexual assault and violence as any other citizen.

You've said I feel sad and like I've seen things I cannot un-see. This is a symptom of post traumatic stress disorder and it can afflict anyone who finds it difficult to reconcile what they have seen of the darker side of human nature with the universally held belief that the majority of people are intrinsically good.

The only way I have found of dealing with some of the more harrowing encounters I've had with that darker side has been to compartmentalise them and, effectively, keep them segregated because talking therapy can help us rationalise and, to some extent come to terms with our (sometimes unsought and unwanted) knowledge, but it cannot erase the mental images that play unbidden on the technicolour screens of our minds.

Until I adopted this strategy, I found myself constantly looking at strangers and thinking 'are you one?'. I've now reached a stage where I can look and be relatively comfortable with the fact that, in the ordinary course of events, I'll never know.

I have recommended EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) to other OPs on this board; go to youtube, search Brad Yates and you'll find various of his videos. Choose a topic that appeals to you and simply repeat his words while copying his actions - the more you 'tap' the easier you should find it to release negative thoughts about the past and present.

I hope you can find the peace you crave and that you will again experience the love of a truly good man in due course.

Moonferret, I'm with CheerfulYank here, your 4th point said "it would reduce my respect for women even more then it already is" - why do you have such low respect for women?

From comments moonferret made on another post after I'd expressed the view that I expect my dps to have a credit rating that is as good as or exceeds my own, Cheerful it seems that they have an issue with women they perceive to be 'gold diggers'.

Make of that what you will but, personally, I'd rather go prospecting in the Yukon than be financially dependent on a man

Prospecting in the Yukon is actually quite good fun :o
(as long as you're not doing it to pay the mortgage).

O dear, I sincerely hope it's not a Freudian slip but 'my dp and one of my dbs' should read 'my df and one of my dbs'.

Oops :)

Happily I'm mortgage free Jacks, so any nuggets won't need to be donated to the bank.

D'ya reckon there's any gold left in them thar hills? Maybe enough to pay extortionate UK fuel bills and council tax?

You lucky duck :). Wish I was.

Anyway, I doubt there's really too much shiny stuff still lying around there, we did it for fun on holiday, each found two little nuggets, not even enough for a fancy lunch :o so you might want to hold off on booking a flight!

About 25% of the men I know have used prostitutes at sometime in their life.
Some of them didn't think through what they were doing. With some it was peer pressure. With others they thought it was going to be Belle de Jour and it wasn't. A few others use prostitutes fairly regularly and enjoy the transactional basis of the arrangement.

I am still beyond shocked but this is an honest answer

Wow, you found gold in Yukon? Did you fly from Calgary?

2 nuggets? Enough for a pair of earrings or cufflinks - or a tip for the waiting staff?

I live near Vancouver so we flew from there. And tge nuggets were wee. 3 mm across. They're gathering dust in my earring box :o

OP - I apologize for the trivial hijack, just realized this is way off topic and cluttering up your thread. Sorry.

Would still like clarification from Moonferret about lack of respect for women though.

I'm not going to make a long point about this CheerfulYank or Jacksmania as this isn't the theme of the thread. There are many things, but as has been indicated, the gold-digging tendencies of many (but certainly not all) women seriously reduces my respect for them. This is the main point, although there are many others. If I have any respect for the users of prostitutes at all, it's when they say that paying directly (ie, using a prostitute) is a more "honest" way of having sex than by pandering to a gold-digger. There can be no disputing that they have a very valid point.

Oh, ok. That clears that up then.

No problem...

If you 'have any respect for the users of prostitutes at all' moonferret, you presumably hold the same degree of respect for the sex workers who make their services available for 'a more "honest" way of having sex than by pandering to a gold-digger'.

Adding my apologies for this derailment to Jacks, OP. These early a.m diversions are not unusual and I have no doubt that your post will be back on track in a few hours' time.

My late H used prostitutes; he was an abusive angry man who objectified and used women to gratify himself.

My DP has never and would never use prostitutes; hes a caring considerate man who could never use a woman.

I can see that this might all go tits up for moonferret now. In case you are tempted to hammer him for his comment, can I just say that he has been honest and decent and clearly does not use women, or expect to be used himself. He says his sex-life is inadequate, so he is obviously feeling cheesed off at the lack of fulfilling relationships in his life lately, or possibly ever.

If you would not flame a woman for saying she has had a crap time with so many men who always end up letting her down and as a result her respect for/confidence in men is diminishing, then please think twice before you flame moonferret for feeling the same.

I have never visited a prostitute, nor would I.

None of my group of closest male friends have.

Except one, after his wife left him, for her lover. He visited one (once I believe) when he was very lonely, and he now regrets it.

I'm sure my two exes and my current never used prostitutes. My ex used a lot if porn, was sex obsessed and had a very strange opinion on women and their role in "satisfying" men. I'm fairly sure my dp doesn't.

Regardless of whether they've been honest or dishonest, I've got no intention of flaming moonferret or kerrymumbles for that matter.

The subject of prostitution tends to evoke paticularly strong views from those who either condemn or condone it.

Often, these strong views are formed without the holder having met any working women/rent boys, or having had any experience of the sex industry other than what they've gleaned from the media.

As the 'oldest profession' is predominately staffed by females, it's perhaps unsurprising that it generally receives a bad press while its predominately male clientele escapes scrutiny.

IMO prostitutes of both sexes provide a valuable service to society, and have done so since time immemorial.

Two out of my four long term relationships have admitted to me that they have used prostitutes in Amsterdam (in their youth, before they met me).

One was a cheating bastard, the other was pretty lovely.

I don't judge men who use prostitutes or the women who sell their services. Unless that man happens to be in a relationship already or if the person he is using has been exploited in some way.