Was I wrong for never telling my wife that I used to visit sex workers before we met?

[JibJab3030]

I (38M) have been married to my wife (36F) for six years, together for nine. Before I met her, I was single for a long time and honestly not that interested in relationships. During that period, I occasionally paid for sex. Not constantly, but enough that if I added it all up over the years, it would probably be a few dozen different sex workers.
Once I met my wife, all of that stopped completely. I’ve never cheated on her, never even came close. We have what I thought was a very honest and solid marriage.
The issue started recently when we were watching some TV show where a character mentioned hiring escorts, and I casually said something like, “Yeah, been there, done that.” She got quiet and started asking questions, and I answered honestly. When she realized it was more than “a few times” and had been an actual pattern in my past, she got extremely upset.
She says this is something I should absolutely have disclosed before marriage because it changes how she sees me and because sexual history matters in a relationship. She feels deceived and says I hid it from her for almost a decade.
My perspective is that everyone has a past. I never lied to her. She never once asked me if I’d ever paid for sex or asked for detailed numbers about previous partners. If she had asked directly, I would have told her. To me, this was private information about my life before we met, and since it had zero overlap with our relationship, I didn’t think it was relevant.
Now she’s barely speaking to me and says she doesn’t know who she married.
I feel I have done nothing wrong and that if this was a dealbreaker for her than it was on her to ask me if I had ever paid for sex before.
I want to know how the users of Mumsnet feel about this. Do you agree with me or with her?

You can’t buy consent. - exactly.

Supposing you were down in your uppers and badly needed money - perhaps to feed a drug habit. Would you feel OK about being a male prostitute, to have men doing what they wanted to you just to make a living? Would you feel this was real consent?

Women are not there to be bought to receive your spunk. They are individuals who deserve respect.

Generally there’s a view that SW are not capable of consenting to s*x because there are lots of situations where women are forced into it, but it’s also a slightly reductive and disempowering perspective. There are plenty of SW who do it out of choice, and who enjoy their work. Reducing every SW to a victim when they may not identify with that at all is in its own sense misogynistic (ie there’s no way a woman could consent to and choose to be involved in SW, as if that’s not their ability or right). Not every SW Is a victim. where they are choosing to be a SW, they CAN say no, change their mind, and leave at any point. A lot of commenters seem hugely naive and judgmental to SW.

However, routinely using SW without being hyper aware of the issues of consent and ensuring you’re only hiring SW who are 100% there by choice (not addiction, poverty or coercion), suggests a lack of respect and empathy for the women you’ve hired. It wouldn’t be a dealbreaker for me but I would think less of you for your apparent ignorance on the sensitivities of the subject.

@JibJab3030

You don’t believe it’s rape. Ask yourself if those women would have wanted to have sex with you if there was no money involved.

Agreed. Unless it’s a reverse. Why would a man actually come here to ask this question. You’d have to be living under a rock to think Mumsnet is the place to come for sympathy or support on this.

The payment changes the nature of consent. If the money disappeared, would the person still want sex with you? Probably not. Paying for sex turns a human being into a product.

Many people in prostitution are there because of poverty, trauma, coercion, or lack of choices — not because they truly want to be there.
If someone would not sleep with you without money involved, you are not buying intimacy or attraction. That is why prostitution is demeaning: it normalises the idea that people, usually women, can be bought.

I would be furious that you didn't tell me before so that I could make an informed decision before committing to a relationship with you. I would file for divorce immediately because you are disgusting!

Trolling or not. You are being deliberately inflammatory and you are minimising the fact that you raped a woman.

*women!!

Consent is the voluntary, enthusiastic, and conscious agreement to engage in an activity, such as sexual activity. It must be given freely by a person with the capacity to make that choice, without pressure, coercion, or manipulation. If you hadnt paid them they would they have had sex with you? Is consent freely given if its transactional? No you coerced them with money.Not only that you seem to think that womens bodies are products that can be bought and sold.

Yes, you are right.

1. I coerced no one. I understand people can be trafficked but I try my best to avoid those situations by going to licensed brothels. If someone there was trafficked that is not on me. Just like it is not on you that some people are exploited for labour trafficking if you unknowingly buy products they have made.
2. I have friends who were sex workers. None of them were forced into it and they actively chose it. I know this because we have talked about it. These are not people that I ever paid to sleep with, these are people I am friends with that I did not know had been sex workers until years after I met them.
3. I say good on Bonnie Blue and the men who slept with her, They all have the right to do what they want.

The only reason why any of those women said "yes" to you was because you were paying them. This is not freely-given consent.

When you asked your wife to marry her, were you buying your own personal prostitute for your exclusive use? Because I bet that's how she feels right now.

Your lack of understanding is on you. Many aspects of basic human decency are inexplicable to some people.

Stupidly perhaps, most women assume that the men they are dating have a higher view of women than just thinking they're bodies to be purchased for use for a quick fuck.

I do actually agree with you on this now, sadly. But really you shouldnt have to. All this sex work BS has somewhat normalised prostitution for some men of your generation - but you've been lied to, by Pornhub and the media. Prostitutes may find it easier on their self esteem to call themselves sex workers but everyone else thinks of them as prostitutes, and pities them.

Let me ask you this. If you and her had gone on to have a baby together, a precious little baby girl that you then dedciated 18y of your life to nurturing and protecting, would you have been happy for her to then be forced (or even choose, if any actually do choose it wothout underlting issues) to earn money as a prostitute?

Having to let strange men, often gross, smelly, inadequate men, at best, and violent degenerates at worse, stick their penises in her and quite possibly other humiliating acts? I doubt there is any father that would say yes I'd be fine with that. But its ok when its someone else's daughter (or son)?

Are you starting to see her point of view yet?

“Several dozen”, so possibly about 50 women.

How am I being inflammatory?
I am telling you how I think.

The fact that you could enjoy getting your rocks off when you could be pretty sure the woman you were using were enduring rather than enjoying it in order to get the money - you can’t see how that information changes your wife’s view of what sort of person you are?

If you’re real, then can I suggest to hop on over to Reddit where you can plead your case to an echo chamber to your hearts content.

Coming onto a predominantly female site to try and convince us all that using dozens of prostitutes is ok because it’s not like you were cheating is not going to work on us any more than it is your wife.

Yikes. You’re about to find out that divorce lawyers are very expensive. I couldn’t get over this if I was your wife.

You created an imbalance of power. Anything other than an enthusiastic yes with no strings attached and both on an equal footing is actually a no. Even if that person on the face of it seems to say yes. In the same way that a drunk/drugged person cannot consent.

There are no licenced brothels in the UK. Most German brothel "workers" are trafficked, often from Romania.

How much would you charge to bend over and take it up the arse? Or is it only OK when it's women doing it?

Are you joking? How do you know that every woman you paid to have sex with was there by free will and not trafficked? Even if she wasn’t trafficked, how sure are you that she had no other means to make money and was only doing it because she was desperate or because she was a drug addict?

Because you are pretending not to know that it is rape and are justifying it with some outrageous statements.

There is no world in which you are stupid enough to think it wasn’t rape.

I would be so repulsed and probably never able to get over it if I found that out about by husband. Men who pay for sex are pathetic at best, or, arguably, just straight up rapists

You buy women like you'd buy an animal or an object.

Anyone who can bring themselves to do that thinks women are less than human.

You are morally repugnant, at the very least.