I asked a group of fellow sex workers a question recently: Is seeing a sex worker considered cheating?
Their answer was surprisingly consistent. Not really.
I wasn’t so sure about that, so I started asking some of the married men I know the same question. Their answers were more complicated. Most acknowledged that there was some moral gray area involved, but they also made something else very clear. They weren’t going to stop. At first, I thought they meant they weren’t going to stop seeing sex workers. After a few of these conversations, I realized that wasn’t what they meant at all. They weren’t going to stop stepping outside their marriages. That distinction changed the way I thought about the whole thing.
There are always explanations, and after doing this for as long as I have, I’ve learned that marriages are far too complicated for anyone standing outside of one to understand completely. Sometimes intimacy disappeared years ago. Sometimes there are medical issues. Sometimes two people have quietly reached an understanding that would make absolutely no sense to anyone else. Sometimes a man seems genuinely happy in his marriage. He loves his wife, loves his family and has absolutely no intention of leaving either one.
And somewhere in these conversations, I will often hear a version of, “I know I do this, but…”
Preaching to the choir.
I’m not exactly in a position to clutch my pearls.
What makes this subject particularly interesting to me is that I haven’t always been standing on this side of it. I was married. I was in a long-term relationship. I was cheated on. I know what betrayal feels like when you are the person who didn’t get to make the choice. Maybe that should have left me with a very black-and-white opinion about cheating. Instead, being on this side has made the subject much grayer.
I used to think the important question was simply whether someone stepped outside a marriage. Now I think there are other questions worth asking too. What was he looking for? What did he bring home with him? What did he put at risk? Was he trying to replace something in his life, or simply experience something that wasn’t available there?
I don’t know the answers for anyone else’s marriage, and I certainly don’t think it’s my job to decide them. What I do know is that there is a significant difference between having an affair and seeing a professional. Affairs can become relationships. Feelings develop. Expectations change. Wednesday afternoon isn’t enough anymore. Someone wants dinner. Then weekends. Then holidays. Someone gets jealous. Someone starts wondering whether a marriage that was never supposed to be part of the arrangement might actually end. What began between two people can suddenly spill into the lives of spouses, children, families and everyone else standing nearby.
A professional relationship is different because the boundaries are there from the beginning. I don’t want your marriage. I don’t want you to leave your wife. I don’t want Christmas morning or a drawer at your house. I’m not secretly hoping that if I’m charming enough you’ll eventually realize you’ve been married to the wrong woman all along. I have my own life, and I rather like it.
When someone spends time with me, my hope isn’t that he goes home questioning everything he has. Quite the opposite. I want him to leave happy. Relaxed. Wanted. Indulged. Maybe carrying a little more confidence than he arrived with. And then I want him to go live his life.
Perhaps that is what my fellow sex workers meant when they answered my original question so quickly. Maybe they weren’t really answering, “Is this technically cheating?” Maybe they were recognizing something I’ve only come to understand after seeing this from both sides. Not everything outside a marriage is an attempt to escape it. Sometimes people are looking for something separate from the life they already have, not something to replace it.
I don’t know where that falls on anyone else’s moral compass. I’ve learned enough to know that I don’t get to draw those lines for other people. What I can control is the place I occupy in someone’s life. I know exactly where I belong. And I have absolutely no desire to take someone else’s place.
🖤 Charlotte