New York Magazine’s The Cut ran a series on cheating this week, not a subject that I’m generally drawn to read about in and of itself. But I do have an interest in the relationship dynamics of romantic partnerships, in the initial dating phase, of course (because I’m dating), but particularly in long-term partnerships.
(Lisa Ellex writes a column for us on long-term love called Extended Encounters, one of my favorite columns, and if you’re in a long-term partnership and would agree to be featured (anonymously, if you prefer) please write her at LisaEllex@gmail.com.)
Of course, sex is a part of the mix in understanding romantic relationships. For that reason, I read What My Clients Told Me About Their Wives, an excerpt from a book written by Charlotte Shane, a sex worker who writes about her professional experiences.
The Cut piece caught my attention because, as its title suggests, it is focused on her married clients and their relationships, rather than on her and/or her relationship with her client. Meaning, it has the possibility of giving insight on the primary romantic relationship her clients’ are in. I am curious about that: the reasons for marital infidelity, how that infidelity is “managed” by the couple (openly and directly, open but ignored, or as a secret), the client’s feelings about ”outsourcing” (so to speak) that element to a paid sex worker.
I didn’t find it incredibly illuminating, I’ll admit, but I’ll share some of the answers I found most interesting.
Why do husbands hire her? What does she say about whether the wives know? Shane has this to say:
“Bed death was the excuse offered by clients who felt obligated to explain why they were in a committed relationship and also naked with me, and to their credit it was normally presented with resignation but not accusation or enmity. ‘We don’t have sex anymore’ held both parties responsible — or neither, as if they were just adapting to a circumstantial change, like they’d sold their sailboat or their outdoor cat had gone missing. If there really had been years of little to no erotic intimacy, surely the wives could figure out how the husbands coped. Maybe the wives coped by using adultery, too.”
Do the husbands worry about their wives cheating on them?
Evidently not. Shane says this about her clients—evidently, always the husbands:
“I suspect their complacency came from knowing they had the money, and that their wives were unlikely to forfeit their lifestyles and incite the gossipy local scandal a divorce would cause. The husbands may also have assumed their wives were too busy with the kids.”
Does she [Shane] consider the wife at all?
She does, but not in a way that I expected.
“Whether or not a wife sounded likable, I knew I usually had more in common with her than with him. Any person can be cheated on at any time, though it feels like a uniquely humiliating and female position to be put in. But the clients, almost all of them, made a strong case for the impossibility of male fidelity. More than that, my identification with the wife was based on my assumption that she and I both hated having sex with him or listening to him bloviate, yet we relied on him for money.”
One of the reasons I know that “bed death” is something that some CRUSH Readers deal with—and thus, why this article from The Cut intrigued me—is that we ran a TOPIX written by CRUSH Reader Mike Johnson last year, My Marital Arrangement. It is Mike’s account of “bed death“ in his marriage, and in the piece he shared his very honest, revealing, painful account of how he and his wife have coped with it. Readers reacted with a range of thoughts, but among my own many strong feelings when I read it was sympathy, not a reaction I expected going in.
Read it here:
Dish Stanley
But I have to say, as a way to address ‘bed death,’ if that’s the primary reason men hire her, the line ”my identification with the wife was based on my assumption that she and I both hated having sex with him or listening to him bloviate, yet we relied on him for money” certainly makes that option sound unappealing.
The Crush Letter
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