I used to be an escort, how can I tell my boyfriend this? I'm not escorting anymore.

It’s been very very hard keeping this from him. I’ve felt like I’ve been living a double life for such a long time. I kept this a secret from family and friends. I don’t want to lie or hide anymore. I want him to know the real me, and everything I’ve been through.

When I was doing it I never got to the point of questioning whether it would ruin future relationships. I’m now getting to that point and realizing what my past actions have caused. I’m very scared to lose him.

Not giving you a hard time, just want to understand the following:

1) Have you had a gynecological exam? Are you sexually healthy, or you have told him what illnesses you may have?

2) Why do you want to tell him?

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought – I have all my tests done, I’m clean. I used to get checked every 2 weeks when I was escorting.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought – He deserves to know the truth. I want a future with him. I love him very much. I don’t want to feel like I’m hiding anything anymore. I want him to know ALL of me. I don’t want it to be a skeleton in my closet. I’ve never told anyone this before.

If you did this before you met him I don’t really think you’re obligated to tell him. We all have skeletons in our closet. If you feel you must tell him, I would just be prepared for the worst. Most guys will have a difficult time dealing with this no matter how open-minded they are. Hope it works out for you.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought – I’m really scared to tell him, but I want to.

@tko7800 – Thank you, I hope it works out too.

There’s nothing wrong with sex work. It’s labour freely performed for money freely given, which makes it more honest than ¾ths of the alleged “work” currently being done in office buildings around the world. I wouldn’t make a big production of it. Just mention it in an “oh, by the way” aside at some point. If he freaks out, he’s an asshole and you should be glad you found out sooner rather than later.

My parents don’t know. My sisters never knew. Not even my closest friends. I don’t want him to not know about this. I selfishly want to keep him forever, but I know this could break the relationship completely. I’m really deciding how and if I should tell me about what I used to do.

I wasn’t in your shoes, so I’m not going to judge you at all. I need to think on this long and hard before I could offer any thoughts.

If he is the one for you, he will understand. You should be able to be 100% honest and up front with him. If he doesn’t accept your honesty, he doesn’t deserve you. (just one man’s opinion).

If you don’t tell him, chances are it will come out when you least expect it and will be worse because you hid it. If he is a decent person, he deserves to know the truth. The same goes for you with him.

@SmashTheState – Ok. If your girlfriend told you she used to prostitute you wouldn’t be freaked out at all?

I don’t want to lose him though. I’m scared too. I’ve felt like I finally met someone who was everything I could ever want in a person and man.

What if you walk down the street and you meet an old “customer”? How would you handle this situation?

You should have told your now boyfried this information a long time ago. He will take this one of two ways: he will laugh at it and carry one OR he will resent you not telling him, at all.

The girl up the street from me, also quit escoting. She has been married twice and divorced after the truth came out and she had numerous date with guys she has confessed this to. You are in a no win situation.
Be prepared for whatever he may tell you. And, remember, you have no one to blame, but yourself.

@SmashTheState :: The odds of me getting a STD don’t go up when I fuck a banker.

Okay, I am glad you are healthy and safe.

I think you are telling him to make yourself feel better. You are ashamed and want him to tell you it is ok. He might not, it might make him crazy. But if it is important for you to get it off your chest, I think @SmashTheState has a point. Don’t make a big deal of it. Tell him you did it, you regret it now, and you want to pretend now it never happened.

@john65pennington Easy John, this is a scared kid.

@needadvice I’m asexual, so I can’t answer that except hypothetically. But no, I wouldn’t care. I have, amongst my circle of friends and acquaintances, drug dealers, armed robbers, sex workers ex- and current, panhandlers, scam artists, freaks, fetishists of every imaginable flavour, and people who would probably qualify as “domestic terrorists.” I judge people on their merits as a person, not by what they’re sometimes forced to do in this shitty, mean, oppressive world to scrape by.

Yes, it’s scary to tell but if you simply have to tell, just do it because his response will let you know whether he’s worth keeping.

@john65pennington – My customers were out of the state and far away in another city. I’m not saying we could not run into them ever, it is possible. But it’s not a situation were me and my old costumer would say “Hello” or “Do I know you from somewhere?”. Since some of my old customers had families of there own. I’m not worried about my damn past customers. I care about my boyfriend.

You’re right I don’t have anyone to blame but myself. I did not tell him sooner because we were still getting to know each other, and I didn’t want that to cut the relationship off so soon.

What will be gained by telling him? Are you afraid that he will eventually run into one of your clients and learn about it on his own?

@johnpowell The sex workers I know are very careful and get tested on a regular basis. Your hypothetical asshole banker is no more likely to tell a potential sex partner about any STDs he may have than he is to show mercy over a missed loan payment or a defaulted mortgage.

@john65pennington In the unlikely event she comes across one of her former clients, I’m sure the client will be even more embarrassed then she would be and would steer clear. I know that’s what I would do.

Just wanted to add that I personally wouldn’t leave someone I really loved if they told me they were once a prostitute. We all do things we regret in life and quite frankly there are things way worse on my list than being a former prostitute.

@CaptainHarley – I don’t want to leave any skeletons in the closet. It was a part of my past life. I want him to know all of me. For the longest time it’s been in my head on how I could possible let him know.

I think I’d gain peace of mind by telling him. He deserves to know. I don’t want to keep something that big of a secret from him. I want a long life with him. Just saying it would be hard.

I even asked one of my friends (who is in this business) and she told me to not even bother telling him because it was just a job. I do want to tell him and move forward from it.

You’re clean – no diseases? No drug habits? No spending habit?
If yes to all 3, I’d skip it and get on with life.
I’d carry that burden alone.

Adirondack….....................I realize she is scared and rightly so. If she was old enough to prostitute, she is old enough to understand my answer. My intent is not to scare her or anyone, but the truth is the truth and it is what it is. My neighbor is still unmarried and she is 42 years old. Believe me, the word gets out sooner or later. I would explain your past life to him and be prepared for the outcome from him. If he is a good person, as you say, he knows he will have a tough time explaining you to his family. They will find out the truth. This happened to my neighbor.

@LuckyGuy – I’m clean in all those departments. Never had a drug or drinking problem in my life.

@john65pennington – I don’t think he would tell his family about what I used to do, he’s not big on gossiping.

Needadvice, sometime, somewhere, someone will recognize you and then your life will be hell. Pardon the wording. My neighbor faced this same situation, after being married for two years. A jon recognized here and asked for a “good time”, in front of her husband. There was almost a homocide because of this.

Everyone has pieces of themselves they are scared to share. Three months isn’t that long, but I personally think you should tell him now. It will seem deceptive the more time that goes by.
The more time you invest in the relationship, the harder it will be on you if he reacts negatively.

Dear John(65pennington),

Not the perversities of others, not their sins of commission or
omission, but his own misdeeds and negligences should a sage take
notice of.

Like a beautiful flower, full of colour, but without scent, are
the fine but fruitless words of him who does not act accordingly.

But, like a beautiful flower, full of colour and full of scent,
are the fine and fruitful words of him who acts accordingly.

— the Gautama Buddha

Tell him as soon as you can, before more time passes. If he’s the right guy for you then he will either not have a problem with this or he’ll at least take his time digesting the information and then level with you about how serious he is for your relationship. If you are serious about him then he deserves to find out from you instead of someone else. Someone is bound to tell.

What do you do for a living now? (I need to know this before I can give you an honest answer)

@judochop – I’m in school for Nursing.

I’m in my first year of nursing school.

@john65pennington – I understand your concern, but my clients that I saw were never that rude or outspoken despite what you think. They were professional businessmen. None of them would ever go up to a person and say that. Or be that bold especially in public.

@Neizvestnaya That sounds like good advice thanks.

@john65pennington we are not discussing a crack whore from the streets. I know you used to be a cop and perhaps you are making an assumption that you very well know what you are talking about but brother….I know three ladies that work in the higher end of things. All three own their own homes, cars and take regular vacations while working a fraction of the time any of us do. I say, if you are safe go for it. It is a profession and apparently, a much needed one because there is NEVER a shortage of men that are looking to spend thousands of dollars just to be held or accompanied. But then again, I could be wrong.

@needadvice if you feel the need to discuss it because of a guilty blanket then I would do it as soon as possible. Of course your choice for work in the past is going to effect your future to some degree but if you’ve changed who you are and are aiming things differently then so be it. Good luck, hopefully he is able to understand things clearly. I would tell him in a somewhat public setting. You guys have only been dating for 3 months, that is not a very long time. You can’t blame him for feeling a little upset or a little pushed back about things if you choose to tell him.

I’m thinking I would tell him I love him very much, but I have something I needed to tell him and that I would understand however he wanted to react. And then be honest.

@judochop I definitely won’t blame him, I love him enough to give him all the time he needs. Thanks for the advice.

How about this: if he proposes, or if you get to the point where you two are discussing marriage, or moving in together, or some other form of committed relationship, then you tell him.

Telling him is a gamble. If you win, you discover that he accepts you 100% as you are, without reservation. That is rare—many people live their whole lives and only get that kind of acceptance from their mothers. If you lose, you lose the man you love. A good man is hard to find these days, even for women without your history.

Not telling him is a gamble. If you win, you carry this secret to your grave. It’s a burden, but many women have borne heavier burdens than this through the ages. If you lose, he finds out somehow from somebody else—and then what?

You are a gambler and a lover. To the gambler, I say, assess the odds before you bet. If you are are confident that he will accept you, tell him. If you don’t have any idea how he will react, then you don’t know him well enough to have this conversation. Wait a bit longer until he reveals his character a bit more. But you’ll never be 100% sure. To the lover, I say, think of your beloved. What does he lose if he loses you?

I’m thinking you should tell. You said you’re learning that you now regret past decisions – the kinds of decisions that people tend to caution you against. I’m thinking that building a relationship on a lie is likely to be another one.

Putting myself in his place, it might cause me some dark thoughts. I might even be unable to stay with you. But don’t you want to be known as you really are? Seems like being honest is a necessary risk.

I’l preface this with saying I know guys that wouldn’t take this well at all and in their cases, well, I’d have to know you personally before I’d feel comfortable in giving you advice. But since I don’t him or you, all I have to go on is how I believe I’d handle it from his perspective.

Just be honest. I never liked hearing the phrase “we need to talk” it’s usually followed by a conversation I’d rather not have, but it’s always one that’s been necessary.

If it was me, I’d want you to pick a time where you know we’ll both have time to process either together or apart, not a time that’s under unusual external pressures. I don’t need that kind of thing on my mind the day before 40 family members descend on us for Christmas.

Don’t judge his reaction accept it and be supportive of it, be honest in your emotions and why you’re telling him now. Most of all don’t make it a partial truth, for me this is the kind of thing that’s all or nothing. Also, be ready for some questions you might not want me to ask and know that I’ll expect immediate and straight answers.

Again, I don’t know him, but I know if you told me I’d be glad you were honest and straight forward about it and love and respect you even more for trusting me enough to take the risk and tell me.

Finally, a lie come back to eat away at you in ways you didn’t realize. They are a weight that also tends to build with time. The truth is a risk, but a calculated one. Love and relationships are based on trust and part of building it. If he can’t accept you for you, past and all, better to find out now. Hopefully he’ll realize that your love is genuine and your past is just that.

needadvice Being that you are already feeling uncomfortable about not being honest with him I think you know that keeping this secret would come between you. While I don’t think, as some people do, that you need to confess every little thing from your past to have true intimacy I think that this is something in your past that you are ashamed of or at the very least embarrassed about and that is why he needs to know more than anything. You cannot move beyond this if he cannot accept it. You will always be wondering what if he knew the “real” me? Would he still love me? You need to know. .

It is just as important for you to understand what you feel about it as it is to find out what he feels about it. You need to be prepared to deal with whatever his reaction is. I understand your not wanting to endanger this new and very special relationship. I understand how you probably want to start with a clean slate. You have to ask yourself if you are willing to keep this secret for the unforeseeable future. It will not get easier to confess it, only harder. We want to be known and loved for who we are. This is your past, but it is still part of what makes you what you are. We all make mistakes. We learn from our mistakes and move on. Let him know how much he means to you. Tell him that you don’t want this to come between you. If he is the right person for you, he will understand. If he does not understand then you are better off knowing sooner than later.

If I am understanding you properly, you have already decided that you want to tell him, and you are hoping for support that that is the right decision. I think that @Earthgirl has given you everything you need to understand that it is the right decision, and that it could have undesired consequences—something you already know.

I would like to echo what @Earthgirl said. If you are going to have a truly intimate relationship, then you have secrets about things that are really important to you. Your boyfriend will never really know you if you don’t tell him this story, and clearly it is a very important story for you to tell. It is something that means a lot to you and you have probably learned a lot from.

The question, in my mind, is not whether to tell the story, but how to tell it. I once decided that I had to tell my wife the truth about what was going on in my life because I was fucking miserable. Actually, it was even worse than that, but I didn’t know how badly off I was at the time. I just knew that I was miserable and I felt like we weren’t living in the same universe and I had grown desperately lonely.

I did what many people probably do, and we all get judged harshly for it. I fell in love with someone who wasn’t my wife. Actually, several someones. Now I met these women on the internet and so there were never any physical meetings with any, save one.

The one I thought I was truly in love with, however, was not the one I met in the real world. She was, I think, crazy in many of the same ways I was crazy and we were both desperate. She no longer felt loved by her husband and I no longer felt loved by my wife, and I think that, after we broke up, we kind of grew to truly care about each other. It taught me a lot.

But I was scared about what I was doing. I felt so desperate and I didn’t really think I recognized myself.

I ran over and over the story in my mind and one night, after the lights were out, I started telling it. I did not start out by saying, “I’m in love with someone else,” or “I’ve been cheating on you.” Those aren’t stories. They are interpretations. What I think you need to do is to tell a story without interpretations and let him try to figure out how it makes sense on his own.

Somehow, you ended up as an escort. No doubt, one thing led to another. We all know that. The devil is in the details.

I was just explaining to my kids about Joseph Campbell’s idea of the Hero’s Journey. In short, the hero is kicked out of home for one reason or another, goes on a journey, meets countless tribulations, overcomes them, and then finally returns home, bringing a boon he has won on the journey. The boon can be something physical (gold) or intangible (wisdom).

Your story (as all stories) fits right into the formula. For whatever reason (and you should spend a good amount of time describing this), you ended up in a situation where you needed to figure out how to keep your head above water. Most likely you were kicked out of the house and had no money, but you also could have gotten into it via a different route. It doesn’t really matter what the route is. It does matter that you tell this part of the story very carefully, because this is where you earn forgiveness (and of course, it is forgiveness that you want from him).

How did you get into being an escort? Now what happened before that? And before that? That’s where you start. Before the part before the part where you got into the profession. Hopefully that part will have a lot to say about your relationship with your family of origin and the struggles you were facing that ended up with you doing that work.

If you tell it right, he will see where you are going long before you get there. It will be inevitable. We all know how the hero must fall. How they must be cut down to their knees and perhaps even face death before they can start their way back up.

Once you see in his eyes that he knows what is coming, then you can start talking about it. But no apologies. Not ever. This is you, and it is a part of your that you are proud of having overcome. You would not be the person he loves without this experience. If it works out right, he’s going to tell you he knew before you even said anything.

I’m going to jump ahead to the end now, because this is the other crucial point. It’s what I just said: you would not be who you are (and you would not be the person he loves) without that experience. You have won something in this journey. I don’t know what it is, but you do. You have probably earned some wisdom that few of us will know (and would make you a good jelly should you decide to stay and if you can put up with the suspicion some people will have of you because they don’t believe your story). This lesson you have learned—about how you got into the business and what it took to get out of it and to put yourself in a place where you could have this love—is what he needs to understand and believe in.

He has to find out that he could not have loved you without your past. That it gives you something that other women don’t have—something only he is uniquely positioned to appreciate.

That’s how the story goes. If you tell it right, there will be no question about your relationship. It will open up new avenues of communication between you. You may cry together. You may ask forgiveness and say you wish you told him sooner, and he may say there is nothing to forgive and he is astonished you trusted him enough to tell him so soon.

My wife forgave me in the end. Not right away, but after a long time and a lot of work. But forgiveness actually turned out not to be the biggest thing. It turned out that she saved my life. She listened to my story and she realized that I was not right. I was not her husband. She took me to psychiatrist and I was diagnosed as bipolar.

I know what I know because of my confession. Yours will, I hope, turn out the way you want it to, but you have to trust that even if it doesn’t turn out that way, you have to go through this in order to learn how to open with the guy you eventually end up being with. Whatever happens, this experience will be good for you—maybe not in the way you thought it would be or you wanted it to be, but it will be good.

@wundayatta – Reading your response make me cry. Thank you for writing that. It’s what I needed to hear. Thank you for everyone else too. Even the people that were skeptical about me coming on here as a newbie asking this question. I still have tears in my eyes and I know telling him is the right thing to do. I know this is the right step in order to move on with my life and forgive myself. Thank you. That was the most comforting thing I’ve ever read. This is a new beginning and a new journey in my life.

@wundayatta – You have a lot of wisdom and I admire that.

I realized why it would be so hard. Because it would be me facing myself as well and me looking at my past demons. I’m telling him but I’m reaffirming it to myself everything I went through. Like a mirror.

needadvice Exactly.That’s what I meant when I said you need to understand how you feel about it. Good luck with everything.

Why were you escorting? Are you educated / have a job?

@SmashTheState :: Sex worker can mean a lot of things. I would put the stripper in a different category than person that fucks for cash. One group is a lot more likely to be raped and can’t really go to the cops without being booked. It is like saying, “This guy stabbed me when I was stealing his stereo.”

@johnpowell Your understanding of sex work is… flawed. My union, the IWW, unionizes sex workers for specifically some of the reasons you mention, that the police not only don’t take their complaints seriously, but are often the people victimizing and preying on them. Furthermore, sex work is completely legal in many places not run by prudes and authoritarian fuckwads. Even in places where prostitution is explicitly illegal, the actual exchange of cash for sex is not illegal (otherwise half the marriages in suburban North America would end in prosecution), only the solicitation. In any case, your moral hairsplitting over the difference between being paid for giving men hard-ons and giving men relief from hard-ons is really rather silly. And antiquated. You may be interested to know that we get the word “pornography” from the Greek “pornos graphos” meaning, literally, the stories of street-walking prostitutes. The Greeks, like you, divided prostitutes into castes, with the most respected being the holy prostitutes at the temple of Venus, and the least respected being the pornos, the street-walkers.

Another thing to think about. Say you tell him. The romance phase wears off and you find you are not destined to spend the rest of your lives together. He is hurt, gets mad, and tells all your family and friends. Make sure you’re ready for that outcome as well.

@Judi I have been in situations sort of similar to that where I want to tell a secret, but I don’t want the secret to get out should the relationship gets sour. What I think you need here, and it doesn’t sound romantic at all, is a kind of exchange of hostages. What I think works really well is an exchange of nude pictures. Often, lovers want these things anyway, but the point is that neither side will really want to betray a confidence knowing that a nude picture gets distributed over the internet if they do betray. Videos work even better.

In general, I think this is a good idea. I’m sure people have seen all those websites where jilted boyfriends post sex videos. They cut out the parts where their faces are seen sometimes. But if you have your own video to post that would embarrass the guy, and you could send links to the guys parents or other family members, I would hope that would be sufficient to encourage everyone to keep their mouths shut.

They call this mutually assured destruction (MAD) in nuclear weapons negotiations. It is actually the basis for some very stable treaties and relationships. It may sound cynical, but the other thing they say is, “trust, but verify.” Trust your lover, but always verify they are trustworthy. If you start taking anything in a relationship for granted, you’re in danger.

Don’t tell him. You probably have been tested and know you are std free. Don’t tell him, there is no law that you have to tell someone everything about your life previous to being with them. I used to do that too, in the same way, and I never told anybody but one boyfriend. It doesn’t matter how close you think you are, in the future sometime when you two have a hell of an argument, that’s the first thing he’ll bring up. I know from experience. You are not obligated to tell anybody.

If it is a heavy burden you feel that is holding you back, I personally think you just need to tell the people who matter the most the most to you and get it over with. When all the dust settles, you will find out who truly cares for you.
Take those treasures and say the hell with everyone else.