My Wife Is an Escort, and I’m Worried Our Family Will Find Out

As Told To Hallie Lieberman

If your partner were an escort, would you support them? Not only that, would you enjoy hearing about their encounters? For the latest installment of Secret Lives of Men, we talked to Spencer,* a 38-year-old Canadian man whose wife, Jenny, 37, is a full-time sex worker. He supports her escorting and even gets sexual pleasure from hearing about her encounters with clients.

*Names and identifying details have been changed to protect anonymity.

Jenny and I met in high school in 2003. I was 15; she was 14. We were the only two kids from our conservative, religious immigrant community at school. Soon after meeting, we started dating. We were both virgins, so we’d just kiss and hold hands at first, but a few months into dating, we had sex.

We stayed together in college. During freshman year, Jenny began making jokes about having sex with other guys. Her fantasies gradually became a staple of our sex life. One night, she sat me down, stared into my eyes, held my hands, and said that she wanted her fantasies to become real. She felt like she was missing out on what other students were experiencing because we’d settled down so early.

After we opened our relationship, she was like a kid in a candy shop. She slept with any guy she found attractive: classmates, men who hit on her at the gym or the bar where she worked, or even friends of friends. She mostly hooked up with guys on her own, but sometimes I would watch. We would have threesomes with another guy or another girl or even couple-swap with friends. I never really wanted to play solo. I didn’t want to chase other women. I loved having sex with Jenny, and I enjoyed the vicarious thrill of her being with others and telling me about it.

One of her best college friends, who knew we’d opened our relationship, was a sugar baby and urged Jenny to become one too. We were both against it. Jenny thought the transactional nature would cheapen the experience. But the seed was planted, and her opposition slowly slipped away. She told me, “What if I only do it once as a fun little experiment?”

I was hesitant, conflicted, and ashamed by the prospect of Jenny becoming a sugar baby, but I also found it perversely thrilling. After I agreed to support her new venture, I went shopping with Jenny for a dress for her first sugar date. I found it very exciting, yet the entire time she was on the date, I was pacing around my room like a maniac, wondering what the hell we’d started.

***

Jenny had four daddies in three years, all in their 40s and 50s. Most relationships were short-lived, from weeks to a few months. One lasted over two years, with a man we called “Daddy.” He was a 50-something newly widowed businessman. They got really close over the course of those years, way beyond just sex. I even met Daddy on a couple occasions. There was a lot of emotional attachment, for both of them, despite the massive age gap.

After graduation, Jenny wanted to quit sex work and focus on building her corporate career. We also talked about getting married. She felt that an open marriage was a lovely idea, but the thought of being a married woman who sleeps with other men for money made her feel icky. Though she was still close with Daddy, Jenny felt that it would not be appropriate to transition to a nonpaid, friends-with-benefits relationship. So Jenny and Daddy said their goodbyes, and from then on they maintained very, very sporadic contact, mostly text based, with a couple of phone calls thrown in over the years.

After Jenny got her master’s degree and we got married, she focused on her corporate career in business and quit sex work for good. She continued to sleep with other men, though not as often as she had in the beginning. One of my best friends from university, who was in between relationships at the time, became one of Jenny’s partners. We trusted him and didn’t worry about our privacy; we had to keep our open marriage a secret from our conservative, religious immigrant families.

***

Jenny had no plans to return to sex work after marriage until Daddy propositioned her. He said if Jenny would agree to meet him once, he would pay anything. She gave him a polite but firm no. If she were to meet him, she would have to break the boundary she’d set not to engage in sex work while married. But Daddy put on a charm offensive, telling her she mattered to him beyond a bought-and-paid-for sex object.

That talk got her all hot and bothered. She finally said yes, and he paid her well into five figures. She justified it by saying, “I’ve broken my wedding vows so many times already. The vows said I shall not lie with another man. But the vows never mentioned not doing so for money.”

Sex with Daddy was magical. She said her corporate job had never made her feel as alive as she did with him. She joked that it’s much more satisfying to have a client thank you with an orgasm than it is to get a curt email of gratitude.

For two months, she fretted over taking on other sex-work clients. After a grueling day at the office, she would say, “What if sex work is my calling? There’s nothing as satisfying to me as a man’s eyes rolling back as he orgasms and knowing that I was the reason he felt such a high.” The next night, she might say, “What the fuck am I thinking? Sex work will burn me out like any other job. I risk being ridiculed and labeled a whore.”

***

Sure enough, Jenny decided to start sex work again—this time as an escort. She hired a professional photographer, created a website, put up an ad on Twitter, and scored her first new client.

She continued working her corporate job while meeting new clients. Some weeks, she saw seven or eight different men; other weeks it was two or three. All in all, 20 men were repeat customers, and she had too many one-time clients to count. She was constantly rebuffing new requests before she decided she didn’t want to rebuff them anymore, so she quit her day job. I was supportive, even though I had doubts. I wasn’t worried about the sleeping-with-other-men part. It was super fun for a husband like me, who takes sexual gratification from her having sex with other men, to be in an open marriage.

But sex work as an escort, not a sugar baby, is very different. Suddenly I was faced with the prospect of the love of my life being paid by anyone and everyone to sleep with them. It was a completely different proposition that was going to dramatically alter our life and demand insane levels of logistical effort to keep hidden. My doubts were numerous. I thought it was easier to keep the fact that Jenny slept with friends and gym buddies a secret than it would be to hide her dalliances with dozens of clients.

Even though her website and advertising didn’t show her face, both could clue in our family and friends. I’d tell her, “I love it every time you have sex with another man. It’s such a thrill. But it’s a thrill because it’s not a constant. Is you becoming an escort just going to make it feel like work, and if so, will that start to build resentment?” So far the resentment hasn’t come.

***

Jenny makes more money now than she ever did in the corporate world, and she gets to travel worldwide, primarily in Europe. Her base is usually in Paris. She’s fluent in French and loves the city, so it’s perfect for her. Her clients fly from Germany, England, Switzerland, and Sweden to see her. None of her dates are with local men—all are rich guys who have villas in the south of Spain.

She has a rule that fly-me-to-you dates can’t be longer than a week. She’s always stuck to that, which isn’t hard to do, since most men only want her for two to five days. But there was one exception. A man hired her for a ten-day Tokyo trip. It was her fourth time going on a trip with him, and I was very upset. For over a decade, my wife and I had fantasized about going to Tokyo for cherry-blossom season, and now she was doing it with someone else. I didn’t express any doubts to her, because I wanted her to have fun—and the money was insane. But she could tell I was anxious, so she started a conversation with me and reassured me.

***

I almost always want to hear about her encounters with clients. If I don’t, it’s because there isn’t much to share. I don’t need to hear about her date if it’s only for sex and there is nothing unusual or kinky involved. Some days it’s just “How was work, baby?” followed by “It was good,” and that’s that.

Other days, I want to hear every detail. If the date is with a man who wants an intimate, couple-like experience or is particularly kinky, I want to hear more. Her debriefs can last quite a while, which can serve as our sexual foreplay or even the entire play.

Sometimes she tells me when men push boundaries. Jenny loves a man who knows how to be commanding in bed, how to manhandle her, how to take control. But the man has to know what he’s doing and do it when the mood and vibe are right. On one date, the man got really rough in bed to the point that, after he was finished, he acknowledged it. “I hope I didn’t push things too far,” he said. Then he got even rougher during round two. Consent wasn’t an issue, per se. But comments like “Slower, please” were ignored. She certainly has refused to see certain men because of their behavior, but the majority of the cases have been for reasons of hygiene or just attitude.

***

Though my wife has had sex with innumerable men, I rarely have had sex alone with other women. When it has happened, it’s with women that we’ve played with together as a couple first.

I’m open with her about the fact that I frequently feel jealous, ashamed, and embarrassed about her relationships with other men. Those feelings can coexist with, and even reinforce, my arousal and enjoyment. However, small things can bring my conservative upbringing to the forefront of my mind, and it’s hard to reconcile what my wife does with what is expected of us socially and religiously. Triggers can still happen—I don’t think I’ll ever be fully rid of them—because society will never accept our lifestyle. I’m a million times more comfortable now than I was in the beginning, and I feel self-assured and confident about her work.

To our social circle, we appear as a normal, upstanding millennial couple. Our conservative, religious immigrant community has no clue about our secret life. They would shun us if they knew the truth.

This story originally appeared on Esquire.com.

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