sex and intimacy

Why Men Go To Prostitutes

Many are married and claim to love their wives. So why do some men pay for sex? Claire Halliday asks them.

"When I'm with them, it's almost like the equivalent of having a massage - physically and mentally. There's no pressure. It doesn't matter if she's had a bad day or I've had a bad day, either. Sex is guaranteed to happen with no emotional struggle and bullsh*t game-playing. If I'm tired, I know that I can still be satisfied without having to worry about what it is she needs. That doesn't come into it at all. Yes, it's selfish. But I'm paying to have a service provided. It's my time."

That's Joe Anderson's reason for outlaying the couple of hundred dollars he spends a month on visits to sex workers. And no, he's not some hormone-fueled 19-year-old, champing at the bit of sexuality. Anderson is 54-years-old and "happily married".

He's had the three kids, got the dog, paid off the mortgage on his house in middle suburbia, has greying hair and a waist measurement that is a little broader than it used to be. He works as a human resources manager in a large retail chain. He says he spends a sizeable chunk of his working life trying to understand why people are the way they are. But he doesn't really understand himself.

"It started when I was in my 30s," he says. "When my wife had our second baby, something happened to our relationship. I don't think it was about the way I saw her. I know some men say that after their wife becomes a mother.

"I really think it was about the way she saw herself. And she was tired all the time. Just not interested in sex any more. At one stage, it had been about 10 months and we hadn't had sex. Still sleeping in the same bed and not really arguing about much - just becoming more and more like mates.

"I know I still love her and I don't want to leave. It's not like I'm having an affair. I've been using the girls at the parlours for over nearly 20 years but, of course, it's not with the same woman all the time.

"I do have a couple of girls I like more than others but if I see them regularly, I start to feel guilty. It's not really about the person. It is just about a sexual release. My wife is still my best friend. She's the one I still sit down and have a cup of tea with in the morning. There's no way I want lose that."

Anderson's wife suspected he was having sex with someone else, but when he admitted it was prostitutes, rather than "another woman" in the classic sense, he was surprised at her reaction.

"I didn't think she would tolerate it or understand it but, in a way, she did. I think she was relieved that I wasn't having an affair," he says. "We talked about it at the start. She needed to be convinced that I wasn't in love with anyone else. Now we go out of our way to not bring it up. I would say she probably doesn't respect me in the same way. I guess it's perceived as a bit dirty, or a weakness. But I'm home with her every night and we have a great relationship as the parents of our kids."

Although their sexual relationship did restore itself to some extent, Anderson kept using sex workers and describes it with a nervous laugh as a "mild addiction".

"It's easy, the girls are young and they just give you their full attention. It's hard to pass that up once you know it's out there."

So difficult, in fact, that some men need to satisfy their urge for paid sex almost daily. As a trained social worker with the Men's Counselling Service, Chris Dawson sees a number of men from all social classes and says that, once it becomes a full-blown addiction, most want it to stop but feel they can't control it.

"It can get very expensive and they'll juggle finances like any other addiction. A lot of these people are self-employed and they're paid cash that doesn't go through the books. It's the white-collar worker, too. They might have a credit card on the side that nobody else knows about," Dawson says.

Why do they do it? "If they're getting satisfied somewhere else then they don't have to be intimate with their own partner. Most guys aren't good at intimacy."

When they eventually come to him for help, Dawson says it is because their relationship with a wife or girlfriend has become so problematic that they seek counselling to beat the desire.

And like any addiction, Dawson says that the motivation behind it can become muddied. Just as heroin addicts develop a love of the ritual-like needle preparation, Dawson says that prostitution addicts he has spoken to are often more excited by the planning than they are by the sex act itself.

"Some guys talk about how the sex itself doesn't actually do much for them. It's the planning and preparation. It's selecting the brothel, the drive to that building, the selection of the girl. It's anticipation. A lot of men try to deal with their problems by going to the brothels and then just walking out. That might be successful for a few days but then they have to score with someone. They don't like it. They carry a lot of shame. They can't control it," he says.

Ben Wilke, 31, doesn't necessarily agree. Currently "between girlfriends", the IT executive says that his use of prostitutes is purely a physical relief that he utilises when he can't get sex from anyone else.

"You can wake up in the morning and masturbate but it's not the same as really being with a woman and having her touch you."

Wilke has been known to occasionally pay for two girls at once to indulge a common fantasy, though says he has no need for any other role-playing games to inspire his sex drive.

"I just want to have sex, basically," he says. And he doesn't feel guilty. "If it's out there on offer, for sale, and it's a service that I'm happy to pay for, why should I feel guilty? I'm not desperate and I don't take risks. I'd never go to a street girl. At the brothels, it's nice and clean and you know they haven't got any STDs. It's safe."

Despite his projected image as a confident regular, Wilke says his first visit to a prostitute, when a long-term relationship broke down over four years ago, was intimidating."I was scared to death," he admits. Not so much because of what he thought the act itself would be like but because of what he thought it would say about him.

"I know I'm a fairly good-looking guy. My idea of the type of men that used hookers was the ugly, lonely fat guy who just couldn't get laid by anyone else.

"I could go out to a bar and pick someone up without too much hassle if I really wanted to. Paying for it and getting exactly what you want is just easier. You don't have to ring the girl up a few days later and take her out to dinner. I'm busy with work and trying to concentrate on my career."

Reclining in the darkened lounge area of Melbourne brothel The Daily Planet, working girls Heather and Emily have their own slant on why men pay for sex. When asked to sum it up in just one word, Heather comes up with "safety".

"Sexual safety, commitment safety, emotional safety,"

Emily agrees. "Their anonymity. They know that they're not going to be walking down the street with their friends or their girlfriends and we're going to walk past and say hello. Health-wise, we have to provide a certificate to work here.

"You don't go out and meet someone and in the middle of foreplay show a certificate that says you're clean. Plus, they won't get criticised, no matter how bad they are. That makes them feel good about themselves."

Listen to Emily and Heather tell it and you could believe women are partly to blame for all the insecurity men suffer. Loveless marriages and resistance to sexual experimentation are all confidence-denters for the seemingly precarious male ego, they say.

"The majority of men that come here haven't been touched by anyone in a while. They've been autonomous and everyone needs contact. With men, their self-esteem relies on being sexually active, whereas a woman needs a healthy self-esteem to be sexually active. For them, it's the equivalent of us getting our hair done. They need to be touched and have some sort of sexual encounter to feel worthy," Emily says.

"And," Heather adds, "if they're constantly rejected by the woman they love, it really affects their ego."

As long as the boundaries are clear on both sides, both girls believe nobody can get hurt.

"I get a lot of regular clients and some of them are deluded about the nature of the relationship. They do think they fall in love with you and you have to remind them of exactly who you are. But most of them just feel comfortable with you and they love their wife at home," Emily says.

"They might feel guilty about what they do with us but they just needed the contact because their biological needs aren't being filled. Masturbation isn't enough."

James Ogilvy, 51, says his regular visits to sex workers stem from a self-analysis as a "borderline fetishist". Again, "happily married" Ogilvy says he has no need to leave his wife of 26 years, as long as he can keep paying for sex on the side. Colleagues at the financial institution where he works have no idea Ogilvy is aroused by, what he calls, "exotic" women. That his wife is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed English woman began to present a problem two years ago when his longing for someone "different" became so overpowering that sex with his wife became difficult.

"I find it hard for her to turn me on. We can have sex every now and then - and in truth she doesn't want it very regularly anyway - but I have developed a sexual feeling for women that look different in some way and that's what does it for me," Ogilvy says.

"We've been together for a long time and for most of the marriage we were very sexually active and happy with each other. This started about 10 years ago when I had an affair with an Indian woman at work. My wife found out and things were really bad for a while. We didn't go to a counsellor - I just ended it. But while it was happening, it was so exciting and wrong that I think part of that has just changed something in me."

With what some might view as a skewed moral bent, Ogilvy made all apologies to his wife and swore he wouldn't do it again but gave himself permission a few years later to indulge what he realised had become an overwhelming fantasy. He won't tell his wife for fear it will make her relive her insecurity about the initial affair.

"It really wasn't about love, although I couldn't convince her at the time. I know it was just about sex. Not having to stay the night with someone or woo them in some way. By doing what I do, I can get the sex with no trouble or guilt. I still love my wife."

So, an average fortnight involves at least one interaction with a sex worker. He makes regular use of an agency that specialises in "exotic beauties". African, Asian, Indian and even southern European women make the grade. Ogilvy has justified it to some extent and feels less guilty because there is such a point of difference. "If I was after blue-eyed blondes but just didn't want my wife, I think it would be worse."

According to sex therapist Dr. Janet Hall, men like Ogilvy are probably just fooling themselves. It is an addiction and any addiction is potentially unhealthy.

"One of my patients has a good relationship with his lady but he has a thing for young women. He's late 30s and he's been doing it since he was 22 when he basically had his heart broken. He felt lost and he felt abandoned and now he's addicted to it and it's cost him a lot of money over a long period of time. When it's an addiction, it's often when they're stressed. Other people turn to alcohol or gambling - they'll need a fix. It can become a stress-management kind of anchor."

Power, too, in Hall's opinion, is part of it. While any working girl would argue the issue of just where control rests, Dr Hall believes that male clients perceive it lies with them.

"The money gives them the power to buy the girl and she's basically at their beck and call. She's supposed to do whatever they say so they really get off on that fantasy that they're the one in charge. If they do a slack job, it doesn't matter and if they do a fantastic job, that makes them feel bigger, tougher, stronger, anyway."

But sometimes it's not just about sexual performance. When artist Mack Jamieson, 29, visits his regular prostitute, Isobel (usually around every two months),

he often pays his money for the simple pleasure of conversation. Oral gratification usually comes with it, admittedly, but rarely full sexual intercourse. Admitting he also thrives on the "pathetic madness" of using a sex worker in this way, Jamieson finds some romance in the seediness of the situation.

"I'm not afraid to tell people I do it. In a weird way, I revel in it a bit. I like that my friends think I'm a bit out there. In a real sense, though, they probably don't understand that seeing Isobel really helps me out emotionally. I've had a couple of bad relationships with women that screwed me up a bit and talking to her - it's like I get a bit of female understanding.

"I really think she has taught me things I wasn't aware of about the way their minds work. I've been seeing her for about a year but there's no delusion about thinking I'm in love with her or anything. Yeah, I might get oral sex while I'm with her but sometimes I just do that because it makes me feel less weird about paying for her and just talking."

But Jamieson doubts that he would see another sex worker if Isobel retires. "She's talking about giving it up soon because she is with a partner and she wants to have kids. If she stopped tomorrow, I don't think I would look for another girl to see. She did give me the number of her friend and said I should try her but I still don't see myself as the kind of guy who sees prostitutes," he says.

"When I first contacted the escort agency and had her come around, I thought I was just doing it to get laid but it just became different. My Mum didn't bring me up to disrespect women and I think there was a bit of a block about just paying someone to screw me.

"I just ended up telling her all about myself and my relationships and my work and she was just really good at giving advice. In a way, she's been kind of like a muse. When she stops doing it, I'll stop, too. It was interesting while it lasted but it's been like a sort of therapy and I'm probably cured."

Some names have been changed.

The Sun-Herald

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