Especially in a “But what if the guy is so lonely and can’t get a date?” scenario like offered upthread. You can’t tell me that he’s going to remain emotionally uninvested in this situation.
I’m not sure that’s true. My understanding (albeit one I never had cause to investigate too deeply) is that those “You’re only paying for my TIME and if we just happen to really hit it off and have sex then that’s just something that happened!!” escort ads aren’t protecting anyone from a prostitution arrest. Cops having better things to do (and cops being more worried about streetwalkers than escorts) is what keeps them from being arrested.
Exactly. The whole “marriage is just legal prostitution” comes across as bitter He-Man Woman Haters Club nonsense. That’s not to say that no marriage is based on that foundation but it’s not inclusive of all marriages nor of what most people would consider to be a good or healthy marriage.
Anyway, back to the OP, I largely agree with those who say that if the guy’s goal is a piece of on-demand arm candy for social events and on-demand sex and they’re both on board with the plan then go for it. As a surrogate for a real relationship, it strikes me as pretty sad – pretty much the same as renting people to pretend to be your friends or renting people to pretend to be your family at the holidays.
Prostitution : the first meeting, the 2 parties meet in a motel and sit on the bed. An envelope of money is handed over. Within about 5 minutes after that, the clothes are generally off.
Mistressing/Seeking Arrangement : the parties meet for a coffee date. He’s finding out if she looks like her pictures, she’s finding out if he’s rich as he says he is. A payment is made for this meeting. The parties meet at another date. And possibly and third and 4th one. Sex starts happening at the end of the 3rd or 4th date.
It’s pretty clear that the money pays for more than sex. How much of it pays for the sex is not easy to calculate.
I’m mostly on the side of ‘don’t interfere with consenting adults who aren’t harming anybody.’ But there’s something I have a hard time squaring.
People say that women nowadays are competing against unrealistic depictions of women in porn. If they want male attention, they feel pressured to be just as slender, alluring, flawless, hairless, and sexually experimental as the women in porn. This (I guess) is why my daily Facebook feed is interspersed with untouched, slightly chunky models underscribed with bristling comments admonishing me that “This is what REAL women look like”. Well, OK. I agree, stop yelling at me.
So I’m concerned that the same dynamic would apply to prostitution. The pressure women feel to match an idealized sexual fantasy would not end in a committed relationship, or after having children, or having raised them to adulthood. Women would labor their entire lives under heightened pressure to be more sexually competitive with contract labor. Who benefits? Men, and young pretty women. That really looks like social & economic injustice to me.
If any of it pay for sex, it’s prostitution but that’s neither here nor there. I was simply saying that the phrase “you’re just paying for my companionship” isn’t necessarily a defense against a prostitution arrest.
However, police aren’t really interested in things like escort services and especially arrangements like in the OP because it’s a pain in the ass to prove (weighing time/effort against a Class A misdemeanor) and they’re more interested in keeping the streets clean of hookers under the lampposts for public perception reasons than they’re worried about people with websites. That doesn’t mean that it’s not still illegal, it means that no one is willing to put forth the effort to do anything about it.
It’s illegal to pay for sex or to receive payment for sex. Using a bunch of coding and plausible deniability might make it harder to prove (even to the point of not being worth the effort) but it doesn’t make it less illegal.
Nothing wrong with it all then. Although I think law enforcement might try to make something of it under some circumstance, but I don’t hear much about them going after escort services which make the same claim. It’s not that much different from traditional relationships, just a little more specific about what the couple expect from each other.
A “traditional” mistress relationship tends to be at least partially based on actual affection, rather than just money on one side and lust on the other. Sure, she might leave if the market crashes, but she didn’t go into it because you promised to buy her a new Ferrari every year. A “traditional” mistress usually doesn’t meet you at a convention or website specializing in paid-for sex/companionship. The relationship evolves “naturally” over time after you meet in a bar or whatever. At least, that is my understanding. I’ve never been in a relationship of that nature.
I suppose the counter is that a sugar baby is just more up front about her expectations. I’ve never been in one of those relationships either, but I know a few girls who paid for college that way.
I made the mistake once of answering a personal ad BEFORE googling what “GFE” meant. Luckily I did so before I met her so no real harm, but I will say the conversation went very far before any gratuity was mentioned.
Setting aside your rather immature notions of what a healthy relationship is like, Illinois state law (the only one I bothered to check) actually has an explicit exemption for spousal arrangements in its prostitution laws. Which I found a little amusing.
My wife has made far more than me for the vast majority of our relationship. Notwithstanding my unbustable bedroom chops, it certainly wasn’t for the sex.
FWIW, the sugar babies I knew had plenty of options. One was a successful model - successful in the local sense, at least as she earned as much as $100/hour to look good at car shows, parties, and the like, and only had to work about 15-20 hours a week to pay her bills. The other was a bank teller.
“Haha marriage is just prostitution” is a clever line, but not a great reflection of reality. If you have a wife today, she probably works. If you had a wife 50 years ago, she probably was engaged full time in housekeeping. If you had a wife 100 years ago, the two of you probably worked side by side on a farm. Outside of the very rich, households have never really had idle labor just sitting around.
Undoubtedly. But that’s not what is being asked about in the OP. To quote:
Again, that may well be true; the OP is asking about a “paid GF”, which seems to be all about the money.
The relationship discussed in the OP is more like substituting a paid “girlfriend” for a guy (and I assume it could work with other gender/sex combos) who is otherwise unattached, to take the place of such attachments.
I realize you’re mostly kidding, but you fell into the trap so many others in this thread have.
It was actually simply “Your services are no longer needed by the company. Your last day is today. Here is your severance payment. Good luck.”
The word “relationship” has no place in arrangements like these. Using that word simply imports a bunch of inapplicable baggage from other aspects of our culture.