I consider myself an upstanding guy and a good provider but I’m now engaged in what some consider the lowest behavior a man can engage in and I am feeling tremendous guilt. Up until about 6 months ago I had been completely faithful. About 9 months ago my wife had a meltdown over something unrelated to this and told me to leave, then a few days later asked me to come home. Over the following 3 months this happened 4 more times. One night I was lonely and decided to call an escort. I’m prepared to be thrown out again at any time, and I found that I really enjoyed seeing escorts and do not intend to stop. I feel like cheating scum. I’m honest with the providers and disclose that I’m married. How do these providers see me?
What low behavior are you involved in? Are you a cop or politician? The only thing you mention doing is seeing escorts because your wife has, to put it bluntly, turned into a flake. You have needs; you’re dealing with them pragmatically. When she threw you out, did you just stand outside in the rain? No, you went and rented a hotel room. If she refused to feed you, would eating at a restaurant have been “low”? No, it would be sensible. And so is seeing escorts to get your sexual & emotional needs met now that your wife seems to think you’re a human yo-yo for her to play with. You mention telling your escorts you’re married; honey, 70% or more of our clients are married. We are the safety valve which allows the highly unnatural institution of monogamy to exist at all, and civilization itself would be literally impossible without us. Every person has the right to control their own sexuality, and nobody else’s (unless that’s part of some kink dynamic they both consent freely to). In other words, your wife has the right to say “I will not fuck you”, but she does not have the right to tell you that you can’t have a sex life because she’s too busy playing non-consensual tease-and-denial games. By seeing an escort, you are mitigating the harm that would come from extracurricular fucking of amateurs whose ideas of consent, hygiene and respect for boundaries probably range from confused to nonexistent.
And though you didn’t ask for advice on this other topic, I’m going to give it anyway: at one point in your very long letter you mentioned the difficulty of finding a good therapist for yourself. From what I can see, you don’t need therapy (except for your inappropriate feelings of guilt for taking care of your own needs, and maybe to uncover why you accept this kind of treatment); your wife does. It’s not normal to keep repeatedly throwing a partner out and then summoning them back; it’s emotional abuse.
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