I am a kinky, straight-ish, thirtysomething female, living in a big city. I have a steady job that is pretty well respected by my peers and family. I am pretty frugal with my money and I have good credit, but my finances, retirement, savings, etc are nowhere near where I would have hoped that they'd be by this age and stage and I have recently been exploring other means to make money on the side.
I have a friends in my community who do, or have at some point supplemented their income doing various types of sort-of sex work as dominatrixes, or cam girls, or catering to people with foot fetishes. I see most of these as relatively low risk and have started feeling out options to possibly make some extra money on the side doing work like this. There is one problem: My boyfriend is much less freaky than I am, and he has absolutely put the kibosh on it and threatened to break up with me if I pursued any of these avenues. I have tried to reason with him—I see a therapist, who would speak up if she thought I was going down an unhealthy path. None of the lines of work I'm considering involve any actual of sexual contact or sex-for-money exchange. Also, my friends have given me what seems like good advice on how to do these things and stay safe.
The only reasons why my boyfriend can't seem to get behind this is because he says it's weird and it make him uncomfortable. I feel hurt by the fact that he would rather let his insecurities override my long term goals for financial stability and independence. Other than this, we are pretty happy and our sex life is A+. It breaks my heart, but I am tempted to just let him break up with me. Help.
I Have Long Term Goals
My response after the jump...
My first impulse was to advise you not to risk your relationship for money you might make doing not-quite-sexwork sexwork. It meant risking something that currently works for you (a boyfriend with whom you have A+ sex) for something that may not work out for you. For while there's certainly money to be made doing fetish modeling and/or dominatrix work, IHLTG, it's not a guaranteed path to financial security and a comfortable retirement. And then there's this: the reality of fetish modeling and/or dominatrix work might not jibe with your preconceptions about it—it might be less tolerable than you imagine—and you could wind up single and no more financially secure than you were before you sank hundreds (or thousands) of dollars into fetish wear and gear.
On the other hand...
"Other than this, we are pretty happy and our sex life is A+. It breaks my heart, but I am tempted to just let him break up with me."
Hm.
When someone indicates to me that they could take or leave a romantic partner—and they're not married and they don't have kids—I almost always come down on the side of leaving that romantic partner. That kind of ambivalence is usually a sign that the relationship has fatal flaws. So if you're seriously considering ending things with an "A+ sex life" boyfriend—albeit a guy who only makes you "pretty happy"—then you should probably end this relationship regardless of whether you or not you start doing sexwork.
