"I used to be an escort" should read "I am an escort" and "... and then this happened" should be "... and then I went and did this."

That's a disgusting amount of cognitive dissonance.

When I was 18 I was dating a girl slightly older, out of my league, and with her shit pretty together. When we met I told her I worked in the kitchen of a mid-tier restaurant because I was too embarrassed to tell her the truth, which was that I worked at a local fast-food chain. Of course, she eventually found out on the way to realizing I just wasn't mature enough to date yet. She was right, and I wasn't even fucking anyone else.

I got fired from my job and couldn't find anything....I didn't mind staying at home waiting for him all day

And if I may be a judgmental prick—this is just... no. There are a million things to do with your time when you're unemployed, waiting at home for your other all day, every day, is not one of'em.

Boun Dan, boun.

I think she meant "used to" as in "I haven't since last night".

LW- Dan was absolutely right to point out that “if doing sex work makes you feel this way—ashamed and dirty—please stop doing sex work.”
Were you feeling bad about escorting before meeting the BF, or is it because you cheated, got caught and lost him?
If escorting a la carte was not an issue and you end up doing it again then you should be upfront about it with future dates.

That said, lines like ”I was so in love with this guy that I didn't mind staying at home waiting for him all day, doing everything and anything to make him happy,” may suggest insecurity and dependency issues.

This is pretty heartbreaking.
You are in a rough spot right now, but really need to get some issues resolved with yourself before you can move forward relationship-wise (probably with someone else...).
You need some support, do you have family/friends?

Bah! "Willing to do anything and everything to make him happy" except honesty. Except give him the respect to allow him to make informed decisions about this relationship.

Had you been honest about your previous escort work AND upfront about your desire to make some money with it again, he might've been ok with it. He might not and opted out of a romantic relationship with you or he might've drawn a hard line and said "no sex work or no relationship". Any of those would have been his right and you would've had the right to decide how to move forward. See? Like grownups. As it stands, you probably killed not only the relationship but any chance for friendship as well.

Anyhow, it's been years since this letter was published. I wonder how LW is doing now.

I wonder what the boyfriend thought was going on during the last year of that relationship. Obviously, he got suspicious at the end and went through her email, but how did he think she was spending her days and earning money? I wonder if there were more than lies of omission, but outright fabrications of the life she was leading, or was he that uninterested in the facts of her day-to-day life or particularly clueless.

Hark, folks. It's from 2010. Back when cheating was not a thing celebrated by the POTUS.

@7,

Anyhow, it's been years since this letter was published. I wonder how LW is doing now.

I think she's the U.S. Secretary of Education

This letter reminded me strongly of "Belle de Jour," with the ethereally beautiful young Catherine Deneuve playing the lead role of Severine. Instead of having a two-year BF, at the start of the movie she has been married for about a year to a busy surgeon. But like LW, she spends her days at home without much purpose, and life starts to get rather boring. To the outside observer, she has it all: she is young and beautiful, she is comfortably haute-bourgeoise, she has an adoring husband who lavishes her with expensive gifts and gentle, respectful love. But he can't provide the BDSM play she craves, and she doesn't really insist because she understands that it is the perfect, pure image of her that he loves, not the real woman with kinky needs and desires. So she starts to spend her afternoons as a submissive sex worker in a brothel while her husband is at work, using the pseudonym of "Belle de Jour" (French for "Day Lily") to hide her true identity. It doesn't end well for any of the main characters, but the lush cinematography and the intentionally blurred ambiguity between what is happening in Severine's fantasy life vs. her real-world life make it a classic erotic film.

Like Mirea @7, I would like to know if LW learned and grew following that bad breakup in 2010. I hope LW is currently enjoying a more honest and fulfilling relationship. I doubt it's with the same BF since, as Dan and many commenters have pointed out, LW was the one who broke the trust and it would be mighty hard to rebuild. I wonder why everyone else has assumed that LW is female, since there were no obvious indications in the letter and there are plenty of gay and bisexual men working full-time, part-time, and freelance in the escort biz.

@10 Yes, I fear you're right. Dan would do well to watch where he dispenses his helpful advice lest he give too much kind encouragement to the wrong people.

@11 - I always thought that "Belle du jour" translated as "beauty of the day", like a menu would have "fish of the day" for example.

Yeah... you cheated, LW. You cheated for $3k, but ya done cheated. Maybe cheat less in your next relationship. Take heart though, if you're hot enough that someone'd pay 3k for a single instance of sex with you, you're hot enough to find someone new pretty easily. Try not to cheat on him/her when that happens.

Phas @13, that's the literal translation. But "belle-de-jour" is also the French colloquial term for day lilies and morning glories - lovely flowers that open up during daylight hours, then close again at night. So it was a play on words for Severine in her sex worker persona, and she used the "de" pronoun rather than the grammatically correct "du" to emphasize the double meaning. She bloomed when she was selected as the "beauty of the day" and opened herself to anonymous lovers and BDSM scenarios every afternoon, but she always returned to her safe, conventional life as a pampered, idealized housewife before her husband got home in the evening.

Bird gotta fly, Fish gotta swim, Hoe gotta hoe.

And ladies, if you want a boyfriend who truly cares about YOU and wants to see what the future holds, avoid sucking and fucking strange men for cash.. Most straight males are not going to cotton to that*. The dudes amenable to that kind of bullshit are the worthless pushovers and loser perverts. (Unless that is your type, then don''t hold back). You aren't going to find your prince charming that way - ask your spinster aunts.

* Most straight males will disappear forever the moment you tell them you are or were a hooker.

still as fake as it was 8 years ago.

—fired from my job and couldn't find anything.
—a friend recommended
—this guy e-mailed me saying he would give me $3,000
No agency for herself at all. Oh, wait a minute, just maybe 'this guy' emailed because she 'was answering ads, putting ads up, sending photos.'?

Sure the boyfriend shouldn't be snooping. BUT, if your girlfriend is a lying, cheating, passive-aggressive POS you'd be better off knowing.

Max, it's not fake, it just doesn't speak of the gambling/drug/alcohol addictions and the cash needed to support those habits which makes the escorting necessary

I shake my head in wonderment that it's necessary to explain all this: No, North, the problem isn't calling it sex work, the problem is cheating. No, Many Men Out There, calling cheating an open relationship doesn't make it okay. It's like people see changing social mores as loopholes.

Cap @15: Like an apple of the earth is a potato. Ah, the French language.

The response feels very retro somehow.

Very sad. And very much a disaster of the LW's own creation. LW, I hope you've gotten your shit together in the intervening years (I know it's hard!!) and are living more happily now.

@15 Thankyou Capricornius, for that lovely explanation.

Did what the LW do constitute cheating (defined as lies, deceit, betrayal) in a sexual context as opposed to a financial context?

Granted she wasn't upfront about her sexual history, it was just that, her past history. The same as anyone else's as long as it remained in the past.

26-- Skeptic. That's for the boyfriend to answer. I suspect it's in a sexual context. It could be both.

I can imagine Boyfriend reasoning: "We had a monogamous relationship. You have sex with someone else. You cheated."

That's opposed to: "Our finances were merged. You made money without telling me in a way I hadn't approved" which seems less likely.

There's also "I don't approve of sex work which I think is degrading and immoral and would think that whether you did it in the long past or in the present. In the long past it's wrong but forgivable. In the ongoing present it's wrong and unforgivable."

Fichu Is sex work any more degrading than being a sub? Do you consider sex work immoral when it is done primarily as a kink or a manifestation of a psychological disorder (nyphomania aka hypersexuality) and not just for monetary reasons? A sub who is instructed by her dom/master to be a whore immoral? I know that's a pejorative term, but it is more accurate than being told to be a prostitute or escort. In this context is her dom/master essentially her pimp?

29 Skeptic-- I was answering with what Boyfriend might be thinking.

What do you think? What are your thoughts on the morality of sex work?

Fichu Subject to certain exceptions (pedophiles, rapists, abusers (unless it is consensual abuse) stalkers, etc. You get my drift?) I don't judge other people's morality with respect to sex. I am not going to impose my sense of morality on someone else. To do that eviscerates the concept of free will.