Hi Lalalee,
Glad my post helped - and you are doing fantastically well abstaining from P all this time. And looking after yourself by not going to clubs that leave you feeling bad. You are really making such a positive effort to change. I hope you are really proud of yourself for that. You deserve to be.
As far as the escorting goes, I am not sure that you will get much out of it, to be honest. I have only slept with a prostitute once. But my experience was that it lacked any intimacy. Even if a prostitute says something nice about you - part of you knows they are doing it because they are paid. It might last longer than 5 minutes, and I guess with an escort you can take them for dinner, but even people I know who use escorts describe the experience as a fairly empty one. Exciting, perhaps - but not intimate. And there are people out there - if they know you are lonely - they will exploit that. Once you have called an escort, they have your number too....As I say, it's your call....and you would probably learn something about yourself, sex and intimacy from the experience....but I'm not convinced this is a great way forward, if I was to give my honest advice.
I was really sorry to hear about your experience of abuse. That is an awful thing to have gone through. And it does sound likely that alot of the problems you are experiencing may be related to that. You learned that sex does not involve hugs, kisses, love or care. That it was something secret, to be ashamed of. And, I don't know if this is true of you, but many people who have been abused even feel it was their fault! Of course, it wasn't. They were a child. The abusing adult has so much power in that situation. I only say this as I know this feeling - that somehow the child is to blame - can lead to so much shame in later life. Life can become coloured by that emotion...
Children need love, care and fun...and some boundaries! Adults should provide these. Adults that break boundaries and create despair....christ! Words fail me. It's so wrong.
So I have two suggestions...obviously take what is helpful and leave the rest. The first one is more of a question: have you ever addressed the abuse in therapy? This can be extremely powerful, and start to make it feel much safer to develop an intimate relationship. If you can't afford therapy, pretty sure if you google, there will be support groups in your area for adult survivors of sexual abuse. Of course, you may already have been down this route....
Second suggestion, is that if you are really determined to part with cash for sex...have you thought about sexual surrogacy? This is a slightly controversial area ii sex therapy, but surrogates are people who are trained to develop relationships with people that involve sex, but focus on helping them in personal growth - so for example, if intimacy in sex is difficult, actively working on that. Just a thought.
Finally, I would say that most of us have patterns in relationships. Mine seems to be to date people with Borderline Personality Disorder. Three out of five of my ex-girlfriends have this diagnosis! Honestly, you would think I hung out outside personality disorder clinics going, 'hey baby...how you doin'?' But I don't. I just seem to find myself mysteriously attracted - often at first sight - to people who say a few months later, 'listen, there's something you should really know about my mental health...'. These women have often been great people - but unable to ultimately commit, it made them too anxious, The conclusion I've come to is that I need to find a way of changing myself in order for my relationships to change. There must be something in me that is attracted to people who have tremendous difficulty committing, who go from thinking you are basically God one moment, to deciding you are the devil the next... It's why at the moment I'm much more focused on personal growth than dating.
So my thought is if your pattern could be described as, 'I don't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member' (you describe a lot of low self-esteem) you won't find a club that wants you to join! Perhaps this is a good thing to work on - finding a way to value yourself?
These things can change, they really can.
All the best,
AT.
