Sticking the long term: it’s harder than you think. Long-term relationships with escorts can be incredibly rewarding, but they’re also fraught with peril.

As an escort client coach, the number-one issue I discuss with clients is managing their emotional boundaries. If a guy (or girl) sees an escort for a while, they might start to develop feelings. And there’s nothing wrong with that! Emotions, as I’ve said before, are a natural part of genuine sexual connection. But often, clients will self-sabotage. When we let our emotions get the better of us, we often end up losing the relationship.

Imagine this scenario: you’ve met an escort you really like. You see them several times, and each is better than the last. Eventually, you establish a pattern; your sessions become a special treat you give yourself on a regular basis. You may feel that the relationship you’ve developed with your escort is special. And it is! There’s nothing more rewarding than finding exactly the right sex professional.

But you may also be feeling the urge to escalate things – to spend more time with them, offer declarations of affection, or even to try and date them outside of your paid time together. This is what’s called the ‘relationship escalator’ – the societal pressure we all feel to follow a pre-determined path over the course of a relationship.

For a standard romantic relationship, it might look like this: dating, then sex, then engagement, then living together, then marriage, then kids. It often means making commitment to be monogamous.  This is just how we do relationships, right? Often, we never even question it. Whenever we meet someone we like, we try to rush through all the steps on the relationship escalator as quickly as possible… and if things don’t go to plan, we end the relationship and start again with someone new. 

But when it comes to sex worker relationships, the escalator simply doesn’t work. If you have feelings for your escort, trying to increase the time you spend with them, seek special treatment, or change the type of relationship you have, can lead to disaster.

You might be thinking, ‘What’s the big deal? If I’m a regular client, surely my escort won’t mind giving me a bit of extra time and affection?’ But the problem is that, as I described above, this need increases. Once you do receive special treatment, it’s easy to adapt to the ‘new normal’ – and before long, start wanting more. This leads to a stressful cycle in which the client always feels shortchanged, and the escort feels continually pressured to give more time, attention, and emotional care.

This usually ends one of two ways. Either the client becomes distressed that the escort can’t give them what they want and stops seeing them…or the escort can’t deal with the rapidly increasing demands and cuts off contact with their client. Both situations are painful for everyone involved. It’s so hard having someone who seems like the perfect long-term regular, only to see them grow more and more difficult or depressed, simply because we can’t give them what they’d get from a non-professional relationship!

Escort/client relationships aren’t designed to be dramatic; we don’t want that stressful escalator ride. Rather, the best way to survive the long term is keep your emotions in check – three steps up on the escalator, so to speak. It means keeping your emotions at a manageable level. It means not assuming you’re entitled to anything extra, just because you’re a regular client.

This is hard to do. We’re not taught to manage our feelings – when they happen, we often feel as if we have very little control over our behaviour. But it’s not impossible to manage emotions, and we DO have a choice as to how we act. Here are some ideas for keeping your long-term escort relationship healthy.

Being a good client is all about boundaries – those invisible lines you draw and don’t cross, to keep your behaviour in check. You are an escort client, and you need to stay in the ‘client’ lane – that means not asking your worker to date you, not calling them at 3am, and not declaring your love mid-session. Your escort will have some ideas about this too, and it’s important to find boundaries that work for everyone.

The same applies to escorts – we need to stay in our ‘professional lane’. Sometimes that can be difficult, especially if we really like a regular, but you have a right to your personal space too. If your sex worker’s behaviour makes you worry that the relationship is escalating – such as offering you free time or talking about personal topics – you have a right to say no, if it’s making things difficult for you emotionally.

Escorts are amazing people to talk to when you feel sad, but we’re not therapists. A good counsellor can help with deep feelings of loneliness or processing the difficult things that might be going on in your life. If you have heavy emotional stuff going on, seeing a psychologist or counsellor means you can bring a sense of fun to your next escort booking, instead of a lot of complicated feelings that need talking over.

Our best relationships happen when everyone – friends, family and lovers – are sharing the load. One person can’t give us everything we need. If you rely on your escort to provide all your company, affection, and fun, you might end up putting a lot of pressure on them, and you probably won’t get everything you need. It’s important to have other friends, other hobbies, and cultivate other rewarding relationships (even with people you’re not shagging). Getting some of your needs met by friends and family means there will be less temptation to rely on your escort for all your needs.

The real benefit of a long-term escort relationship is the genuine connection that comes from spending time with someone. It’s not about declarations of love or special favours; rather, it’s getting to know someone in a way that you simply can’t do over one or two sessions. This process isn’t under anyone’s control. It can’t be forced by gift-giving or saying, ‘I love you.’ It’s just a thing that happens over time, if circumstances are right.

A good long-term escort/client relationship requires, patience and acceptance. It requires respect for how wonderful things can be – the chance to really know someone on an intimate level. Above all, it requires that you resist the escalator and manage your emotions, so that you can keep everything going smoothly.