Help me: my feminist boyfriend paid for a ‘happy ending’

My boyfriend, who identifies as a feminist, paid a prostituted woman in a ‘massage parlour’ for a hand job on Friday, after being pressured to participate by a male colleague who he was desperate to impress.

He doesn’t even like massages.

I’m totally devastated on two fronts. Firstly, I just finished a postgraduate thesis on feminism and the sex industry. I won’t go into the details of the topic, but the more I researched, the more I came to intuitively feel that the liberal pro-prostitution position and its murky distinctions between force and freedom were problematic. By the end of the process, I became more and more sympathetic to radical feminists like Sheila Jeffreys (whose recent book The Industrial Vagina is a must-read for all feminists). Anyway, I’m too fragile to go into whether people here agree or disagree, so please respect that, I just can’t believe that after months of participating in discussions about my research and reading my paper, he could go out and endorse the industry which, particularly in this region of SE Asia, is prone to the exploitation of women. He said no when I asked him whether he asked her name, how old she was, or where she was from. He said that he didn’t make a mental connection between the massage parlour with other forms of prostitution at the time, as if he was of a different mind. He says that now, after this experience, he identifies with feminism more than he ever did before. Cold comfort.

Secondly, I’m naturally devastated about being betrayed by the person who gets me more than anyone in this world and is my best friend. I’m angry about losing the intimacy, the safe spaces we created, and innocence we shared in our love. I’ve had relationships before – this one was the real deal. Soul mates. Life had never been better. His desperate insecurity to please people had only ever existed outside the house and with minor consequences – petty lies, pointless exaggerations, and stupid displays of bravado at parties. He was so desperate to make the colleague his friend last Friday evening that if it hadn’t have been paid sex, he would have gone along with drugs, cliff jumping – basically whatever was on the table. He identified that he went into it with a combination of drunkenness, extreme arrogance and extreme insecurity. He said it felt like an out-of-body experience. After confessing, he instantly hit rock-bottom and showed deep remorse. After four days of what felt nothing short of mutual grieving, he went to a counselling session at my request because he felt nauseous looking at his penis and was shaking, feeling dirty about his body. I’ve been at a hotel but have starting spending more time back at the house. I want to see if he can transform the true courage and heroism he has long shown inside the house to the outside world, particularly in social situations. I also expect a culture of total honesty and openness. Only then would I even consider staying.

We are living in a foreign country, away from family and my few feminist friends here are in the high-heeled, professional liberal set. They don’t appreciate or understand me on this issue, and when I talk about it they keep saying things like “boys will be boys” or “it’s just a little mistake” (which makes my blood boil as there’s a difference between a mistake and an action that requires 10 decisions). My dad (who I was a rock to after my mum left him for another man) sent me an email basically said that I should get over it soon as there’s nothing worse than a woman going on and on and on about one mistake. Charming. I will go to a counsellor in the next few days but I feel so angry that she or he will not truly understand the feminist dimension to my grief. Ironically, it’s only my boyfriend that gets it and that’s just like salt in the wound.

How do you think I can deal with the loneliness I feel in dealing with this uniquely feminist aspect of my grief?

p.s I categorised this as random as I didn’t see a suitable category related to relationships or paid sex.