Love For Sale
As a student of psychology I’m asked everything from relationship and sex advice to why people do the things they do. A lot of the time I can’t answer these because even with my education, people continue to be a mystery to me.
Many of you are probably familiar with the Eliot Spitzer scandal. For those of you who aren’t you can read about it here. Anyhow, I was asked for my take on this whole thing. Not so much about Mr. Spitzer as an individual, but why men and especially men in a position of power solicit prostitutes.
Men look elsewhere when needs aren’t being met at home and this can be in a few ways. This first is sex in general. It’s no mystery that many men are put in the situation where they marry the love of their life and that also coincides with the end of their sex life. The second could be to do with a particular sex act or any sort of fetish. A man can have a completely healthy sex life at home but there may be a particular act that his wife or girlfriend won’t do. The third is about confidence. After reading through Letters From Johns, there was at least one instance of a man turning to a prostitute to help grieve. A relationship ended, there was a death in the family and he’d lost his job. I think that in this sense it has less to do with sex and is more about sharing intimacy. Of course, your idea of intimacy may differ from this. And lastly, (again, read from Letters From Johns) is the act of paying for sex to some men can be very appealing as it’s still a major taboo.
So back to Eliot Spitzer. Why would a man in power who’s in the public eye risk his career this way? He obviously wasn’t getting what he needed at home. Like a lot of men, he probably felt that turning to an escort agency was a safer bet than simply finding some random woman to cheat on his wife with. I think that prostitutes, escorts and call girls all expect the same level of discretion that johns expect.
March 14, 2008 - mid-afternoon
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