Does True Love Exist? A Social Escort Responds.
Illustration by nuglybird for Rice

Sass & Ass is a monthly column written by Rebecca, a social escort working in Singapore. You can find out more about her from her website and from this earlier article

The million-dollar question: Doesn’t being intimate with married men make you a jaded woman when it comes to love?

Nope, I believe in true love more than ever. Let me explain.

As an escort, the distinction between a client and a potential life partner is made clear. I have pretty amazing clients that make me love what I do, and though I have very positive feelings towards them, I would never date them outside of work.

So in a way, you could say that my line of work has allowed me to better recognise what’s real intimacy, and what isn’t. And this in turn has given me a heightened appreciation for true love when I do see it.

Some might disagree, but I believe that most aspects of a relationship can be compartmentalised. Sex and intimacy for example, can be extricated from each other. The act of paying for my services is simply an admission of this fact.

Or put in another way, if my clients didn’t love their partners despite whatever that is lacking in their relationships, they would’ve left. But they didn’t. Maybe their partners don’t pay attention to them in the bedroom, or they have certain fantasies that they know their partner would never be comfortable with doing. Paying me (and other escorts) is also an admission to the fact that they never wanted to leave their relationship at all.

Love, sex and relationships are complex things, and while they do overlap, understanding that they can be separated has allowed me to continue believing in love.

Professional intimacy, after all, is all about making people feel great about themselves.

Funnily, what most people don’t realise is that being a successful escort (in the sense that you do this without feeling jaded or having your mental health threatened) is not about denying and suppressing one’s emotions, but rather, feeling and accepting them in all their intensities.

Professional intimacy is about making people feel great about themselves. And in order to do this well, a keen emotional awareness is required. Aside from just taking off my clothes, I need to be able to make people feel comfortable around me and then figure out what they love and what they’re passionate about.

If I was emotionally dead, I would not be able to do my job. How am I supposed to create intimacy if I don’t believe in it in the first place? It would be disingenuous!

Admittedly, being in the business of emotional and physical intimacy can be confusing for my personal life. Many people assume that I have learnt how to live without much emotion to avoid romance (it’s even somewhat implied in this article title).

I beg to differ. Dismissing my very real and very human emotions is rather shallow and painfully easy, and it contributes to me being dehumanised simply because of my job.

Personally, I have always been picky with the people I date and who I decide to keep in my life for the long-term. Who knows, I might just quit if I get into a serious relationship with someone that I truly love. We can’t predict these things. I believe in finding that special someone and that the two of us will put in the due effort to make things work no matter what. In my relationship, I’d make sure that we have a healthy connection with frequent and open communication. After all, isn’t that what love is?

Have something that you’d like Rebecca to write about? Send your ideas to rebecca@readrice.co.
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