A 35-year-old woman who just got engaged posed an interesting question to Reddit’s Am I The Assh*le sub a few days ago—do you have to disclose your entire past to your partner?
For the woman, her past includes a short stint as a sex worker, and she was conflicted about whether or not he needs to know or if it’s even possible to keep this a secret for the rest of her life.
“I don’t have some sob story about how I felt abused and exploited because frankly I didn’t. Like any job it had its good and bad parts. I don’t have some dramatic story about escaping it, I stopped simply because I didn’t want to do it anymore. I didn’t require therapy or rehab, I just moved on and got a normal job,” the woman writes of her time in the sex work industry.
I have been regularly tested and have no STIs, nor so I have any emotional scars from it, so I told myself it’s now no one else’s business because it won’t impact any other relationships. However it feels wrong I can’t share this. He once asked how many sexual partners I had and I simply said ‘a lot’ and told him technically the truth: that I was prolific at one point in my life but no longer am and don’t intend to do so.”
“I’m still scared to potentially ruin a great thing if I reveal it but I’m also not looking forward to keeping this a secret for life,” she ended her post.
First of all, sex work is not anything to be ashamed of, and the stigma often keeps people from being honest and forthcoming with their loved ones. But aside from some really lame slut-shaming, it was clear to the folks on Reddit that this woman needed to be honest with her fiance and tell him about her past in order to have a happy future.
“I am a sex worker. I would not dream of hiding that from anyone. I wouldn’t want to be with anyone who wasn’t cool with it anyway,” said user ingodwetryst. “If this is a dealbreaker for him, he deserves to know and make he call himself.”
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being an escort but let’s be honest there’s a huge stigma around it. I get why you haven’t told him but it’s something akin to not telling him you were married before, it’s still a lie,” said Alternative_Answer.
“This might be controversial, but hear me out: he has a right to know. It’s true that your past is your past and it doesn’t define you or your future, but this is your life-long partner we’re talking about,” agreed clementinesdot.
Well, the woman ended up taking Reddit’s advice, and in an update, she informed everyone what happened when she told her fiance about her sex work history.
“I decided that I didn’t want this hanging over my head in our marriage. So it was tough, but shortly afterwards one night I had a few glasses of wine and told him I had something I needed to talk about,” she wrote.
“So I sat down and told him: When I said I had ‘a lot’ of sexual partners it was over a stint of about 4 months as an escort. He was taken back a bit and said, ‘That’s not something I’d expect,'”
“I had tears in my eyes and asked him if his opinion of me had changed. He said ‘Well what you did didn’t stop you from being the woman I fell in love with so why should it?'”
She finished her post saying that she feels a huge weight has been lifted—and they’re now in quarantine, so that’s your COVID-19 love story for today, folks. Be honest, don’t slut-shame, and practice social distancing!
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