The Client Relationship

Picture the scene. A party in the depths of East London’s most on-trend bars is heaving, a deep baseline slowly thuds while limbs intertwine and all the beautiful people soak up all that the city has to offer. I’ve been deep in conversation with a Totally Hot Babe™ for about 15 minutes. She’s got these bright eyes and a blunt brunette bob, which she runs her fingers through effortlessly as we move from the topic of music to the topic of British pleasantries. She asks ‘what do you do?’. And so it begins.

In my explanation of my work to her, she is relatively nonplussed. However, the point at which this all changes is when I insist that I truly love my job. I don’t have an exit plan. This is my dream career. I explain how I have these fulfilling, important relationships with my clients and suddenly, this beautiful stranger draws the line. Her response: "But it's so transactional, you can't possibly feel valued!" So I explained to her how the boundaries and 'transactionality' which she perceived as oppressive, in fact are liberating. How that, within them, two people are allowed to be entirely themselves and are more honest than most people often are in civvie dating. Gift giving is a love language & that transaction is a gift - does this make the art of gifting any less special? The amount of adoration and generosity that clients have shown me, in the form of all love languages, far surpasses civvie dating and hookup culture 100x over.

As these conversations tend to go (and believe me, I’ve had many), the woman then literally said to me that I was 'being bought'. She described my clients as ‘men who would rather pay for a shortcut to intimacy than to earn it’. And this statement was where I drew the line. Not just because it could mar the very concept of what being a client means to my clients, but because it completely misconstrues the point client/companion relationships in such a profoundly sad way. My voice rising slightly, I psychologically shut out the other people eavesdropping on our conversation and I become tunnel visioned. I tell her that what is actually being bought is in a sense, an exclusive pocket in time and space, in which two people (or more, you know) both use this time and space, to create a compartmentalisation - separate from everything else in our lives. This distance almost serves as a protection, and in these moments we can both be more vulnerable and open about our needs, our desires and our dreams in ways that so often we've learnt are unsafe! We are raised to believe that as women our minds must be read, and as men that you must do this mind reading. Moreover, traditional gender roles and ways of dating stipulate that men mustn’t ask for their emotional needs to be acknowledged, much less cherished. I even explained to her just how differently confessions of truth are within client/provider relationships: you know that when one of you discloses something personal to the other, it's a huge deal, because so much could possibly be at stake. That trust gets built up slowly, and these boundaries are what create the opportunity for us to trust in this unusually restrained way. We don’t blindly fall into each other, we take baby steps. We pause. Through acts of self preservation we protect ourselves, and when we begin to trust we do so realistically. Every step of the way, the trust that's built is never taken for granted. Not in the same way that i've personally experienced civilian relationships, at least! In the midst of my increasingly heated rambling, I remind her that women seek the services of companions also, that men seek men, women seek women, and people falling on all areas of the complex spectrum that is gender seek professional companions too.

I understand why some people incorrectly believe that to purchase something is to take the easy path. You want help with your house move, you pay the moving men. But buying sex, and reserving time with companions, is not something as simple nor as socially acceptable as chucking the good old Man with a Van 100 quid and being done with it. The decision to pay for companionship is often, sadly, riddled with indecision, uncertainty and shame. Clients who turn up at my door do so after months, years and even sometimes, decades, of deliberation. They question whether this is right for them, whether they are doing something inherently bad (see: the rhetoric of SWERFs and whorephobes doing this damage), whether they are good enough for me, whether I’ll even like them, whether they’ll even like me. The moment I open the door to them, we both stand there in a second of intense vulnerability - bearing the truth of who we are to one another, at a crossroads which for so many has been the biggest decision they’ve ever made, and will change their life inconceivably going forward. They have made the decision to discover themselves - something that the men I have dated in my personal life have shied away from their entire lives, without the depth nor self awareness to want for more.

I can tell you now, I never feel 'bought' by my clients. I feel cherished. I feel that the man I'm with has reached a point in life, in which he's decided that something sacred, and special, and private, is worth investing in. In similar ways to how investing in a great therapist is an investment in ourselves, I see investing in a companion as an investment in ourselves. It's an investment in learning and unlearning the ways that we relate to ourselves as intimate beings, deserving of connection and longing and feeling and love.

After our discussion turned into a one sided rant (the guilty party being me), the strangers facial expression changed from incredulous to curious. I knew my job was done when she paused after I finally stopped to breath, and she quietly asked "So... how did you say you started in this line of work?" I don't want to give the impression to newbies that this sort of connection occurs all the time, and that with every single date you'll meet a different version of The One in client form. But these connection do grow, and when they do, you'll know it. Have I had horrible clients? Yes. Clients who made me feel used? Most definitely. But have I also had clients who became trusted confidantes who I miss and have genuine care for? Yes. And those clients - they've made every rude, cheapskate jerk worth it. A thousand times over. I won’t apologise for sounding trite. I care passionately about my work and the entirety of this world I inhabit as a professional companion. We all deserve to be seen. To be truly seen, for all that we are. The deep down darkness, the beautiful surface, and the myriad layers upon layers of complexities in between.