Dear Love Goddess:
I’m having an issue with my SO.  I love him tremendously and although he doesn’t know exactly about the escort part of my income, he does know I have ‘slept around’ & had many sexual partners.  I am almost retired and only work when I need the extra cash (I work in the entertainment business in my real life, although not as an entertainer, and so does he and we both are employed on a contractual basis, so income is not always predictable).  He’s open minded but I just don’t trust telling anyone I P4P because of legal issues I had with a bf many years ago.

Everything is perfect except for one thing – he is in love with another woman. Although he loves me and I completely know that he does, he has had a crush on a female friend of his for 8 years.  They have never dated and have gone through periods of being good friends, but she has a flake out tendency and will disappear for periods of time.  They have never been completely single at the same time and he has told her that he’s in love with her (he even wrote her a letter a year before we met) but she has told him she only loves him as a friend.  She does love it when men chase her, so she does leave that possibility of ‘you never know’ open.  She’s kind of a user when it comes to men and ALWAYS dates losers.  She kind of has this ‘damsel in distress’ quality that seems to attract the men like bees to honey, although she is not as beautiful as other women and is kind of a mess in her career (she also works in our industry and we all run into each other all the time).  She knows I am aware of this whole thing (more about that later). He has dated other girls but always had a torch for her. Unrequited love, I guess.

So why don’t I just dump him?  We’ve been together for 1.5 yrs and he’s about to move back to the town I & she live in (he lives in another large town nearby) and I am really connected to him and feel like he’s my soul mate.  We have amazing se x and make a great team in whatever we take on together.  I feel guilty about escorting and sometimes think that’s the reason I haven’t just slammed the door on him. I have also been alone for a while and am about to retire from escorting so that may be it…. I won’t feel sexy anymore, I fear, and I’d like to start a family. I also look at it as not really a threat – they’ve never been together and she seems resistant to giving him a chance, although from what I understand from colleagues she views him much differently since he’s been dating me.  I hold more authority and have more success in our industry and am significantly younger than she is and she has even lost jobs she has really wanted to me.  It’s a weird paradigm.

I found out about his ‘obsession’ by looking at his email, which was a complete violation of his privacy and he probably should have dumped me for that.  He told me that they were close and had feelings for each other and something just didn’t sit right… I am used to investigating my clients and escorting has taught me to not trust everything a man says, so when my instinct told me to look for more, I did.  I actually ignored the feeling for a month and then found an email he wrote to another friend saying he really cared about me but she was the one he really loved and he would STILL, 7 years later, do anything to be with her.  This was 3 months into our relationship.  We discussed it and he was living with me at the time because he was in town for work and we decided to try to be friends.  We were all over each other after a month and ended up falling in love.

The situation doesn’t always bother me, but every couple of months I get crazed over it because I feel like I’m sharing his heart with her.  He has said that being with me has eased him out of it slightly and I am the best girlfriend he has ever had.  He asks me if I’ve ever been in love with 2 people at once, and that’s how he feels… I haven’t really seen him do much about it other than try not to think about it.  I have tried many tactics – tough love, being extremely supportive of his career unlike her, just being friends, just being fuckbuddies.  Nothing seems to work, although we do seem to fall more in love with each other – he says in some ways it’s harder for him to deal with because the more he is with me the more he realizes he’s wasting his time lusting her…

I think it’s just a fantasy, but is there something wrong with me for wanting to be completely loved by him?  I have this guilt because I have worked as an escort and I sometimes think to myself that is my secret revenge against his fantasy love affair.  He’s not the cheating kind and is extremely monogamous when it comes to the physical stuff.  He hasn’t had many sex partners, although he is okay with the fact that I’ve had many and that I’m b and occasionaly sleep with other women.  I even offered to have a 3some with another girl that I told him was a former escort and he was into it, but only if I was.  

Right now we’re in a holding pattern… he moved in with me because we do love each other and he refuses to give up on us as a couple and so do I.  But we’re “friends without benefits” by my choice – we cuddle and live together as a couple, tell each other how much we love each other but no sex.  We even sleep in the same bed.  I’ve tried everything else except sleeping with other people to his knowledge.  I guess I could tell him I’m still an escort, but I’m not sure what that would solve.  When it comes to sex I am so open-minded – he knows I’ve had open relationships in the past.  If he slept with someone else it would sting a little but not nearly as much as him loving someone else.  And if he really wanted to fuck around or go to a swinger’s party I would let him….  Did I attract this relationship because I’ve only been giving half of my pussy to every man I’ve dated since I started escorting?  I mean, I’m only getting half of his heart, so I guess it’s fair?  That whole notion is very self-loathing, I know…..

Some other things you should know…. This other woman dated my bf’s best friend 6 years ago and he still hasn’t recovered from her dumping him.  She also got Herpes from a guy she dated 2 years, who is a notorious player and had been chasing me for years (yuck – no way I would have dated him and ruined my escorting career).  She is actively single (does not want a bf right now) and when she gets lonely calls my bf to come over and listen to her talk about how lonely she is.  She is relatively nice to me, but kind of treats me like she’s better than me.  Also, she has loose lips (mostly because she likes to talk about herself to anyone who will listen) and is a social butterfly so anything that she knows about our relationship she blabs to other people in our industry.  Also, we are a couple that is beloved within our circle and by both of our families and I am constantly being told how lucky I am to have found such a good match (he’s told this too, even the other woman thinks he is lucky to have me).  Several of my friends who don’t know the situation think we have an ideal relationship…. In many ways we do.