Sure, at the legal brothels, everyone is there because it was their aspiration to be a prostitute, no one gets raped, and everyone is getting rich. Only in Bangladesh do those stats apply.

Even here in the bluest, most educated state in the US, we’ve got people like my former co-worker, a man in his 40s with a wife and baby, getting busted for having sex with a trafficked minor across state lines. A teenager. At least 20 times. Who he knew was a teen and being pimped by her boyfriend. All nice and cool.

Legalized brothels like the Bunny Ranch probably ARE different than the norm in many ways. Unions probably help too. But the norm IS abused runaway teens or desperate women being controlled by pimps and with a real bleak future. It does women a disservice to believe otherwise, that it’s a job like any other and the sex is consensual.

He wasn’t her partner when he visited the brothel. If he was her partner at the time, then the answer would be different. And it was a legal Australian brothel in which the women are well protected and financially ok. The world does not divide facilely into men who would go to a legal brothel and men who wouldn’t. There are also men who did so as early twenties singles in a foreign land and would never do so again. To damn these guys seems harsh and I think counts a fairly large pool of guys.

But all of that is somewhat beside the point. The LW is married to this guy. She was very happy with this guy, before she snooped and found out he had visited a legal brothel. She and her husband are raising a young child together. So yeah, just throw away what was a happy marriage, become a single parent, all over something that happened years before she met him. That certainly makes sense.

And yes, she didn’t know everything about him when they married and is freaked out to learn this. Perhaps he knows equally little about her past and sexually history. Perhaps he would be equally freaked out that she stayed with a guy for 6 years, knowing he had repeatedly cheated on her. How much do you think he knows about her sexual history? I’m guessing next to nothing. She now knows this about his, and only because she violated his privacy.

She is going to have to work this out herself, because what could he possibly say to change her view of his visit to the brothel. As a single man, prior to meeting her, he had legal sex with an adult prostitute at a licensed brothel, where the prostitutes have lots of rights in Australia. What additional information does everyone think he owes her? And if the answer is he owes her a lot of info, then how much info does she owe him about her 6 years with the cheater. If detailed sexual histories are owed, then that cuts both ways. I thought our consensus was that they weren’t owed.

Also, I’m not sure that it’s been established that he DID go to legal brothels and have adult consensual sex with women over 18 – has it? He could at least tell her that much.

80% have been raped, 8-10x a year on average. That’s not vapid or hysterical, it’s a statistic.

I didn’t say anything about disease other than that it’s obviously a hazard of the job.

Really, Ron? You see a “happy marriage” in these two, who barely have spent any time together and can’t talk about anything together?

How so, exactly?

Very true Fyodor, where she lives mothers-to-be may not be given STD tests routinely.

OTOH if she or her husband brought an STD into their marriage, it was equally likely to be LW as her husband. A prostitute who receives frequent medical exams vs 6 years with a serial cheater. I think that the serial cheater is a greater risk than the prostitute.