DEAR CHRISTINE, I read your column regularly. In a recent Sunday paper, I saw an article by another journalist on teenage sex for pay, or “transactional sex”.
I am certain that it is not only teenagers who engage in this sort of underhand prostitution. With regret, I encouraged and supported a divorced mature woman, aged 38, in this form of covert prostitution.
I say prostitution because at the end of the day that is exactly what it is.
The woman in question has two children from different men. She works at an entry level job in a statutory corporation and is truly on the breadline, or so she claims. She receives little financial support for one child and nothing from the other father.
Lies told
When we first met she told me a lot of lies and hard luck stories as I later found out. She quickly gained my trust; sufficiently for me to enter into a relationship which turned out to be one of “transactional sex”. She pledged her undying love and I fell for it, failing to see that her agenda was sex for money, money, money.
She claimed not to be in any other relationship and I believed her until recently when I chanced to discover otherwise.
As early as two weeks ago, we reaffirmed our mutual love and she again informed me that I was the only one in her life and the only one who mattered because no one had ever treated her like this before.
Again I fell for it.
Recently, we arranged for me to hand over to her a large sum of money, as was the weekly custom, to purchase school items for her children as well as to deposit some into a savings account.
As luck would have it, I went unannounced to her home and caught her red-handedly wrapped up in a car in the arms of an ex-boyfriend, whom she had always said wasn’t worth anything to her because he failed to support her financially or in any otherway.
She said she had ditched him. She even reaffirmed this to me just two weeks ago during our most intimate encounters.
Christine, you should have seen her face when she saw me arrive at her door, unexpectedly. She rushed over to me from his car to tell me that she needed a lift home and called a friend to give her a lift. That friend turned out to be her ex, even though she denied it, until I went to the driver’s door and said hello to him.
An argument pursued with her and I left, vowing never to see her again. She was totally embarrassed.
Lesson learnt
If I hadn’t gone to her home unexpectedly to drop off some items which she asked me to purchase, I would have been none the wiser and would have continued to hand over the weekly cash and monthly cheque deposits.
All along, despite giving her body and soul to me twenty-four seven, deep down, she yearned for this man. She got caught and is now sorry that I discovered what I thought was her love for me, but was really an undertaking of transactional sex, shamefully so. I’ve learnt and now warn other men.
Christine, you must see that it is not only teenagers, but mature women with an agent, ably encouraged and condoned by men.
Sadly, I was one of those fools and have had time now to clean up my act and say never again. Men, beware!
– ?
Dear ?,
I am sure you have learned your lesson and can move on with the knowledge that a situation like what you’ve been through will not happen again.
Thankfully, all women are not the same and so I wish you much more happiness with someone who will love you, not for what you can give but for who you are.
– CHRISTINE