Cande gave me a very thorough comment in response to a very terse post of mine. I aspire to respond to all the parts of it in time. But I thought I’d just start at the top.
She wrote (I’m summarizing) that men who pay for sex generally have “anger issues toward women.” I don’t know about “generally.” I resist “generally.” I definitely have “anger issues toward women.” It’s an area of my psyche I don’t understand all that well, but here are a few examples of how my anger toward women works: when a woman behaves in ways that are normal, predictable, human, I often find myself responding with out-of-proportion rage. Rejection? Ignoring? Ghosting? These behaviors all prompt a response in me – far greater than when men do these things to me – that just makes no rational sense. It is clear to me that, for whatever reasons, when you ghost on me, cancel on me, disappoint me, my reaction is ultimately not to you but to some deeply held preexisting set of experiences and associations that you are triggering.
Money is an interesting tool, for me, in the face of this: it allows me to clear away a lot of the risks that are inherent in normal, non-commercial, human (and particularly sexual) interactions. I’ve always thought, though, that what the money mainly does is to make me feel safe, because without it I’m scared. It makes me safe in two different ways: first, it eliminates the fear of rejection or, worse, judgment; and second, and more complicated-ly, it protects me from the danger of intimacy. I know that when I pay a woman for sex, I’m paying her for sex. But I also am paying her to maintain a certain emotional distance (what Charlie Sheen thinks of as “leaving“). Maybe I’m also paying her to reinforce a deeply held view that I’m ultimately undesirable, that I’m only desirable because of money.
Is all this about anger toward women? I’m not sure. Cande has a view about men, generally, but I’m eager to learn more about the hydraulics of this, both in her general world-view, and as it relates, specifically, to me. If we stipulate that my having paid women for sex is evidence of my anger at women, why? How does that work? How does anger morph into paying for sex? Or where can its traces be found?
I don’t have answers – only questions.
Oooh a whole post dedicated to my answer… can you see my hands rubbing together? lol.
First a clarification. While I understand your summary of my comment, the wording was quite different and it took me forever to put together, which tells me that the wording is important to my concept. I didn’t say that “men who pay for sex generally have “anger issues toward women.””. I stated that they have issues with their relationship towards women especially anger but not only. I’ll also add: Anger is only one manifestation and possibly final manifestation of deeper issues.
Without addressing your post paragraph by paragraph, I think the psychology behind your/male issues boils down to something very simple but you’re the only one that can find the answer. You have a lot of questions but really it’s just one.
Here’s my take. Maybe you/men have abandonment issues. It would make sense because money keeps these women from rejecting you. The fears that you talk about, including the complicated concept of fear of intimacy all stem from a fear of rejection. Getting too close means the possibility of getting hurt more if rejected.
In any case, anger is an outburst, it’s the externalization of buried feelings. Now you just need think about your past relationships with women and see which one it was that hurt you enough to feel this.