The idea that an escort provides emotional as well as sexual intimacy is heresy to a traditional view of romantic relationships. But, writes Adelyn Moore, paid relationships create their own unique intimacy. A relationship that exists outside the demands and social norms of ordinary life can cut the pretence and offer a more honest and intense connection.

One of the things that shocked me, as an escort paid $2500 per hour to spend the night in the bed of Fortune 500 CEOs, was how little the clients flirted with me. There’s a confidence you see in a man who knows he already has you, who knows that no matter what he does or says, you’re his. There’s a certain confidence I see in men that I don’t think other women get to see – the way that you would only see in secret.

Critics of sex work generally think of it as lacking emotional intimacy, which can only come with long-term love. However, a relationship bounded by transaction can provide its own deep form of intimacy that you can’t find in the outside world. It’s allowed me to see my clients as someone they’ve known for a long time, often to a completely unorthodox level, unshielded to a stranger. This manifests in details they would never tell their closest friends or wives, treating me as they would an old friend, or letting me know what they don’t like about themselves, about sex, about dates.

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It’s about breaking the social scripts – the set of behaviours, actions and consequences expected in a particular setting. In ordinary social interactions there are all sorts of complex unspoken norms and expectations of what each party should do and how they should respond that have to be interpreted moment by moment as the situation unfolds.

Instead, I've been found on a rabbit hole online with a mystery face, and now we’re here dissembling it in reality. This industry gives a novel, sometimes strange opportunity to meet when you’re otherwise merely strangers. You find each other in ways that you would’ve never otherwise—an introduction by sending a strange email to a stranger online who you’ve already seen naked. I spent about a year researching how escorting worked before I started. I liked that I could read online a play-by-play on how the dates go, how to enter, when they take off their shoes, where they sit, where I sit, where they put the envelope, what topics were allowed and what topics weren’t. As an Autistic woman, it felt like I was finally looking at a handbook that everyone had already read but me.

I tried to find a name and explanation for the intimacy I felt. I called it zero-trust proofs, a cryptography term, where one party – the prover – can prove to another party – the verifier – that they know a certain piece of information without actually revealing the information itself. This allows the verifier to trust that the prover has the information without the prover having to share it. You’re simultaneously minimising the exposure of sensitive information in an untrusting, anonymous environment, while building trust in the other party’s authenticity. What is held back keeps your identity secure while allowing the other to feel secure in it too.

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Without the pressure of goals or expectations, people can be a truer version of themselves, relieved of the sometimes impossible standards maintained by our stories about love.

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Usually, in social dynamics, we assess how we should interact with someone based on the groups we’ve clustered them into and whichever identities we project on them. As an escort, I hold legal information that perhaps no other strangers know, but on a social screening level, I hold nothing in how we usually assess other humans. Another way of framing the intimacy that emerges from this is as contextual strangers, like Strangers on a Plane, a context-dependent willingness to divulge sensitive information when we feel elements of our privacy are safe.

However, I think it’s more than that. You’re meeting someone in an enclosed box where no matter what you say, however painful or non-painful or intimate or close or weird it will be, you don’t have to impress the other in how we normally approach dating. That if I sleep with them, I can disregard so many of the social-capital considerations women are consciously or unconsciously weighing to assess their sexuality. I enjoy that escorting gives me the ability to turn off something in my brain that is always running, a biological intelligence that gets in the way of a modern horny brain. Often, it feels like a pre-ordained fate that I didn’t know I wanted till I was in the room, in the bed, naked.

This can turn any man into the most confident man in the world, which means I can see sides of people that they would hide if they were trying to ensure their words or actions achieve some goal. Tell me the weirdest thing about yourself, and I'll love it; people's words change when not tied to intent or reputation. Language usually works across three levels: context, emotion, and intent. Context shapes the meaning of what is being said, and is usually stable but influenced by emotion and intent; the emotional level is often unconscious; and intent drives the status part of the language. Intent determines whether we’re trying to put our language above or below someone, being proud or humble, whether we’re trying to hide facts, or whether we’re trying to aggrandize. When the desire to covertly achieve some goal is removed, language becomes something without as much intent and instead operates in more of a flow state.

Without the pressure of goals or expectations, people can be a truer version of themselves, relieved of the sometimes impossible standards maintained by our stories about love. Often we hold much higher standards for partners we love than we do for family or friends. When relationships end, it’s not because two people have always hated each other. Two people who deeply love each other have come to a point where they cannot forgive and change for each other. Ironically, as often seen in couples therapy, it’s so difficult to forgive a partner not because we hate them but because we hold the highest of standards for their behaviour. They are the person who becomes our bookkeeper, child-rearer, friend, between shared bank accounts, chores, and calendars.

I become one role in their life, a story relinquished from expectations to be an everything. Instead, I get to have the parts of someone when they step away from their responsibilities, and we are completely present for each other. I am forever grateful that I get to have relationships with people, albeit via an unconventional introduction, where romance and passion are maintained in their best form.

Relationships with people we love are often the hardest because when you love someone, you’ve idealized them in your mind, and you’ve set them up to compete against divinity. You’d only have someone you love held to perfection. When there are no expectations, you process people as they are. I think I often get to see people as they really are. I get paid to undress, but my real charge is to bare my soul.