“I didn’t buy love,” Bintu once said. “I bought what my marriage could no longer provide.”
That statement may shock many people, but it opens the door to a conversation we rarely have.
Women also pay for sex.
Noooo.
Yes o.
Why?
Because contrary to popular belief, women also have sexual needs, frustrations and complicated emotional lives.
Bintu is 46, successful, elegant and married to a retired banker. If you see them at parties, they look like the perfect couple. They dance together. They coordinate their aso ebi. They smile for photographs like a toothpaste advert but behind the expensive lace is a bedroom that has been on life support for years.
Her husband suffers from erectile dysfunction. They have tried herbs from Ibadan, concoctions from Kano, pills from London and prayers from every mountain between Lagos and Jerusalem.
Nothing has worked.
Bintu loved her husband. She still does and had no intention of leaving him but she was also a healthy woman with healthy desires.
Eventually, through a trusted friend ( whose husband was also having problem getting his JT to rise to even a monthly occasion), she met a discreet young man. There was an arrangement. No emotions. No promises. No Valentine’s Day drama. She paid him, he came when invited, and everybody went home happy; Bintu satisfied and the loverboy richer. Both parties relieved and less tense.
There’s another group of women whose problems are different from Bintu’s. They are like Ireti.
She didn’t have a husband with erectile dysfunction.
Her own problem was worse, I think.
Her husband had enough energy, perhaps even too much energy, for everybody except his wife. The man was like a he-goat with an erection that can’t be pacified. He had a side piece everywhere.
Office girlfriend.
Gym girlfriend.
Church girlfriend.
WhatsApp girlfriend.
Even one widow on their street was rumoured to be a beneficiary of of Ireti’s husband’s generosity.
By the time the man staggered home each night, he was too exhausted to remember he had a wife.
Ireti complained.
He apologised.
She forgave.
Less than three months later, there was another side chick on the scene, like a bad sequel. On and on the bad movie, that Ireti’s life had become, went. Each side piece took a piece of her until her self-esteem was down to zero-zero.
Then, one day, after years of neglect, Ireti did something even she never thought she was capable of. She hired an escort! Yeah, you will be shocked what is available in this country of yours if you know where to look. And no, Ireti didn’t want to destroy her marriage. She was not also trying to get back at her husband. She simply wanted to remember what it felt like to be desired, to be touched, to be ravaged deliciously with reckless abandon.
Go on, condemn her. I can even help you you with a few moral and religious quotes. You and I know Ireti was aware she was crossing certain lines. But we also know she was tired and desperate. She should have waited a little longer, prayed a little more fervently, fasted a few more days. I agree, absolutely. Let us just , with our church mind, quietly ask and answer, “How exactly did we think a situation like that would end?”
Marriage cannot survive when one spouse continually feeds outsiders while starving the person at home.
Then there is the revenge-served-in-high-heels paid sex.
Tola’s husband believed sex was a weapon.
Whenever they quarrelled, he would declare a cold war in the house.
No touching.
No kissing.
No cuddling.
No negotiation.
Sometimes the punishment lasted two whole months. Other times three.
He enjoyed watching his wife suffer, then beg. Control gave him satisfaction.
Unfortunately, power games almost always have unintended consequences.
One afternoon after another long season of “presidential lockdown,” Tola followed a friend to a luxury apartment. She paid for one afternoon.
“It wasn’t even the sex,” she later confessed.
“It was somebody holding me like I mattered.”
That sentence should make every married couple pause because a woman’s need to be held and cuddled matter.
Sometimes a woman is not only hungry for sex. She is hungry for affection and validation. She wants to be seen.
It isn’t always about desperation for physical satisfaction, let’s be honest.
Not every woman who pays for sex is lonely or trapped in a difficult marriage.
Some simply do it because they can , especially the single, financially independent women.
The same way some wealthy men hire escorts without emotional attachment, a growing number of rich babes want convenience without commitment.
No boyfriend.
No jealousy.
No endless texting.
No “Where are you?”
No explanation.
Just an arrangement.
Transaction completed and everybody returns to normal life.
To some people that may sound shocking.
To others, it is merely another example of modern relationships becoming increasingly transactional and women wanting to become men. I don’t think so but that is a matter for another long day.
What about women who think paying for their pleasure is plain adventure?
There’s such a category, really.
These women are not necessarily unhappy.
Neither are they neglected.
They simply enjoy the novelty the one man is not enough excitement. The way some people collect shoes, bags, watches stamps is the way these women collect experiences.
Psychologists have long noted that human sexual desire exists on a spectrum. While many people are naturally monogamous, others constantly crave variety. That doesn’t make every action wise, but it does remind us that women are as capable of sexual curiosity as men. How many times have men chosen to ignore that ? Women also like variety, we are just more disciplined , more focused on the bigger picture.
In addition to our other hidden talents, women are also better at keeping secrets.
If men kept secrets as efficiently as women, half the beer parlours in Nigeria would close for lack of gossip.
Now to the interesting part.
When a man pays for sex, people sigh and say, “Men will always be men.”
When a woman does exactly the same thing, society behaves as if the sky has fallen. The headlines are louder, the judgement harsher. The insults are creatively sensational.
Why?
Perhaps because we still struggle to accept that women possess sexual agency.
Our world is comfortable seeing women as objects of desire. We are less comfortable admitting they also experience desire.
That discomfort, however, doesn’t erase reality. And before you make yourself a judge in this matter, none of this is an advertisement for paying for sex. Far from it. Transactional sex has its own plenty emotional, marital and health risks. It can destroy trust, deepen loneliness and complicate already fragile relationships.
So, before we rush to condemn every woman who crosses that line, perhaps we should ask a few uncomfortable questions.
Is there a husband who has abandoned intimacy?
Is there a wife who has endured years of rejection?
Is there emotional abuse hidden behind respectable family photographs?
Or is someone simply making reckless choices?
Every story has a beginning long before a wife books an hotel room or a luxury apartment.
People pay for what they desperately need but cannot easily get. Some pay for convenience or silence.
Some pay for companionship.
Many women pay because their marriages have become museums where nothing moves except the ceiling fan. Their husbands have become neighbors they can choose to greet in the morning or ignore.
Love is free but faithfulness is priceless. But neglect is expensive.
Sometimes, heartbreak sends people shopping in places they never imagined they would visit. The biggest lesson here isn’t that some women pay for sex.
The bigger lesson is this: when affection, intimacy and communication disappear from a relationship, somebody, somewhere, may eventually decide to outsource what should have been freely given at home.
That, dear reader, is the most expensive bill any marriage can ever pay.
- Egbemode, is former President, Nigeria Guild Of Editors, former Commissioner for Information, Osun State, her syndicated column, Intimate Affairs, appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Sunday. She can be reached on egbemode3@gmail.com.