A Bonafide Lovergirl on Sex Work and Heartbreak

This one is only for the bonafide lovergirls.

This is something I can only write about and share publicly now that it’s over. Now that I’m on the other side of it I can see the forest for the trees. The experience of being absolutely crushed, heartbroken, destroyed while still showing up and holding a loving, open sensual space for clients—what a goddamn trip. 

I’m looking at pictures of myself from the spring/summer of 2025, when I was skinny from too many cigarettes, and looking spent from so much crying. I could barely eat. I was journalling obsessively about this deep pain of betrayal and abandonment in my personal life. Forcing myself to go on dates with cuties from apps, then coming home and crying more. Putting on my cute fits, caking my face with makeup and taking great selfies, all the while feeling like a husk of a human. Trying in vain to move through the deep pain of the sudden, confusing and unexpected loss of what I’d believed was a great, uplifting new love in my life.

I was spending too much money talking about it to an online psychic. I was cancelling commitments I had been excited about months before. I was unwell, a mess. Straddling a nervous breakdown most probably, but hey, I’m a single mom who grew up low-income and I have a rabid work ethic and so kept working. Was there any other choice?

One morning in particular—spring 2025 in El Paso—I was putting on my makeup for a client, when I started sobbing and couldn’t stop. The romantic abandonment had hit a core wound and there I was broken open. I let myself cry. For only five minutes or so. Then I cleaned off the tear strewn makeup and started again.

The romantic abandonment had hit a core wound and there I was broken open.

I’ll tell you this honestly—working while suffering inside was hard, but it wasn’t horrible. Work has for a long time now been my soft landing spot. A cozy place that can hold me. I didn’t talk about it beyond some vague general anecdotes here and there in conversation with clients, but I didn’t feel like I needed to betray it either. A sensual meditative space can hold deep emotional pain. The session space held mine, quietly. Through touch and deep breaths again and again and again. It was a sense of normalcy in my emotional sea of despair. An exercise in expanding beyond the painful rumination to be present and sexy. To connect and be seen, even when my protective instinct was to crawl under a rock and rot. And I was appreciated, wooed, worshipped and touched. I was still dying inside but these little islands of respite, of pleasure exchange, were chipping away at something in me that wanted to harden in hurt and resentment. 

See, my work requires me to be soft (well, not in the intake/booking process, as any newbie can tell you I’m a hard-ass cunt there, but in session). For an hour or ninety minutes clients are rocked in my strong-soft capable mommy hands and energy. My work requires me to be present. My sessions are powerful because outside of words there is a felt connection. That connection wouldn’t feel as safe or delicious if I kept all of my pain and anxiety front and center. So, doing the work well has required me to try to put it down for a little while.

Sometimes that has been impossible, so I just loosen my grasp if that was all I can do. Missing the ex lover who rocked my world—oh look a leg, feel that calf, with fingers, knuckles, variations in grip, sliding up and down. Going over words spoken in anger that kept burning—let me lie down my heart to his lower back and rest in several deep breaths here, as if here is all there is—it is. Sessions have been concentrated, meditative practices of continually calling myself back. I won’t pretend that only this healed me—it's a hateful cliché about time healing all wounds—but like so many hateful clichés, it holds truth.

When we talk about neurodivergence we talk about masking as a negative and performative mechanism that takes us further from actualization and authentic connection. When I think about this time in my life though, I am starting to think that there is a way that in some contexts, masking can allow us to open up and step into aspects of ourselves that we might be otherwise blocked from accessing. Meaning—I deserve simple pleasures and light easy conversations in the midst of my existential despair. I deserve to be seen and desired, and to feel sexy and powerful. And if not for my vocation that forced me to put on a happy, or at least neutral face, I likely would not have stepped so consistently into these aspects of my multitudinous self, that I had exiled in my loyalty to my pain, heartache and dread.   

I’ll tell you this honestly—working while suffering inside was hard, but it wasn’t horrible.

Feeling rejected and unattractive, in particular, that unwanted “not-good-enough” grief is a wild one to be in, while attempting to hold a space imbued with desire-energy. I know my lovergirls reading this know what I’m talking about. It is part of our job as sex workers to be the objects of desire and to bask in our own slutty beauty. So how then, when we are reckoning with ground-shaking heartbreak, which has unearthed abandonment issues and feelings of being tiny and insignificant, can we show up powerfully to be desired and to play in desire? Sometimes we phone it in. We rally as much of ourselves as we can, and we arrive at the sacred space. Sometimes we are just barely inhabiting a body, let alone housing an awareness of sexual prowess. 

For me, it has always pulled me back, tethered me to something so much bigger than interpersonal trauma, even if just in glimpses. Even if just an hour of reprieve. The chipping away at the calcification, the undoing of that pain building to resentment was continual. 

And now, thanks to so much journaling and so many tears, grief-processing and therapy, steady friends and kindness to self, reframe after reframe. Building new habits and a healthier environment, coping skills, and just the passing of time; I’m on the other side and I can feel the difference. I’m not lugging around that tender heavy hurt anymore. I may not be completely free, but I am rebirthed. I am better. 

The only way out really is through, and for us as sex workers, sometimes through looks like role-playing our healed self for a live-in-person audience. 

I’m on the other side and I can feel the difference. I’m not lugging around that tender heavy hurt anymore.

For me, my work; my relationships with my clients are an arena of healthy, boundaried, secure affection. And yet something in me, probably not unrelated to the heart-break-scarred-intimacy-skittish-part, recoils a tiny bit when a client unexpectedly drops the Love bomb on me.  I recently had an extremely sweet client tell me he loved me. He prefaced it with, “I’m not trying to be creepy but…” I spoke with a sweet sex worker friend about what this brought up for me. What does that declaration mean in the context of our boundaried intimacy? Why does it make me feel worried?

I know I am getting more free because I am learning and accepting that love can be simple and matter of fact—not tied to control, obligation or pain. 

I love my clients the way I love pizza and I want them to love me that way back. I adore pizza. I don’t want to change it (I’m from New York please don’t talk to me about putting lettuce on a pizza). I’m so glad it exists and I will always want some of it. Not everyday, but forever-regularly-now-and-then, I cherish the taste and the whole experience, for sure.

To be clear I could write this essay about any kind of work, any practice that I could call my whole self into. It’s sex work here, but it could also be an art practice, or parenting or working out. An office job, writing or farming, etc, etc, etc. There’s a unique rub to navigating heartbreak within a sensual, intimate space—and it’s sure rubbed out some emotional knots and blocks for me in the past year. 

We bring whatever we are working through to whatever work we are doing. The pain and existential crisis of a deep heartbreak can, when held just so, deepen our intimacy work and allow for spaciousness and reprieve from “stuck” pain-spirals. And it's not unique, although hard to believe that when a heartbreak feels so absolutely personal, it's actually one more opportunity for overlap, because this, too, is so very human.   

For more articles on sex work and relationships, take a look at Losing Friends As A Sex Worker and Surviving The Sea of Grief.

Are you a sex worker with a story, opinion, news, or tips to share? We'd love to hear from you!

We started the tryst.link sex worker blog to help amplify those who aren't handed the mic and bring attention to the issues ya'll care about the most. Got a tale to tell? 👇☂️✨