This exploratory study identified a number of ways in which sex work impacts negatively on women’s personal romantic relationships. The findings of this study support the need for further studies to be undertaken to determine if the findings are reflected in a larger, more representative sample of Australian sex workers and should be considered in the context of any future intervention and support programs aimed at addressing the tensions sex workers experience between their work and personal relationships. Greater public awareness and education programs aimed at addressing the negative stigma associated with the sex industry may go some way towards easing the issues faced by women in their personal relationships.

Most women (78%) reported that, overall, sex work affected their personal romantic relationships in predominantly negative ways, mainly relating to issues stemming from lying, trust, guilt and jealousy. A small number of women reported positive impacts from sex work including improved sexual self-esteem and confidence. Just under half of women were in a relationship at the time of the study and, of these, 51% reported their partner was aware of the nature of their work. Seventy-seven percent of single women chose to remain single due to the nature of their work. Many women used mental separation as a coping mechanism to manage the tensions between sex work and their personal relationships. Member checking validated the accuracy of the questionnaire data.

Fifty-five women working in the indoor sex industry in Melbourne, Australia, were recruited to complete a self-report questionnaire about various aspects of their work, including the impact of sex work on their personal relationships. Questionnaires were completed anonymously and included both closed and open-ended questions. A further six women were interviewed to ‘member check’ the accuracy of the questionnaire findings.

Very limited research has been undertaken on sex workers’ personal romantic relationships and the impact the nature of their work has on their relationships. This exploratory study aimed to explore the impact sex work has on women’s personal romantic relationships and the use of mental separation as a coping mechanism to balance the two aspects of their lives.

Data Availability: Data are available from the Alfred Hospital Ethics Committee for researchers who meet the criteria for access to confidential information, due to restrictions outlined in the consent form. Interested researchers may contact Kordula Dunscombe of the Alfred Hospital Ethics Committee if they would like access to the data ( k.dunscombe@alfred.org.au ).

Introduction

Sex work involves one or more services where sex is exchanged for money or goods [1]. Sex workers however are not a homogenous group [2, 3]. Street sex workers are generally illegal workers who meet clients on the street and service them in alleys, or the clients’ cars, whereas indoor sex workers are employed to work in brothels, massage parlours or as call girls [4]. Past research has shown both street sex workers and indoor sex workers have commonly experienced high levels of abuse in childhood and adulthood [5–10]. While rates of abuse and trauma are lower for indoor sex workers than street sex workers, they are still higher than the general population [10–13].

Sex workers commonly face significant stigma related barriers regardless of where they work, due to their perceived violation of gendered norms through sex with multiple partners and strangers, taking sexual initiative and control, inciting male desires, and receiving fees for sex [14–16]. Stigma can be external and enacted through discrimination by others, or an internalised sense of shame [15], and is generally accompanied by an intense fear of others ‘finding out’ about their work due to the stigma associated with it [14, 17–19].

In Australia, legislation surrounding sex work varies by state and territory and in a number of states/territories some forms of sex work are legal [20]. In Victoria, under the Prostitution Control Act 1994, indoor sex work in a licensed brothel, escort agency or private setting is legal, however street based sex work remains illegal [21]. As part of legislature, indoor sex workers cannot knowingly work with a sexually transmitted infection (STI) and are required to have three monthly STI testing and provide a certificate to work [22].

Information from the AIDS Council of NSW (a state in Australia) suggests approximately 20,000 legal and illegal sex workers are working in the Australian sex industry at any one time [20]. Most sex workers in Australia predominantly work in the legal indoor sex industry, with estimates of between 2%-10% of street based workers in the industry [20, 23, 24]. It is difficult to provide estimates of the number of sex workers due to the transient nature of sex work and sex workers reluctance to report working in the sex industry. This is often due to aspects which remain criminalised which may result in them incriminating themselves or making themselves a target of abuse (20). The stigma surrounding the industry also means they are often reluctant to disclose their work even with family and friends, and the knowledge that in Australia once registered, their name will remain listed in a sex work database regardless of whether they are still working in the industry [20].

While there are some commonalities between street sex workers and indoor sex workers, generally there are vastly different issues associated with their work and substantially different conditions in which it takes place [9, 10, 18]. Indoor sex workers are far less likely to report injecting drug use or issues around poor health compared to outdoor sex workers (20). They are also less likely to report concerns around personal safety or to experience work related violence compared to outdoor workers due to regulations and controls in place in the legal sex industry [20]. Indoor sex workers are also more likely to view their work as a career than a transient job and remain in the industry long-term and tend to express different concerns in relation to their work including problems surrounding their personal relationships [18].

While considerable research has been conducted on street sex workers, there is considerably less data on indoor sex workers. The majority of past research on indoor sex workers has related to condom use and physical health. Past research has found that many sex workers use condoms with clients but are less likely to in their personal lives [19, 25–29]. The absence of condoms appears to signify security, intimacy and trust between sex workers and their personal partners. Perceived intimacy is the strongest predictor of non-condom use, with condoms serving as an emotional, physical and symbolic barrier between sex workers work and personal lives [27, 30, 31].

In a study by Warr and Pyett [31] of condom use in female indoor and street sex workers’ personal romantic relationships in Victoria, Australia, researchers found that almost all 24 women did not use condoms in their private relationships in order to maintain a distinction between sex with clients and sex with private partners. All of the women reported tensions associated with working in the sex industry and having a private sexual relationship including issues of jealousy, resentment, disapproval and disrespect from partners due to the nature of their work. A recent study by Bilardi et al. [25] based in Melbourne, Australia, examined female sex workers’ job satisfaction but also briefly noted that women working in the sex industry reported problems in their personal relationships which stemmed from their work. Most participants reported that sex work interfered with their romantic relationships adversely due to issues of jealousy, guilt and safe sex practices. Seventy-five percent of women stated that the job made it too difficult to sustain a relationship and 80% reported that sex work interfered with romantic relationships.

Previous studies that have touched on sex workers personal relationships as part of the broader study have also found sex work negatively affects personal relationships. In a study by Sanders [32], which examined sex work from the perspective of risk management in England, it was found that negative emotions generated by the commodification of women’s bodies through sex work affected their social identities and relationships, with women struggling to separate sex at work with sex for pleasure. In a further study by Rossler et al. [33], examining the mental health of women in the sex industry in Switzerland, women stated relationships commonly failed because their partners could not separate out sex at work with sex at home even though the women themselves could.

To cope with these issues, sex workers commonly adopt behaviours to separate their work and personal lives [17, 19, 29, 32]. Work/family border theory proposed by Clark [34] argues that work and family influence each other. Work and home lives differ in terms of purpose as well as culture and have specific patterns of attitudes and behaviour for each. Some level of integration is necessary to balance the two spheres of an individual’s life, but the degree to which this occurs varies between people. According to work/family border theory, borders are lines of segregation between domains, defining where a person’s behaviours begin and end. A physical border defines where these take place, temporal borders define when the behaviours take place and psychological borders are defined by the individual, dictating when behaviours, thinking patterns and emotions are appropriate for each. The more flexible a border is, the more an individual can think about work while at home and home while at work. When domains are very different it can be more difficult to juggle the conflicting demands and an individual can experience confusion about their identity and purpose [34].

In a study by Wolffers et al. [29] on female sex workers in Indonesia, the majority of who were married or had previously been married, two important ways sex workers kept their work and personal lives separate were living far away from work and changing their dress and make-up. Another important aspect was maintaining emotional distance at work while being emotionally involved at home. Other strategies sex workers commonly use to cope with the demands of sex work are taking regular breaks at work, physical boundaries between work and home, keeping to time during consults, hiding appearance and avoiding emotional relationships with clients [17, 19]. This can however, lead to issues with dissociation and denial and affect women’s mental health [35, 36]. Similarly, Sanders [19] found indoor sex workers constructed a manufactured identity in order to maintain a sense of self by limiting certain feelings to work, and certain feelings to their personal lives. Women had certain rituals surrounding clothing, behaviour and appearance to separate their identities, with some women even referring to their work persona in the third person.

The romantic relationships of indoor sex workers, outside of work, has not been studied extensively despite being raised as a concern by many women in the sex industry [25, 29, 37]. It is likely that the nature of sex work impacts on many areas of women’s personal relationships. It could be argued that psychologically, activities at work and home are very different for sex workers and therefore strong borders between the two would be required in order for a person to cope with the very differing demands. This study developed from findings of an earlier study by Bilardi et al. [25] which found that female sex workers struggled with the tensions between sex work and their personal romantic relationships. The aim of this study was to explore the impact sex work has on women’s personal romantic relationships and the use of mental separation as a coping mechanism to balance the two aspects of their lives.