Firing clients is an important tool to have as a sex worker.
I’ll tell you a story about why I say that.
I had a client who came to DC to see me for an overnight. He had a great time, but there was something off about him I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I had a bad gut feeling.
Nonetheless we booked another date. I wanted to give him a second chance.
He came to DC again to visit me, this time seeing me for a day and a half. It turned out to be a mistake. He was emotionally draining, always complaining and seeing the world through a negative lens.
He said “I love you”, after which I requested he not do it again. He said it again just a few hours later.
Why it’s important to fire problematic clients
Even though we had a 3-day FMTY planned for the following month, I realized with the help of my coach it wasn’t worth seeing this client again.
The toll he took on my well-being and my ability to see other clients was too much. It took me days to recover after seeing him.
So, before I left for my December 2022 vacation to Turkey, I mustered the courage to send him an email explaining that we were not compatible, I was cancelling the FMTY, and returning his deposit. I made it clear that this was a firm decision and I didn’t want any follow-up.
Unfortunately, that didn’t stop him from trying to contact me through different accounts, even filling out my screening form again in hopes of getting closure. He even messaged me on my OnlyFans, risked getting my account deleted.
In January 2023, he even went as far as buying something from my wishlist as a manipulation tactic.
For the rest of 2023, he’d comment on my social media posts until I finally had to block him. And blocked him again when he made another account.
Thankfully, I never feared for my physical safety, but it was clear that this client was showing his true colors.
Protecting emotional health by firing clients
This story shows it’s important to listen to what people say and how they make you feel. Listen to what your gut feelings are telling you.
It’s one thing to be a fantasy girlfriend, but never at the expense of our own well-being and safety.
I know taking a client or a booking can mean a lot. Taking an extended date can relieve a lot of financial stress or even turn a good month into a great month.
But when you have a client that crosses boundaries, pay attention. When you have a gut feeling, pay attention.
How to trust your gut feelings with clients
We live in a very logical world. In my 20’s I was pushed to always have a logical reason for everything. If you always need to have evidence to explain you decisions – even ones that require emotions– that means that you have fallen into the fallacy of needing to always be logical.
As I came into my power as a woman, I realized that not everything has to have objective proof. You and I are humans, and emotions are part of our lives. We’re not robots, and expecting ourselves to be robots is going to be unhealthy for us emotionally in the long term.
The way to bridge the gap between our logical brains and emotional brains is to treat our emotions as symptoms. Our emotions are there to tell us important information. So they can be the starting point for observing our thoughts, assumptions and what’s happening to us.
So when you’re getting a bad gut feeling when interacting with a client – whether in real life or over email– it’s OK to take that into consideration before you see them or see them again. Trusting your gut doesn’t mean forgetting logic. It means using your gut feelings, emotional intelligence and analytical skills to make good decisions.
Using my emotions to help make decisions has been good for business. It helps me stay happy, which is important for me showing up as my full wonderful self for clients. And it helps me make quicker decisions because I’m not overthinking and trying to write a thesis in my mind for supporting a decision.
Learning to lean into our emotions takes practice. It’s a skill that’s driven out of us with the unhelpful rhetoric of being an “irrational woman”.
Accept your powerful femininity and humanity. Start trusting your gut feelings when dealing with clients. So sometimes that means firing clients.
Take it from me—trust your gut, protect your well-being, and never be afraid to say, “This isn’t working for me.
[…] Here’s a blog post in which I talk about a particular client. […]