I'm a 28-year-old male in a long-term committed relationship with a twenty-one-year-old girl who's beautiful and sexy and wonderful and such. Before we met, she was a high-end prostitute. Her boyfriend at the time did not know this. She did not need the money and generally maintains that this was the low point of her life, that she was severely depressed, and that it took months for her to right herself and get out of the business.

After we had been seeing each other for a bit, but only kinda sorta serious, she started stripping. I'm a sex-positive guy, I like strippers and strip clubs, so no problem. I drove her to and from work, I helped her find auditions and encouraged her to do what she wanted. But increasingly it became apparent that she had to be drunk to do the work. And that she skipped out on a lot of jobs. And eventually a mutual friend (that worked at one of the strip clubs) asked why she kept doing it since she seemed not to like it. She really didn't like being questioned about her stripping so everyone laid off.

One day I picked her up from stripping and she was hysterically crying and begged me not to let her strip any more. She said it made her want to go back to the dark days of the past, that she wanted to start escorting again, but that she doesn't want to go back to what was a hellish experience that she hated—and asked me to help give her the strength to get out of the business altogether. Great. No problem.

A few months later we're much more serious. Then the friend who got her involved with escorting drops her a line on Facebook.

The rest of the question—and my response—after the jump.

My girlfriend is pensive and quiet for days, but generally all right.

On her birthday a few days later, a very aggressive assholish guy that had been making fun of her friends, insulting the owners of the house we were in, and putting me down, got really aggressive sexually with her and ended up taking her home to his place.

The next day my girlfriend came to my place (where she had pretty much been living) and told me she didn't know why she was compelled to fuck him. It was something about the way men paid attention to her and that she hated herself and didn't know what to do. I kicked her out because she humiliated me in front of all my friends by fucking that guy, and I needed to deal with how I felt by myself. However, I told the friend she was moving in with pretty much what I just wrote you and warned her that my girlfriend probably would start getting involved in the sex industry and should be discouraged from doing so.

The next day I hear from my girlfriend and she's stripping again. I call her and tell her that even though I need time, I don't think it's good for her to be stripping and I point out she doesn't need the money. She says stripping makes her feel good.

Days later I get a call at work from her. I know something is very, very wrong. I find her in a park in nearly catatonic state with bandages covering the slits along her wrists and she tells me how she's mentally making a client list to go back to escorting. I take her to the hospital and she's moved to the psych ward. I visit her every day. The doctors tell me that she needs to stop drinking and see a psychiatrist longterm because she has self-destructive behavior that somehow links back to sexually acting out and she needs to work through that.

Time goes by after her release. We end up getting close again. Things seem better, but she's still quite depressed as she ended up losing all of her friends in the above process.

Yesterday she told me she wants to start stripping again and I basically say she can pack her bags and I don't want to deal with it any more if she's going to do that again.

1. I don't suppose there is some easy, cover-all answer about what is compelling her to act like this, is there?

2. As a sex-positive guy that likes strippers, porn, strip-clubs, etc., do I have a right to object to her stripping again? It seems to me some people approach such jobs in a healthy way, and this just isn't healthy at all.

3. She's starting to claim that I'm oppressing her and that society has a problem with her sexuality, but I think not wanting her to strip—at least until she sees a shrink and works things out—is reasonable, don't you?

4. Are there any resources that she can use for this kind of thing? It's pretty heavy for me to do all the lifting.

Wants To Help

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1. She's a mess.

2. As a booze-positive guy that likes beer, Mai Tais, imperfect Manhattans, champagne, etc., I nevertheless object to alcoholics going out and boozing it up. Because I recognize that, for some, boozing is a real problem. I drink in moderation, I enjoy it, I make no apologies. And my refusal to buy rounds for alcoholics does not make me a hypocrite.

3. You're the reasonable one, WTH, she's the messy/trainwrecky one. And do you know what you're not? You're not her therapist, her parole officer, or her guardian angel. You can't force her to stop stripping, turning tricks, or self-destructing. You can't lock her up, you can't stop her from doing whatever she decides to do. And now that she's externalizing her inner messy/trainwrecky conflict about sex work and casting you as the controlling, sex-negative, hypocritical villain, WTH, this shitstorm is only gonna get worse. Run.

4. You keep saying that she doesn't "need the money," that she doesn't have to strip or do sex work to support herself. Since it doesn't sound like either you or her ex-boyfriend were supporting her financially—surely you would've included that detail—your girlfriend presumably has resources: family money, a civilian job that pays well, some other income stream(s). So when she's ready to get the help she needs, WTH, it sounds like she can afford to go get it. And you're not obligated to hang in there playing the role of punchingbag/knightinshiningarmor/horrifiedwitness until she's ready to get help. You did what you could. Now it's time to dump her.

And if you think she's spiraling out of control and is a danger to herself, WTH, call her family—assuming they're not to blame for her problems—and let them know that their daughter/sister/niece needs help. But leave the details out.