Could you, would you?

[Vitruvian]

It's funny how 'love' and 'respect' get mixed up and confused. You can love someone without truly respecting them and you can respect someone without loving them. However love and respect together is the strongest combination.

If you fall in love with a sex worker and you are totally aware of what they do for a living at that point, then you can not put conditions on that love. You have to be able to love them regardless of what they do and then if that person loves you back they need to be able to love and respect you regardless of the fact that they met you as a client or person who has been a client for others.

I personally think true love can see the difference between a sexual act and love itself, which are totally different things. If you can accept that they bare no comparison, then why should you not believe that the person you love is able to be mentally faithful to you? If you are both mentally on the same wave length, then you will not be disrespecting each other, but working together to make the relationship work, make compromise where necessary and respect past and future commitments already made.

Just because you have fallen in love with someone, does not mean that you can just 'stop' working and even if you were able to support the person working as a Sex worker, how does that value their Independence? How does that show respect to the person that you met and fell in love with? How does that help them achieve their long term goals?

In my mind the 'love' is the easy bit. It's putting your feelings and emotions second in order to let the person you love flourish and achieve their goals in order to have a future together that shows real respect and compassion. If you can support that person in anyway you can, then the future goals belong to both of you and that future may or may not involve one partner being a sex worker, but that would be something you agree upon together and based on what is right for the two of you. It's not about wanting to change the person you fell in love with, as much as growing together as a couple and the stronger you are the more respect you have for each other.

On a last note. I do wonder how someone who offers sexual services, could not respect someone who would allow them to do their job while in a relationship, bearing in mine most clients are in a relationship? Does that mean they have no respect for the majority of their clients? Just a thought.

Yes, you can love someone and not respect them, however in romantic love, you cannot continue to be in love if there is no respect, it will become contempt.
As for respect, it is an attitude, not an emotion and depending on if a relationship is wanted, then different standards would probably apply.

[Empirical]

So, romantic love is the basis for marriage, is that what you're saying?

If it is, the divorce statistics tell another story.

Romantic love is a fairly recent invention, say the last 200+ years—even if it has roots in the troubadours centuries before, though wasn't that all unrequited and platonic?

Dynastic marriages are pretty old hat now, but what about the "business partnership" model? This latter was more about mutual support—you might say they have a lot of similarities to arranged marriages, the Indian ones perhaps, rather than those in Lisdoonvarna.