In 2018, I arrived in Asia with a simple intention —to learn the art of spice blending and, if I am honest, to not eat alone. For four months in India and Nepal, families invited me into their homes through home-stays where meals were shared around a common table and conversation flowed easily, full of warmth and curiosity. Those moments felt like the connection I craved.
Louis C.K. once said, “It’s kind of awkward to eat alone in a restaurant because everybody’s looking at me.”
I felt that awkwardness, especially in the quiet moments of traveling solo.
My background in education, sacred intimacy, and compassionate conversation, where I learned to dissolve shame and ask for what I wanted without fear or manipulation, helped shaped my hope for authentic encounters—meals shared, laughter exchanged, glimpses into how others live and love.
Thailand, however, was different. Airbnb meant a lock-box code and solitude. I found myself wondering how I might meet people — and, perhaps more honestly, how I might make connections. Drawn to Asian culture for as long as I can remember, I wasn’t looking for sex tourism, holiday girlfriend, or fleeting adventures as a single man. Instead, I joined dating apps, introducing myself as someone interested in authentic cultural exchange and genuine companionship. What I discovered was far more complicated than I expected.
The Marketplace of Desire
The first thing I learned was that I am a farang — a foreigner, a word spoken with a mix of curiosity and resentment. A taxi driver explained it kindly, but I already felt it in the glances on the street, the undertones in the markets. Being a white, middle-aged, Western man carried a history, one shaped by sex tourism, gender hierarchy, and economic disparity. I wasn’t just a traveler; I was a symbol of power and privilege, whether I wanted to be or not.
Thailand’s sex tourism industry has deep roots. During the wars of the last century, from Korean to Vietnam, Thailand became a playground for Western soldiers on R&R. The legacy remains: massage parlors, go-go bars, escort agencies, entire neighborhoods that cater to foreign men. What began as wartime recreation has evolved into a transactional industry of pseudo-intimacy, where sex, pleasure and even companionship are commodities.
While walking the streets of Pattaya, I was solicited … my arm grabbed, my body brushed, invitations whispered. It wasn’t prudishness that jarred me, but because of how quickly a human interaction became a transaction. Everything could be bought: a drink, a shirt, a smile, a body. It wasn’t so different from the discrete exchanges back in America, hidden behind closed doors — just more honest about what the transaction details and what was being traded.
The Hierarchy of Want
This transactional world revealed a deeper truth about patriarchy, where unequal access shapes desire. Men are taught to lead, to provide, to take; women to adapt, please, and follow. Over time, these roles create a quiet but powerful hierarchy, where pursuit and possession are seen as strength for men, and patience and endurance become virtues for women. When men have easy access to women, this power difference starts to feel normal—and even desirable. Attraction begins to reflect control, not who has choice.
In the sex worker industry, some women navigate this system with agency, setting prices, establishing boundaries, and controlling their earnings. They reclaim power within a patriarchal structure designed to limit it. Exposing the hidden economy beneath all relationships—where affection, attention, sex and safety are negotiated.
As Oscar Wilde observed, “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”
I saw this truth reflected in every exchange, from the streets to the apps.
Yet, for every woman exercising choice, another is driven by necessity. The same system that grants autonomy to some, creates constraint for another. Patriarchy turns relationship into a constant negotiation of dominance and submission. Even when women gain some measure of control, they must work harder to keep it, while men rarely lose power, even when they lose control.
The Clarity and Cost of Transaction
This economy of desire wasn’t limited to sex—it permeated daily life. A street vendor flattered me to sell another serving of mango and sticky rice. A woman online sought not only affection, but a monthly allowance for companionship. A bar girl laughed while negotiating her rate. These interactions revealed an invisible ledger of needs and survival, where every exchange carried a price.
It forced me to ask: Is any form of intimacy truly free from exchange, or do we simply change the currency?
Even in romantic relationships, we trade attention, validation, or status. Currencies less transparent than money but no less real. We offer care to feel needed, devotion and commitment to feel secure, desire to feel seen. The difference lies in honesty: sex work openly names the price, while romance often pretends there isn’t one, hidden beneath the so-called language of love.
Reflecting on my own journey, I recalled my years studying somatic sex education, where I learned about conscious touch as a path to healing. I was now facing a paradox: the freedom to ask for what I wanted—tenderness, connection—came through a system that turned care into commerce. My search for authentic intimacy collided with a reality where touch was a tolerated economic commodity, revealing the cost of my own privilege.
Read Sabrinna Valisce’s full account here on what it was like under Prohibition and Decriminalisation in New Zealand.
Love as Purchase: The Marriage Economy
The logic of these transactional exchanges extend beyond the red-light districts and into the sanctified spaces of marriage. In Asian cultures, the tradition of sin sod — a dowry offered by the groom to the bride’s family symbolizes respect and the ability to provide. Beneath the ritual, though, flows the same current of transaction and ownership disguised as devotion. Families negotiate amounts—gold, cash, status—and display them publicly, as if a woman’s worth can be measured.
For many modern couples, sin sod is symbolic — often returned after the ceremony or quietly omitted. Yet the undertone persists… in some contexts, love carries a price tag. Whether in brothels or at weddings. The difference is in the packaging, one explicit, the other beautifully dressed. Recognizing this, I began to see how deeply transaction shapes connection, even in spaces meant to transcend it.
The Work of Unlearning
My time in Thailand keeps stripping away the layers of my own culture’s programming and illusions. I came seeking connection and found a world where desire was sold, suppressed, or (de)moralized. My background in sacred intimacy had taught me that desire isn’t immoral—it’s the unconscious power behind it that distorts love. In Thailand, I saw this power at work, not just in the sex worker industry but in every interaction shaped by economic disparity and gender roles.
The freedom to ask for touch, learned through years of study, comes at a cost here. To request tenderness or care, I had to offer money. My sense of safety relied on someone else pretending as if they were safe. This is not about guilt—it is clarity. The healing I had once found through consensual conscious touch back in America … exists here within a system that commodifies care. Forcing me to look at a different role I need to play within this framework.
Learning What I Want by Experiencing What I Don’t
Travel (and life) has a way of revealing truths through discomfort. By staying longer in places to deal with my boredom, I learned what I wanted by encountering what I didn’t. Not flawless ideals, but the quiet strength of authenticity, care, and understanding. Our personal values take shape in uneasy, difficult and challenging places, where longing meets disillusionment and disappointment. It’s in this friction of unmet expectations where we get to clarify who we are and what we want.
Real honest love and care for another is not something that can be purchased. It’s a reciprocal give and take practice. Love is a verb, demonstrated through our daily actions as a consistent commitment to the growth of another. It’s sharing our joy’s and disappointment’s, holding presence without turning another person into a transactional object of exchange. Love refuses the invisible contracts that patriarchy and commerce impose.
Toward an Honest Love
Love in a patriarchal world is messy and tough. It’s tangled in power, money, rigid gender roles, guilt and shame. Centuries of male dominance and economic disparity shape how we connect and what we demand. Seeing it clearly is the first step.
When we realize our genuine care gets twisted into a trade of wants and demands, we start breaking free from patriarchy’s grip. Centuries of men holding power and wealth have turned love into a deal, but facing this raw truth—without sugarcoating—lets us choose real connection over scripted roles that serves the greater good.
It’s about acting with guts to reject those roles.
Love will always brush up against the edge of power —
but if we can name it and call it out, and handle it with honesty and curiosity, rather than control,
then something honest and real can emerge:
not a transaction or a show, but actual presence.
A shared table where no one eats alone.
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