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Notes -
A close friend (Bob) is considering proposing to his girlfriend (Alice). Alice is an ex-prostitute. I am trying to talk him out of it.
By Bob's account (which I presume in turn is him parroting Alice's account), Alice's stint in the oldest profession was a regretted youthful indiscression perpetrated in her teens, for a couple of months. She wasn't groomed, she wasn't coerced, she wasn't doing what she had to do to feed her starving family: she was just horny and kinky and thought it would be hot. After it proved less hot than she anticipated, Alice got out of there and never did it again, and since had the 'normie' sex life of a 21st century young woman: (uncompensated) app hookups interspersed with long term monogamous relationships, most lately Bob.
My gut-level revulsion at the prospect of wife-ing a ho makes my effort to talk Bob out of it difficult, as my churning viscera limits my rhetorical strategy from being much more sophisticated than, in so many words, just yelling "CUCK CUCK CUCK" at him. Perhaps with a side of "If you're not part of the solution for deterring teen whorishness by making it's practitioners persona non grata in polite society, then that's how you get more teen whores".
I am wondering if the astute minds of The Motte can help me think up any more coherent arguments to deploy.
The wiseness of marrying her or not is going to depend on who she is now and in the future, the past is useful in-so-far as it informs those.
Having promiscuous sex is a sign that someone
Does not treat sex as special or sacred or important, at least not to the extent that a chaste person does.
Does not have a proactive loyalty or consideration towards their future partner. A chaste person who saves themselves shows respect and loyalty to the person who they will eventually end up with, before they've even met them. This means that once they do and that person fills that role they are irreplaceable.
Does not think about long-term consequences of their actions, or highly value things like reputation and honorable behavior. A lot of people are going to find this behavior icky, which both severely narrows down the promiscuous person's future partners, and leaves a permanent regret in the heart of partners who decide to forgive their past but still have to know about it.
All of this together means such people are more likely to cheat, and more likely to divorce when they get bored and find someone new. Their current partner may be special, but they are unlikely to be the same level of special that a purely monogamous person would have. However, this is correlational, not guaranteed. And people can change. I don't know Alice, I don't know how much she's changed since then, how loyal she is, how devoted she is to Bob, how much she does or does not regret her past. All I know is that however many years ago she thought that sleeping with however many guys was an acceptable thing to inflict on Bob before she ever met him. But ultimately, the decision is up to Bob. He has to figure out whether he's willing to be guy #537 to Alice, whether he can accept that without it bothering him for the rest of his life. And decide how much he trusts her, whether he's actually truly special to her or just another notch in her belt. And he's allowed to choose to marry her. And it might even be the right decision, I don't know her, I don't know how much her past speaks to her current character, whether she's still the same kind of person or whether she's truly changed.
But when making an argument, it should be focused on Bob, his future, and what's right for him. Her past only matters in-so-far as it affects those.
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