This.

I sometimes walk by the red light district.

One time I seriously considered having sex with a sex worker.

I talked to multiple of them to find a click and I was appalled by all my interaction.

I realized that I wanted intimacy leading into sex.

What they offered: strictly penetrative sex and nothing else.

As I got older, another issue arose: to what extent is intimacy actual intimacy when you are paying for it?

Intimacy implies someone caring about you and you caring about him/her. That suddenly means it has an ethical component of idealism attached to it.

For me anyways.

I've made the plunge and become a "John" a few times now, always in other countries where sex work is either legal or tolerated/quasi-legal.

I must say the experience varied a lot. About half were mechanical and just felt like they were trying to get my money. That feels pretty hollow.

But I've also had some really great experiences where I felt like we had a genuine connection. I grant that this is not "real" intimacy in the sense of "they care for you", but it did feel something like chemistry or attraction.

And finally I have not tried this but have read enough anecdotes suggesting that you can get intimacy while paying in good sugar daddy-sugar babe relationships. That won't be cheap though.

I've finished my 2nd viewing of Blade Runner:2049; the replicant K buys an AI(-ish) holographic program that presents itself as a beautiful, loving wife, her name is Joi. Think about that, robots buying robot love (I know it's a movie, work with me.) Comes the turning point, they have to run. Joi has been a constant companion to K all this time, if the bad guys get access to her "memories", they have access to everything K ever did, saw, everywhere he went. You have to destroy the console, she said. But that means if anything happens to the remote, you'd be destroyed, gone forever, he said. Break the antenna too, she said.

On first watch, I thought, awww, semi-sentient AI fumbling toward love. On second watch, I thought, there's nothing here that replicant K doesn't want. He wants to destroy the console. He wants to destroy the antenna. That it came from her voice doesn't change that, especially not when the advert for Joi - a Wallace product - is "Everything you want to see, everything you want to hear." There's no AI in love, there's only K, has been all along. Joi is an extremely well-adapted product.

There exists sex work which in places like Japan where the experience is flirting with girls or cuddling. I haven't tried the cuddling thing but I did go to a few girl bars where you pay an expensive cover fee to get in but the bartenders are all pretty girls who will flirt with you.

My assumption was that the experience would somehow be cheapened because I was paying for it, but that wasn't the case. I came to the conclusion that my limbic system doesn't really know the difference.

Maybe I got lucky. A similar experience could have felt pretty bad if the girl was clearly only trying to get tips, but in this case it worked out.

I can't speak for Japan, but in Thailand, Philippines etc. the intent of such girls is to find a long term partner and settle down.