I've been doing this long enough to have what I'd describe as a methodology, which is either a sign of a certain kind of personality or evidence that I've thought about it more than necessary. Probably both.
The methodology: I read the profile carefully. Not just the description but how it's written. The grammar, vocabulary, the specific choices of what to include and exclude. This sounds like I'm overcomplicating it. I'm overcomplicating it slightly. But I've found over six years that the way a profile is written is predictive of the experience. Not perfectly predictive. But directionally useful.
What I'm looking for isn't elegance exactly. I've booked women with plainly written profiles who were excellent. What I'm looking for is consistency and specificity. A profile that knows what it's offering is usually a provider who knows what they're doing. Vague profiles tend to produce vague bookings. That's a generalisation with exceptions but it's held up enough that I keep using it.
I also read reviews where they exist. I'm aware that's a contested thing. Some providers don't allow reviews, have had bad experiences with review culture, find it dehumanising. I understand those objections. But reviews do provide information I wouldn't otherwise have, and I weight them carefully. A single bad review among twenty good ones tells me something. Twenty similar reviews tells me something else.
The ethics of the transaction is something I've thought about more as the years have gone on. I didn't think about it much at the start. I was in a relationship that had become something neither of us wanted but that neither of us had the energy to end, and this felt easier than the alternatives. I see escorts now without that context. Just because I want to, which I think is a more honest position.
The ethics aren't simple. I've read arguments from researchers and advocates who take very different positions: that the industry is inherently exploitative, that it's a legitimate service, everything between. I can see validity in positions I don't ultimately hold. What I've landed on is that the relevant ethical questions are less about the transaction in the abstract and more about the specifics. Is this person choosing this? Do they have alternatives? Am I treating them decently? I can only ever partially answer those questions and I hold that uncertainty honestly.
I travel for work and book in other cities. Zurich occasionally, Amsterdam once or twice, Dublin a couple of times. What's interesting is how differently each market works. Zurich is organised and legal and calm. Dublin felt more informal, faster. London is enormous and anything you want exists here if you can find it, which cuts both ways.
My partner doesn't know. We've been together four years and it's a good relationship by most measures and this is the thing I'm not transparent about. I've thought about the logic of that quite a bit. My conclusion, for now, is that I'm not prepared to have that conversation and its consequences, and that's a choice I'm making and living with. Whether it's the right choice, I'm not certain. But I've stopped pretending to be certain about things I'm not.