For the couples in the adult industry, another day at the office could be grounds for divorce for anyone else.

Hentai Productions founder, Wayne Hentai, has been in the industry for over eight years. He not only has a seasoned perspective, but a backstage view as well. Because his position has mostly been on the business end, his views of love and sex tend to focus on the economical value of a relationship.

At first, everyone tries to separate their personal and professional sex lives. Wayne sees this as something that only a small few accomplish.

In Wayne’s opinion, when a girl or guy enters the business, they may have specific ideas about what they think will happen. Sometimes they think that they can get work together, as a couple, but that is rarely a successful model. “The fact is that people want to see the girl have sex with different guys and it gets pretty stale if she's only having sex with the same guy. When a girl only works with one guy, you're talking about a girl with real clout who can call her own shots. But that's very rare,” he says.

They eventually agree that if they are both going to stay in the business, they need to expand their repertoire. Wayne has noticed that when this happens, the guy is the one who usually gets less work. “It's hard for the guys to get noticed,” he says.

Finally, issues that any couple experiences during the course of a relationship develop: insecurity, jealousy, control, and resentment will rear their heads. A partner may not be as comfortable as they initially thought with the other’s job. He or she may try to limit the scenes to only several sex scenarios. A guy may ask his girlfriend to only stick to girl on girl movies, or he might want her to avoid a specific actor or gang bangs.

“That's pretty dumb,” says Wayne, “because he's not letting her make the money she could be making.”

Overall, Wayne thinks that having a steady partner in the business is usually bad for business. “You have to be a very secure person to enter this business with a significant other and be ok with her having sex with other guys. When it does work it's often because you've been around this business for a long time,” he says.

Bobbi Star is a California born, college-educated, oboe-playing, award-winning porn actress. Among the list of accolades, she’s been named 2009 CAVR Star of Year and 2010 AVN Award winner for Most Outrageous Sex Scene in Belladonna’s No Warning 4, where she performed solo.

She and her boyfriend, who goes by the nickname Ssippi due to his origins in Mississippi, are in a long-term, exclusive relationship. He’s a successful artist and musician who has done art direction for adult films. They met through a mutual friend who was also involved in the industry.

They got together while Bobbi was already making films so the conversations they had were pretty delicate in the beginning. Like any couple, they set boundaries and talked about what they would hope to happen in potential scenarios. Because of Bobbi´s line of work, they discussed protection and STD prevention early on in a way that would make most other couples clam up. Bobbi is blunt with Ssippi, and vice versa. She makes sure to get tested often and talks to him about pretty much everything that happens on set.
“I would hate to expose my boyfriend to something harmful,” she says.
Meanwhile, their home life is like any other. They hang out and talk about music.

“I don’t know anyone who predicates their relationship based on their job so we’re not going to either,” she says poignantly.
Bobbi and Ssippi aren’t the only couple that knows how to make this type of relationship work. They mention couples like Joanna Angel and James Dean or Belladonna and her husband Aiden as healthy examples of love in the world of adult entertainment.
For Bobbi, any and all relationships require work, whatever the external influences are. Being able to tackle tricky subjects with guts instead of placing blame on the wrong issues has made her and Ssippi all the stronger.
“Most people are unaware of or unwilling to admit how much work a relationship is and are quick to place blame on unorthodox factors. When things start to go wrong this sends both parties into a downward spiral of judgment, resentment, and heartache,” she adds.
Bobbi and Ssippi overcame their concerns, but Michael, an advertising salesman, and Perry, a scuba instructor, couldn’t shake theirs.

Though the two men have never met, their experiences and opinions about their brief relationships with exotic dancers are quite similar.

Michael met Alyssa when she served him drinks at a strip club. He had no idea she was a dancer until the following week when she invited him to stop by. As he walked in and his eyes slowly adjusted to the backlights, he noticed that she was on stage.

“I was initially thinking maybe she’s just fooling around, like got up there and was just drunk. After her shift she asked, ‘How was I?’ I was really surprised. She just nonchalantly said, ‘I dance a few nights a week.’ I knew she would never be my girlfriend but I can’t lie, it was a semi turn-on for what I knew it would be… a fling,” he recalls.

Perry hung out at a bar often that was next door to a strip club. He’d been there before so he knew that a few of the girls that came in during break time. One night, one of the girls started talking to him and gave him her number.

“It felt like an important milestone in my life. I was never super ladies man. I mean, I’ve had girlfriends and normal relationships, but dating a stripper validated all kinds of insecurities and stuff.”

While both men didn’t mind the dancing at first, they admitted that if the relationships were to get serious, they’d ask the girl to stop.

Michael says jealousy, issues of privacy, and a strong, traditional family influence are the reasons he was uncomfortable dating a stripper. According to him, even though Alyssa was working to support her master’s degree, he would still have a hard time bringing her home to meet his mother. Because he felt he couldn’t be honest with his parents and most of his friends about her, he realized he couldn’t seriously date her. Their relationship ended after that. Though he says he has nothing against anyone who pursues unconventional employment, he nonetheless wouldn’t let himself get close to Alyssa.

Perry, on the other hand, was looking to date the dancer he met, though he too didn’t want anything serious. With her, he felt more popular at the bar and with the other women who worked at the club, which eventually led to their break up.

“I started flirting with another stripper and it was getting somewhere, but then they all started talking to each other and turned on me,” says Perry.

This doesn’t mean that while they were dating he didn’t have his share of societal reservations. He admits that while he was bragging by to introducing her to his boys, when it came to his mother and sister, he wouldn’t be able to.

Though in the end, he says doesn’t mind stripping if there are goals beyond that.

“But if she wanted to be a stripper her whole life I would probably step away,” he says.

In the lesser noticed part of a strip club are the cashiers and in Angie’s case, the coat check. She has been working in one of New York’s top strip clubs for over three years. She’s also subbed as a cocktail waitress. Though she didn’t like being inside the club, preferring to be backstage instead.

The bigger the club, the less they want their secrets revealed. She’s not allowed to say where she works, but she is allowed to talk about what she sees. On her weekly night shifts, she’s gotten a backstage view of a lot of relationships that come and go through the velvet draped doors.

And like the club owners, she also has reservations about telling people where she works.

“I tell close friends, but most guys I meet don't seem thrilled that I work in a strip club. I guess they just assume the atmosphere is something that they wouldn't want their ´girlfriend´ to be around. It causes fights in my relationships because when you work in a place where sex is so comfortable and open, it creates jealousy,” she says. “People don't realize how normal the job can be. When they hear the words `strip club` they look at you funny. Too many people judge, so it's better to keep it to yourself and avoid any negative thoughts and reactions.”

In a world where sex is so accessible, there is a greater chance for charged reactions.

“The job has to do with sex,” says Angie of any guys or girls in the business. “And when you get paid for it, that is not accepted among society. Though, there is lots of money in it, it is not something that you strive for or go to school for. It is something you do to make fast money.”

The dancers, if they’re dating, are discouraged from inviting their partners to watch them at the club. The owners believe that this could lead to uncomfortable situations inside. In the case that a partner gets by the bouncers and causes any trouble, the dancer will be fired the next day.

Not all incidents necessarily involve jealousy, Angie recalls. On one occasion, a customer got out of line with a dancer. She didn’t feel like the bouncer had really defended her so she called her boyfriend, who eventually came down. She was let go by the owners immediately after that.

In the end, Angie says she feels no shame working at the club. The staff has become like a second family to her.

“We're a team, sometimes we even spend holidays together if the shift falls on your night,” she says.

Wayne shares a similar perspective. “You work in this industry long enough,” he says, “you become ok with people having sex on camera. It's not a big deal, or if it is, you just don't date anyone on camera.”

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