After Studious Pursuits, Adult Star Aiden Tyler Makes Up for Lost Time

"That turned into going to Barcelona and Madrid and meeting up the likes of like Victor Rom and all these other kind of big creators in that area. And then I made a big trip over to the States, where I traveled for about four or five weeks and went around and just met up with all these big names there."

Tyler's enthusiasm and comfort in his own skin... which is to say, out of his clothes... may seem a bit off-brand for the typical Brit, so I ask him whether his American upbringing might have had something to do with his sexual gregariousness and lack of shyness. Here, too, Aiden suggested that his earlier life left him hungry for certain sorts of experience.

"When I was growing up, I was always more into alternative careers and stuff like that," he recalls. Moreover, "My self-esteem never used to be that great as a teenager in some of my 20s. I think doing this was just a means to kind of grow my own confidence."

His success has helped fulfill that ambition.

"The more that validation came in, it's like, okay, I'm just gonna keep doing it," Aiden says.

What's more, his voyage, while certainly one of sexual discovery, has also become a font of personal growth – including some surprising revelations about his own nature.

"I've come to find out that I'm not really much into the voyeuristic aspect of it," Aiden says of having sex on camera. "When you're filming, what's always going on in the back your mind is, 'Oh, is this angle going to look good? Are we in frame?' And you think that you probably would have had a little bit more fun off camera, or if you had a hidden camera or something set up."

Sex for the camera's ever-watching eye, he adds, "is not as glamorous as you kind of thought it would have been.

"I think it's just things anything," Aiden adds; "if you do something for long enough, it just becomes a bit routine."

Another less than obvious aspect of a career in porn is the unforgiving nature of scheduling and how much energy and attention it takes to put a shoot together. "I would say it's less about the porn," Aiden says, "and more about the actual logistics of it.

"You schedule the time in to go meet these people at specific points," he explains. "So, if you're not feeling in the mood, you still have to go do it because you don't want to cancel, because they blocked out time for that.

"Initially," Aiden acknowledges, "it was one of those things where it's like, 'Oh, wow, this person's actually agreed to meet me!' and it's some big name, and you go meet them. You're starstruck. Eventually, that starts to wear off."

The shine can wear off the nomadic nature of his career, as well. "When you're traveling around a lot, things just go wrong," Aiden notes. "I fell asleep on a train and had a bag with my laptop and everything else stolen. I came down with monkeypox halfway through a trip. And then there was a whole incident in Turkey back in March, getting arrested there and spending six days in a migrant [detention facility]. So it's definitely not been without its hassles."

The experience in Turkey has had lasting repercussions, Aiden went on to disclose. "I used to say that I was up for anything," he muses, "but since that little episode happened in Turkey – I mean, even though it wasn't outside, they classified as 'indecent exposure inside your hotel room.' I'm a little bit more hesitant to do things outdoors. I don't really want to have to deal with any more police in those kind of situations."

Another surprise revelation is that while a relationship might be nice, he's whole within himself.

"There's definitely a few people that I could [have relationship with]," the charmer told EDGE of the men he's worked with. "But I think the issue with any of this is when you live in completely different places, you're always on different trajectories." Anyway, of the men he knows and has shared screen time with, "a big majority are more like acquaintances. But here and there, you do [make a connection]. I could send a message to quite a few people over in the States and in Europe, and I could go to them for advice about certain situations."

If true love isn't in the cards for him just now, that's, in a way, an extension of his ordinary life. "I've probably not dated anyone in about 10 years, because I've just been so transient," Aiden says. "I've never really stayed anywhere longer than three years. When I moved to the UK it took a long time to get really integrated, and then I went back to the States for another three years. Not living in a big metro area, there just wasn't really that much opportunity. And then when I moved back to the UK, the lockdown hit. And from my own experiences, dating in the UK is hard. It's just a completely different environment. There's, like, a whole lot of kind of subtext and implications. People aren't as direct here."

On the other hand, Aiden admits, "While [doing porn] kind of did satisfy the sexual component that I was desperately missing from my normal life, I came to realize, once the honeymoon period wore off, that always having sex on camera isn't necessarily the healthiest, either, because you can become so consumed with doing that and the upkeep of the account and everything else, that you kind of lose out on the nuance and the intimacy that's associated with spontaneity."

When it comes to his dealings with the general public, Aiden is still getting used to the idea that he's actually fairly famous among fans of gay adult entertainment.

"I think I've been recognized a few times," Aiden says. "I mean, when I was just in Barcelona [at a circuit party], somebody walked up and wanted to take a photo with me, and I'm like, 'Oh, okay.' In other situations, somebody's been like, 'Oh, hey, I'm a big fan.' I'm like, 'Oh, cool.'

"There's people out there with millions of followers or whatever else," Aiden goes on to say. "I never even thought I'd have 10,000 followers, let alone over 100,000, but I think all together, on all the social media, I probably have about 165,000. It's just crazy, that that many people see what I'm doing and take the time to keep up with it."

The numbers may be crazy, but his success and experience have helped him "develop healthier boundaries with people and assert myself more," the porn star confides. "Before, I was always such a people pleaser; I would go out of my way, at a detriment to myself, when there really wasn't all that much to be gained." But now, he adds, he's "become a lot more confident that I don't need to always please people, when I could instead just be pleasing myself or taking time for myself as it's needed."

He also, he says, attends to the business aspect of his career much more than he used to.

"From the get-go I was just winging it," Aiden says, "and I realized I should have treated this as a business, because suddenly I had 10,000 followers, and then 50,000, and then, a couple years later, well over 100,000... and I was happy just to get the 10,000! I didn't think that I'd ever kind of get to this point, which was silly.

"I didn't have a plan going into it," he summarizes, "and if I could say something to anybody who's starting this, it would be, "Go into it with a plan. Treat it like you're gonna get somewhere, but don't hinge your entire self-worth and ego on the validation that might come with it'."

Check out these pics from Aiden's Instagram: