My arm nestled around their crossed legs; my palm cupped their lower waist. We were engaging in the Sensate Focus technique on the back body. The terms of this technique are simple yet profound: touch for your own pleasure and focus on the sensations of temperature, texture, and pressure. The touch is to be slow, but not massage-like. The touch should not indicate any escalation or performance requirement. Touch is experienced one way as in if you are receiving touch you are not giving touch. And lastly, Sensate Focus is contained by time. Depending on where we are in the process, conducting each giving/receiving Sensate session can last anywhere from 2 to 15 minutes.
Finding the cadence of touch of the Sensate Focus method is fussy and for good reason. Touch is the currency of sex and yet, we can forget to really experience it. Or we experience touch in limited capacity by focusing only on certain areas of the body. This is why Sensate Focus, a protocol designed by sex researchers Masters and Johnson in the 1960’s, came to be.
After complying data that proved sex as a natural bodily function, Master and Johnson went on to examine sexual dysfunction, mostly vaginismus (the tightening of the vaginal canal) and unreliable erections (premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction). Sensate Focus exercises are a way for couples to reduce spectatoring (thinking about the performance or outcome of sex) and deepen into pleasure. When the goal of sex (intercourse) and orgasm are removed from the experience, what pleasure can you find in touching your partner?
There is a meditative aspect to Sensate Focus for both the giver and receiver. As the giver you are constantly redirecting thoughts to curiosity. The practice of Sensate Focus begins on the hand which is abundant in textures. This is a great landscape for the giver to get curious about the different consistencies of skin – where is the hand more rough or smooth, cool or warm, hard or supple. This curiosity slows us down, asks us to reflect, asks us to attune to our body. Where do I want to touch?
My client adjusted positions to access areas of my back body not in arm’s length. The adjustment meant that my arm no longer wrapped around them. My palm was left open. Empty. After a few minutes, they returned to sit cross legged beside my body. They placed my arm back around their body, firmly pressing their hand on top of my hand as if to say, “Here. I am with you. This is where you belong. Here.” I was overcome with a tender sadness. I hadn’t realized the meaning that had transpired in this connection point of our bodies. I hadn’t realized that my unoccupied palm left me feeling bereft until the return of their skin, their warmth, their knowing.
Yes, I am not to give touch as a receiver. And technically I wasn’t. My arm positioning was out of comfort; my fingers did not graze, press, or even move. However, as time passed and we settled into the meditative state of Sensate, the positioning of my arm took on different meanings.
First relationally, as in our intimacy bubble was demarcated with the curve of my arm around them, a marker for no one other than us. And then beyond how we looked from the outside, was a felt sense of safety. At this point, the client knew how to attune to themselves and the body they were touching. We were many sessions into the surrogate partner therapy, many sessions into Sensate Focus and so I could ease up, ever so gently and carefully, in my role as the teacher. I could receive in a way where I wasn't metaphorically resting with one eye open ready to assist and redirect. The ease of my body then allowed the client to drop more into their intuition. And so, for these 12 minutes I received, wholly and authentically.
Feeling safe to let go then made me able to relax. My body softened and my heart opened. In this surrender, I was able to truly experience their touch, and the feelings brought on by sensations. How the swirly pattern of their fingers on my lower back gave me a youthful giddiness. How when they moved hair from my face to reach my cheek and neck I felt cared for. How the circling of my ankle evoked erotism. And then how when they shifted and my hand was left empty, sadness emerged.
What I’ve learned in working with bodies is that attaching a story to every emotion that surfaces is not always needed. From an intimacy guide perspective what can be more important than the story is the body’s ability to feel safe enough to feel the landscape of emotion. If we don’t feel safe our body is bracing, on guard, static. If we feel secure, our bodies open, and a myriad of feelings can flood in. And then we realize just how many goddamn feelings occur in the span of 12 minutes. The crossing weather patterns of it all.
So, could I attach a story to the sadness I felt? Sure, the easiest one being that developing an intimate connection with someone knowing there is a limit, and an end can create a melancholy. Like becoming close to someone at sleepaway camp that you won’t see again until next summer, if that. But the knowledge of your limited time together doesn’t stop you from getting close, staying up late sharing secrets on the bottom bunk.
And in the context of surrogate partner therapy, to experience someone release the chokehold of shame, that maybe has haunted them since the days of sleepaway camp, and step into their erotism knowing that you won’t get to be a part of their new (sex) life is bittersweet. We will let each other in and then let each other go. But beyond that, the immersive intimacy in those 12 minutes was that I felt safe to feel sadness and they were able to intuit this and tend to me. They could have just as easily left my arm by my side and sat alongside me. But they knew the arm placement had depth. My hand needed to be connected to their body. Maybe just as much for them, as for me. This non-verbal communication can only be experienced naturally. I couldn’t have instructed this moment to happen. I couldn’t exactly recreate it.
When the timer dinged, my client laid down next to me, also on their belly and hugged a pillow under their chest. I didn’t go into all the emotions I felt. In fact, we were silent for a minute, adjusting to stepping out of our giver/receiver roles and now making eye contact.
“What was that experience like for you?” I asked.
“There used to be this darkness around sex,” they said and then paused, debating on what to say next.
“Until?” I prompted.
“Until you,” they said.
I smirked, “As much as my ego likes that I wasn’t fishing for a compliment. And it’s not me. It’s both of us. My prompt was hoping you would say that there was darkness around sex until you were ready to make change. You’ve done so many things to change, like getting sober, well before you found your way to me.”
They nodded. “Yes, that’s true. And it’s you. You change people’s lives. You are changing my life.” They worried I would feel too much responsibility in knowing this.
“And why do you think I am burdened by the responsibility?” I asked.
“I don’t know if you are or not. I just worry about it. Like, I’m too much.”
It’s not the first time they’ve expressed this concern. The question prompts another: What is too much? What has led them to believe they are too much and not just the right amount. They are enough.
What they aren’t wrong about is my responsibility, though I don’t feel burdened by it. I feel honored to hold this responsibility as a surrogate partner therapist. The first sexual experience for this client was one of assault. As was mine. As were many. Trauma is not experienced in isolation, and it cannot be healed in isolation. The healing that I can provide for my clients is because I have been healed by others. And I continue to heal.
The intimacy that developed by way of my palm nestled along their skin was nurturing and nourishing for both of us, most likely for different reasons. We didn’t talk about it specifically, but I know that somatically something shifted for us. Being held is a reminder of our collectiveness rather than an individualism that is too heralded in American idealism. We need each other to experience safety, tenderness, love and all the other emotions that flow from us. Touch is the currency of sex and so, so much more. Here. I am with you. This is where you belong. Here.