Alison: No Longer Trying to Sell Them on Me

Photo by Baran Lotfollahi on Unsplash

Outcomes from surrogate partner therapy

In my first conversation with Alison, she told me that she was at “85% love factor” as opposed to the previous months…year…decades at 40% or less. I had a sense of what she meant. Love factor felt akin to RuPaul proselytizing, “If you can’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love someone else?” This catchphrase is based on an internal gauge of self-love and self-worth, but Alison could have also meant the inverse as in “I’m now 85% loveable” which would be an external value system based on cultural messaging much of which is bullshit. To know which metric she was using, I asked her to clarify what she meant by love factor.

“I’m measuring the amount of love for myself. I’ve done so much work in the last year, that I doubled my love factor, but I’m not at 100, yet” Alison explained.

She was hopeful that surrogate partner therapy would be the final 15% boost she needed to get to full love factor. Relieved to know her love factor barometer was her own making and charmed by her boisterous energy, intrigue, and enthusiasm about surrogate partner therapy, we agreed to move forward with weekly sessions in the triadic model.

The triadic model is central to surrogate partner therapy wherein the client, talk therapist, and surrogate partner therapist work through the intimacy goals of the client. The client meets with each of us individually and the therapist and I exchange session insights to support our work (the therapist more family of origin style, the surrogate more somatic style). While Alison and her therapist of 2 years had goals in place, we established new ones for the triadic model.

We all have a unique way of how we think about or define ourselves. Alison had developed a self-worth metric system that sounded like she had shed a lot of toxic cultural messaging to get there. So, I was surprised that when I asked her for goals she said, “I want to be in a relationship. I struggle to get to the second date. And I want freedom over my body.”

“I can’t promise that you will be in a relationship after a certain number of sessions. But what I can affirm is that surrogate partner therapy will give you a better understanding of who you are, your core desires, what you want, and how to communicate.”

Alison thoughtfully replied, “I’ve always wondered who I am at my heart. Like, without thinking about my family or how they see me, just who I am at my heart?”

“Yes. This is such a beautiful reframe,” I said. And because already that thing was happening where we were building trust and rapport, I nudged the door open a bit more.

“I noticed that you chose the word ‘over’ when talking about your body. It felt like you were naming having control over your body. And I wonder if there is a reframe here as well. Maybe ‘in’ as in ‘freedom in my body.’”

“Yes!” She hadn’t caught the odd mixed phrasing of “freedom over.” It’s like she was headed in the right direction but her language went into autopilot: I want to control over my body and what I eat. And this slip of tongue made sense as I would learn, Alison was primed in a diet culture household that prioritized thinness as attractiveness and viability. At a certain age, Alison could not meet the thin qualifier, which did not go unnoticed then, or now.

Over the following months, Alison and I worked together to explore her self-identity and what freedom in her body would look like. We found ourselves at many breakthroughs including one pivotal session doing mirror work where we each take turns standing naked in front of the mirror telling the story of our body. It’s a pivotal exercise for everyone (me included) but the revelation Alison had in mirror work neither one of us could have anticipated. And while I can and will tell you more of Alison’s story, I want you to get to know her.

A year after our final session, I reached out to Alison to see how she was doing. I was curious about what stayed with her, what had shifted. Following are questions I emailed Alison that she kindly took time to reflect on and respond to in hopes that sharing her experience would inspire another to make a change in their love factor.

Please note Alison’s responses have been slightly edited for clarity.

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What brought you to surrogate partner therapy, and how did you know it was time to try something different?

I wasn’t understanding why I was still single at 45 and couldn’t understand which barriers were holding me back. It was reflected to me by my therapist that perhaps I was not into men but into women. I figured it was worth exploring. And also, why not try an alternate therapy style?

How did working with both a surrogate and a talk therapist change your understanding of your patterns or blocks?

It helped me understand that my block was entirely in my brain. Not my physical body. The most impactful day for me was when we did body work in front of the mirror. I thought this entire time I was ashamed of my body. Since childhood my parents convinced me I was not worth anything physically. Doing the mirror work brought me to tears.

I looked at my cellulite and gut and said, “I’m so tired of these thoughts.” And that’s when it clicked—it’s not how my body looks but how these negative thoughts are held in my brain. I was so tired of my thoughts and years of therapy trying to figure out why I was broken. I literally just started crying when I realized it wasn’t my body—but my brain that was so hurt and tired.

What was the biggest shift you experienced in relating to yourself or others?

I’m clear that I’m heterosexual. And I am slightly asexual because I only fall for people with whom I’m emotionally safe and interested in, and this takes time and is never immediate. What I thought was an undiagnosed issue of repressed sexuality is in fact me showing up for myself and protecting myself until I feel safe enough to emotionally attach to a partner.

What did you experience in surrogate partner therapy that you weren’t expecting?

I had no idea how much I needed the long hugs. I was so starved for physical touch and had no idea the impact a long hug and cuddling with a caring human was void in my life. It still is, but now I can soothe myself better. That was the greatest gift to realize my utter loneliness was so huge that I was swallowed by it. And to have Miranda crack open my depressed heart and release the deepest childhood wounds of not receiving physical touch was the most amazing and en-”lighten”-ing experience.

What would you want someone who’s curious and hesitant about this work to know?

If you’ve explored/exhausted talk therapy and it hasn’t totally opened you up to being in a relationship — this is the missing piece. Surrogate partner therapy allows you to find the barrier you carry that prevents you from being intimate with a potential partner. Also, I learned that pleasure comes in all forms. Pleasure can be play, love, and sexual touch. It’s all a gift.

Anything else about your experience that you would like to share?

Miranda brought laughter and play into my home. We danced and sang in the hallway, praising the home to bring joy back into it. I’m forever grateful. I now love the home energy I’ve created and can sit with joy in my home, even by myself. And now I choose to share my home with others. I no longer feel unworthy of love. I know I’m worthy. I’m just careful to let people in slowly so I feel safe at each phase.

I am dating and showing up on these dates as my joyful self. Being 100% myself on a date did not previously happen. I now feel good about being me. And I’m finally attracting nice guys. There has been definite improvement with who I’m attracting and who I engage with.

I’m able to be vulnerable and hold space for men’s thoughts and needs. I can listen and I also take up space to share my thoughts and needs. I’m still not a big touch person in public, so if a guy needs touch immediately, he may miss out on me, but it’s OK. I am showing up as me, and that is huge. This mindset shift is huge for me. I’m no longer trying to sell them on me; I’m just being me and it’s up to them to resonate with me or not.

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Alison’s takeaways from surrogate partner therapy deeply move me. She achieved her goal: she knows who she is at heart and can show up confidently as that person. She has shed so many other people’s expectations of her. The realization that her mind was controlling how she felt about her body was a huge breakthrough that was incredible to witness. Neither one of us could have predicted that standing in front of the mirror naked would reveal just how much, as she said, “her brain hurts.” She wanted to hold her brain and her thoughts so tenderly. She wept for this part of her body, this part of her that had been running the show. The freedom in her body was not in how she looked but in how she thought.

Similarly, through surrogate partner therapy, Alison expanded her thinking about sexuality beyond being gay or straight. Though she is more attracted to the opposite sex, she is someone who needs to move at a slower pace and who may also need less physical or sexual input and feels good about referring to herself as a bit asexual.

Like with any orientation, it is for the person to define what it means for them, so always inquire with the person. Though, generally speaking, and for those unfamiliar, people who identify as asexual experience little or no sexual attraction to others and/or may experience sexual attraction in a non-normative way.

The Trevor Project offers more asexuality insight, a portion quoted below, and the link to view the full article: Understanding Asexuality.

Asexual people may want to and can form many types of intimate relationships, whether those relationships are romantic, platonic, or other forms of attraction and connection.

Common terms and identities on the asexual spectrum include:

Demisexual: People who only experience sexual attraction once they form a strong emotional connection with another person.

Grey-A: People who identify somewhere between sexual and asexual.

Queerplatonic: People who experience a type of non-romantic relationship where there is an intense emotional connection that goes beyond a traditional friendship.

When I first broached the subject of asexuality with Alison, she was taken aback. Maybe even slightly offended that I would suggest such a thing. But part of my job is to be someone’s mirror and say: You aren’t broken. You are whole. Our culture is broken. You don’t need to change. Culture does. And you will be a part of the change by being yourself at your heart. Not trying to conform to society’s narrow vision of what sexuality or a relationship can look like.

Asexuality was not something I was prescribing to Alison any more than her therapist was positing that maybe she isn’t straight. It’s more that the therapist and I were illuminating a path forward that might be different than the one forced upon us in dominant culture. It’s not for us to define but to offer and invite an alternative path of self-definition. I can set up the full-length mirror but she is the one reflecting back what she sees.

When people ask me about success rates of my work I have to laugh because there is no single measure of success. The goal is not for everyone to be in a monogamous relationship with kids. It’s not for me to say, “Yes, all my clients are partnered now. I am 100% successful.” No, the harder work—the truer work—is for success to be so individualistic that no metric can be universally applied.

Though I suppose if there’s one metric worth tracking, it’s the one Alison named: love factor. It’s a play on RuPaul’s question about loving yourself before you love another by reflecting: If I can’t love myself, how can I show up as myself?

Because when you love yourself—really love yourself—you stop trying to sell someone on your worth and start simply being yourself. If someone doesn’t resonate with you, that’s on them. Said differently and often on the internet, “Other people’s opinions about me are none of my business.” That’s the shift. That’s the work. Alison showing up as herself on dates—this is the win. This is success.

So, I’ll ask you what Alison asked herself: What is your love factor?

Interested in knowing your love factor more? I would love to support you. Fill out this form and I’ll be in touch.