Are you interested in understanding your desires and having a deeper connection with your erotism, but you aren’t sure what type of support is best for? Finding a provider with a practice you feel aligned with is key to creating an opportunity for change. While I hope you are reading this because you are interested in working with me, I understand and respect that my offerings may not be right for you. Therefore, this article will detail the difference between a sex coach and surrogate partner therapist from a general and historical perspective and I’ll share how I differentiate between these intimacy guide offerings in my practice. First things first, let’s examine the concept of intimacy.
What is intimacy?
Whether you hire a sex coach or surrogate partner therapist, how you understand and engage with intimacy will be explored. I refer to myself as an intimacy guide and under this umbrella I offer sex and relationship coaching and surrogate partner therapy. How I came to the title of intimacy guide is based on how I define these words.
Intimacy is the heart of the work. A romantic connection isn’t needed to feel intimacy. We can experience intimacy in various dynamics and relationships. I like to think of intimacy as the feel or quality of your relationship with yourself and others. Intimacy with ourselves can refer to how we think and care for ourselves: are we tending to our needs or not, putting ourselves down or holding ourselves in high regard. So, whether you want to address boosting your confidence, a decreased libido, learning how to date or having better sex with a partner, intimacy is central to the equation.
I settled on the term guide simply because I like it better than coach. The term coach has a “get back in the game” pep talk vibe that doesn’t feel accurate to my approach. And while I actually do celebrate and cheerlead my clients like a sports coach, I like the broader, softer appeal of the term guide. I do use the term sex and relationship coach because I completed training as a coach, and the term has become common a parlance used today. So, for me coaching is a service and being a guide is the nexus of my practice.
To guide is to lead the way, to offer a path forward, maybe an alternate path than what is conventionally heralded. I love the synonyms for guide like confidant, usher, adviser, teacher, shepherd and illuminate. I am a confidant to shame. I usher in new identities or ways of thinking about desire. I am an advisor on how to process disappointment. I am a teacher of nervous system regulation tools. I shepherd people to greater confidence. I illuminate your core desires. To guide feels collaborative; I make an offering, and you make it yours. This collaboration leads to a guidebook that becomes your own. The transference of you, the client, now becoming the guide able to show someone the way to being intimate with you.
From Danielle Harel PhD and Celeste Hirschman MA, founders of the Somatica Institute, a sex and relationship coaching certification program that I am completing, following is an excerpt on how intimacy is regarded, tracked and processed in the client/coach dynamic. The quote is pulled from the training manual and therefore the you is referring to the coach.
"Intimacy can only be learned in a two-way relationship. In order for people to practice intimacy and sexuality, there has to be a real person on the other side of the relationship. This real person is you. You are not teaching people to be intimate or sexual in a generic sense, instead you are engaging in intimacy and sexuality with them. This means you have to let yourself feel what you feel in response to the clients and share it in a way that is helpful and instructive to them so they can learn and practice something new."
The authors continue with guidance on allowing feelings in the coach/client dynamic. "It is highly likely that your client will feel about you the way they feel about many people in their lives, and thus, behave towards you the way they behave in other relationships past and present. Traditional therapists track their own feelings towards clients but share it as an observation: they generally avoid or redirect erotic feelings from clients. We track our feelings towards clients and share them so our clients can experience what it is like to be in an authentic two-way relationship."
Now that the table has been set with an understanding of intimacy, what is the difference between a sex coach and a surrogate partner therapist? The TL;DR is that they are similar with only a few key differences. The main difference is that surrogate partner therapy operates in the triadic model whereas a sex coach does not. In the triadic model the client has sessions with a therapist and separate sessions with a surrogate (that’s me) and we all work towards set forth goals. The surrogate partner therapist and talk therapist share notes as needed and the client shares relevant details with each provider. Ready to practice intimacy in surrogate partner therapy or sex and relationship coaching, then let’s schedule an intro call. Unsure or just wanting to learn more, keep reading!
What is Surrogate Partner Therapy?
Surrogate partner therapy (SPT) has been around long enough for a few name iterations. First known as a sexual surrogate in the 1960s, then later shortened to sex surrogate, today the work is known as surrogate partner therapy. The shift in terminology is partially due to naturally shifts in language over time and also the scope of practice has experienced a subtle shift.
Conceived by clinical sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson in the 1960s surrogate partner therapy was utilized to address sexual dysfunction like premature ejaculation, ejaculatory incompetence (what we now call erectile dysfunction or ed), vaginismus (tightening of vaginal canal) and sexual inadequacy in the aging male and female (low libido). Outcomes from SPT were published in 1970 in the book “Human Sexual Inadequacy.” This book launched the concept of surrogate partners to the public.
Masters and Johnson believed that intimacy could only be learned by experiencing it. And so, individuals and couples looking to address sexual dysfunction would attend The Masters and Johnson Institute for a two-week time period to experience intimacy and work through sexual dysfunction with a sex surrogate. The methodology of surrogate partner therapy was in four phrases: emotional connection, sensuality, sexuality and closure. This “exposure therapy” was paired with talk therapy. Often referred to as the neck up and neck down providers, the talk therapist delves into the psychological make up of an individual examining the person’s origin story, family dynamics and history of trauma, while the surrogate partner tracks arousal and shut down during touch-based exercises. The client, surrogate partner therapist and talk therapist form a triadic relationship relaying information in service of the resolution of sexual dysfunction.
While the Masters and Johnson approach is radical in terms of pairing the physiology of the human sexual response with the psychological, it is worth noting their bias. Not only was surrogate partner therapy only open for heterosexual individuals, for a period of time Masters conducted conversion therapy (read: trying to convert people from gay to straight). While this is disappointing to learn, it is also representative of the time period. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (DSM) listed homosexuality as a mental disorder and only dropped the diagnosis in 1973, just around the time of Masters conducting this shameful work.
Aside from the exclusion and attempted erasure of the LBGTQIA+ identities, surrogate partner therapy looks a bit different than in the 1970s and 1980s when the practice reached its peak. First and foremost, SPT does not exclude the LBGTQIA+ community and some providers, like me, may identify as queer. And second, surrogate partner therapy addresses more than sexual dysfunction.
In the therapeutic relationship of surrogate partner therapy goals might include:
gaining confidence
body acceptance
releasing trauma
establishing safety in the body
understanding and communicating boundaries
learning what a no feels like in your body
learning what a yes feels like in your body
learning to give pleasure
learning to receive pleasure
sex education
pleasure mapping
tracking and dissolving dissociation when intimate
asking for what you want
eradicating shame
Because these goals are less focused on erection, insertion and orgasm, the time frame of the work varies. No longer a set two-week time period, clients may be in surrogate partner therapy for up to six months. This is partially because the work is conducted as people go about their lives as opposed to staying at the Master and Johnson Institute for a two-week period where day to day life was put on hold. While surrogate partner therapists may vary the length of session and frequency of sessions, generally speaking a client meets weekly with the surrogate partner therapist and the talk therapist. Again, it is up to the client, SPT and talk therapist to determine the triadic model cadence.
For pop culture representation of surrogate partner therapy watch the movie “The Sessions” starring Helen Hunt and the TV show “Masters of Sex.” As with any Hollywood dramatization, view with a grain of salt.
What is Sex and Relationship Coach?
Simply put, sex and relationship coaching is everything written above about surrogate partner therapy but taken down a notch. Sex and relationship coaching does not operate in the triadic model with a licensed therapist. While a client may work with a talk therapist in addition to a sex and relationship coach, the coach and therapist do not share notes and work towards the same goal.
Coaching as an industry came into popularity in the late 1990’s and early 2000s. In the rise of coaching services specialties emerged (see life coach, business coach, personal development coach and leadership coach). In the flurry of coaching programs, The Somatica Institute, a sex and relationship coaching certification program, was founded 2010. In whatever is the area of focus, coaches help individuals achieve their goals.
Goals of sex and relationship coaching and questions to ask yourself if you want to seek these services may include:
Learning self-love
Do you feel disconnected from yourself and your desires?
What are you core desires?
How do you think about yourself?
Do you hold yourself in high regard or speak negative about yourself?
Do you worry about how you are seen or how others regard you?
Do you put others before yourself, i.e. people pleasing?
Managing a transition
Are you re-entering dating or want to change how you have been dating?
Are you divorced and rediscovering yourself as an individual?
Are you experiencing a loss in any manner (divorced, death, change in body, change in career)?
Are you experiencing a rite of passage (parenthood, menopause)?
Are you stepping into a new identity (gay, bi, queer, trans, kinky, polyamory)?
Are you looking to approach all areas of your life from a more grounded and confident manner?
Sex and relationship coaching, especially in the Somatica approach, offers embodiment exercises that emphasize the importance of experiences (as opposed to thoughts) as the central vehicle towards deeper intimacy and choice. It is through these exercises and the development of intimacy that goals about learning self-love and managing a transition are achieved. Scroll up and read again the quote from the Somatica founders about intimacy.
How do Choice Between a Sex Coach or Surrogate Partner Therapy?
So how do you know which approach is right for you? Do the goals of sex and relationship coaching align with your goals, but you want to be in the triadic model? That’s an option! Here’s my approach.
Some of the embodiment exercises used in sex and relationship coaching are available in surrogate partner therapy and vice versa. The difference in the offerings is how the services are contained: timeframe, boundaries and working in the triadic model or not. Again, intimacy guides design their practice differently so service options may vary from provider to provider.
While there is some overlap, I keep the services of sex and relationship coaching and surrogate partner therapy contained to the original perimeters from my education and training (minus the homophobia which isn’t taught now, anyways. Good riddance).
My intimacy guide offerings stay in the original guidelines of coaching and surrogacy with one addition; I operate from a trauma informed lens. I sought a 200-hour trauma informed yoga teacher training less for the poses and more for how to work with trauma. My clients may not always know we are working on nervous system regulation, but we are! A calm nervous system is central to creating safety and intimacy. It is from this trauma informed perspective and from the idea that intimacy and erotism are teachable that this intimacy guide practice, Selfish Sexuality, is built on. Either in the sex coach or surrogate partner therapy container we will be building intimacy and moving at the pace of your nervous system.
Want to understand more about how Selfish Sexuality can help improve your sex life and strengthen your relationships? Let’s discover your goals and create a plan of care.