When you get paid to perform sexual healing on women with intimacy issues, you need patience, sensitivity, and a willingness to put her pleasure before yours. And also condoms. Lots of them.

If surrogate partner therapy (SPT) sounds like something straight out of Masters of Sex, it is: In 1970, William Masters and Virginia Johnson published their findings on an innovative treatment in which a surrogate partner makes clinical appearances in the office—and the bedroom. Working as a member of a three-part therapeutic team, the surrogate partner helps construct a series of experiences to introduce the client to healthy forms emotional and physical intimacy. Yes, that can mean sex.

SPT rode a wave of popularity through the seventies that came to an abrupt end with the AIDS epidemic. Maybe it’s because of shifting attitudes toward sex, maybe it’s because sexually transmitted infections don’t carry the same fatal stamp they used to, but SPT is starting to make a comeback. In particular, therapists are finding more and more women are seeking the services of male surrogates.

Enter Shai Rotem, a forty-something Israeli who has lived and worked in Los Angeles for the past decade. He is one of a small (but growing) handful of male surrogates left to satisfy this rising demand. Here, Rotem shares the naked truth about his unusual job.

“I knew early on I wanted to work with people. Starting at the age of 20, I realized that nearly all the girls I had dated had some issues around sexuality, intimacy, and relationships. They either never had a boyfriend, were virgins, or had some history of sexual trauma. I got used to it. One of my best friends said, ‘Hey, Shai, what’s going on with your dating life? It’s not normal.’ He was referring to the fact that I had had six relationships, and five out of the six women had a history of sexual abuse, sexual trauma, had been raped, or molested by a family member. I just saw it as ‘This is life. I’m honored to help these women.’ That’s the day I called a center in Tel Aviv that offers surrogate partner therapy. I was accepted for the training, graduated, and I’ve been doing this ever since.

“Many clients are very, very shy, embarrassed or closed-off. If it’s a woman who’s a virgin or who has had sexual trauma or sexual problems, she doesn’t feel safe with guys. And I’m a man, so on one hand, she wants to contact me; on the other, the emotional feelings and fears are starting to surface. Many times it will start with an e-mail. I’ll respond, and then we’ll start writing back and forth to each other. Clients need to gain trust. Each client goes at her own pace. Eventually, I’ll refer them to a therapist and we’ll move to a three-way meeting. That’s when the process really starts. The client sees the therapist once a week, she sees me once a week, and the therapist and I as a team will talk in between sessions.

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The ways we perceive the actions of others reflect how we see ourselves. I knew I had a problem with shame because of how I’d been treating my partner.

It began innocently enough.

“Are you really going to eat all of that?” I’d ask playfully, as if monitoring his eating would negate my own cravings.

“You did what in high school?” I’d gasp, appalled at whatever crazy anecdote came up. As if I were Mother Theresa.

I was looking at his past under the same negative microscope with which I judged my own. This served to confirm my belief that my mistakes made me a bad person.

Shame was deeply rooted in my relationship history, but I covered it with false bravado, impulsiveness and deflection. Subconsciously, I kept focus away from my own negative qualities by looking for them in others. Even in those I loved.

At the time, I saw this as a positive behavior. I would point to something I saw as a fault in my lover, then actively assert myself in “helping” him fix it. I thought that this made me a good partner. But in truth, I was anything but.

I didn’t know how to love someone without trying to improve him or her somehow – even if my words said otherwise, and even if I didn’t really want to change them. I couldn’t help myself. Judgment, blame and shame were all that I knew, even when life was good.

“Blame is [a] defensive cover-up for shame. Blame maintains the balance in a dysfunctional system when control has broken down.” – John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that Binds You

I could say that I developed these habits because of my religious upbringing, where love came with conditions. Or I could blame my actions on past relationships, because they all seemed to have been dysfunctional in this way. But to actually solve the problem, I would have to look at the common denominator in these factors: me.

I didn’t know how to love myself without pretense or perfectionism. And because I didn’t take the time to admit this before I entered the relationship, it took a big toll on my partner. I was ruining my life, without even realizing it.

At the time, I was convinced that I was in the right. I believed that caring for people in spite of their shortcomings was the same as unconditional love. The very foundation of my relationships had been poisoned by shame. I acted defensively by default, manifesting of my own deepest fears. I truly loved my partner, but I was doing it wrong.

It took a great deal of therapy, self-reflection and rock bottom moments for me to finally have the guts to look in the mirror and acknowledge the fearful person staring back at me.

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Tag: intimacy issues

Hands on Sexual Healing from a Man

When you get paid to perform sexual healing on women with intimacy issues, you need patience, sensitivity, and a willingness to put her pleasure before yours. And also condoms. Lots of them.

Relationship 911: Unpacking Shame

The ways we perceive the actions of others reflect how we see ourselves. I knew I had a problem with shame because of how I’d been treating my partner.