Insights

Pornography’s effects

Recently, there was an article in The Economist on the effects of pornography entitled: “A user’s manual.”  In one section, they say that studies have found that there is little evidence that addiction is a real outgrowth of a daily pornography diet. I beg to differ. In my experience as an Intimacy Behavioral Therapist, I treat men (and women) of …

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Touch starved and disconnected – let’s begin again anew

The reality is that we live in a time when we are exposed and asked to integrate more information than ever in collective human history. I encounter the consequences of this in the behavior of the people who seek my help. Many of them are touch starved and therefore disconnected from the messages their bodies send them. I find that …

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What’s the fuss?

I’m weighing in on the ruckus created by those (now) infamous, bare-breasted women in Times Square who ask for tips after taking pictures with families. Toplessness in NYC is legal, and the pictures I’ve seen of these women show them to have made efforts to transform their bodies into artistic expressions that add to the flavor and culture of our …

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Dirty, Sexy, Funny with Jenny McCarthy

I had the great fortune this morning to be interviewed by Jenny McCarthy on her radio show “Dirty, Sexy, Funny” on Sirius XM. She was fascinated by the work that I do, having not heard about it before – much like the rest of the world. This is precisely why I agreed to be a guest on her show – so that more people will know there is help in the form of intimacy behavioral therapy that includes surrogate partner therapy and a whole lot more.

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Shame, it’s at the Root of it All

In my field shame is the name of the game. It underlies most of the challenges men and women face when dealing with their intimacy issues. This first came to my attention in a very big way when I began working as a sex surrogate helping men overcome functioning problems: Almost without exception, the root cause had shame of some kind at the heart of it. Human interaction often involves being vulnerable and when we are young and defenseless we don’t know how to protect ourselves from being misunderstood and judged. So, the man, who as a teenager and young adult missed out on having sexual encounters, is now an older man feeling shame for not knowing what to do. The woman, who was inappropriately sexualized by a father figure when she was a child, is now filled with misgivings related to trust when trying to form romantic relationships. These are but a few examples of what happens when you live in a society with virtually no real sex education for youth and a proclivity towards antiquated sexual messages that reinforce our collective sense of shame. *There is much more to say on this topic so I will continue writing about in future posts.

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Who Knows?

I’ll start by saying I don’t like to speculate on why people do what they do. However, in regards to the recent shooting in California by the 22-year-old virgin, I am chiming in after all. The reason is that I am a surrogate partner therapist treating a number of “late virgins,” and what I offer has helped many of them enter into solid intimate relationships for the first time. This therapeutic model is based on Dr. William Masters and Virginia Johnson’s result-getting techniques, which includes sessions where patients can learn a great deal about the opposite sex, basic sex education and about how they respond to giving and receiving touch. I am aware that he was suffering from other major challenges like mental illness and chronic bullying, so I am not implying that what I do is a panacea by any means. That said, our culture is virtually devoid of this type of helpful process, and I would have liked this young man to have had the opportunity to be in safe and professional place where he was accepted and taught valuable lessons – potentially enabling him to find a less violent way to express his outrage over rejection. Who knows? I certainly don’t, but I propose that if our society had viable venues for those suffering in this way, perhaps the outcome would have been different.

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