![\"Day](\"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/day-bed-with-pillows.jpg\" "\\"Day")
My friend and colleague, Linda Poelzl, has been working as a professional surrogate partner for 17 years. As a local writer commented a few weeks ago after meeting both of us, what this means is frequently misunderstood.<\/p>\nMy friend and colleague, Linda Poelzl, has been working as a professional surrogate partner for 17 years. As a local writer commented a few weeks ago after meeting both of us, what this means is frequently misunderstood.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I think \u201csex\u201d is the most powerful and misleading word in the English language! Call Linda a sex surrogate and people start imagining her writhing in coitus. \u00a0Call me a sex therapist and local readers post, \u201cHow sicko and disgusting that we have a sex therapist here in San Luis Obispo County!\u201d on their Facebook walls.<\/p>\n
Our local weekly (the New Times<\/em>) was particularly excited to arrange an interview with Linda and me because of the flood of positive publicity surrounding The Sessions<\/em>, a new film based on actual experiences in the late 1980s when surrogate partner Cheryl Cohen Greene worked with polio-disabled<\/a> journalist and poet Mark O\u2019Brien.<\/p>\n In the trailer, there is one scene in which two astonished hotel workers watch a nervous and paralyzed O\u2019Brien being loaded into an elevator on a stretcher. When one of them asks why they\u2019re taking him upstairs, the other explains that he has an appointment with a \u201csex therapist,\u201d a misnomer that has Linda and other surrogates feeling frustrated.<\/p>\n \u201cThe public doesn\u2019t comprehend that you and I work together to help people heal!\u201d she says. Where my work as a therapist is psychological, Linda\u2019s is physical, employing exercises focused on intimacy, body image, relaxation, and the giving and receiving of touch or \u201csensate focus.\u201d Sexual intercourse<\/a> occasionally does occur, but it is a minor part of her work.<\/p>\n Common presenting issues for men include rapid ejaculation, delayed ejaculation, and very often, simple inexperience\u2014one of Linda\u2019s current clients is a 32-year-old virgin. \u201cHe\u2019s never, until recently, held hands, kissed a girl, had sex,\u201d Linda says. \u201cHe\u2019s a gorgeous guy! There are a lot of people around who are silently suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n Some people refuse to differentiate what Linda does from prostitution, she explains. What they don\u2019t comprehend is that she never works alone. After each session, she relates her impressions to me, which enables me to better assist clients through many challenges toward sexual healing.<\/p>\n