A Psychologist's Experience of Surrogate Partner Therapy

I wanted to take the time to write a letter of endorsement for the surrogate partner work Jason Martin has been doing with one of my long-standing therapy clients through the triadic model.  I have been working with our mutual client for over a decade, and she has struggled with developing interpersonal relationships (specifically romantic relationships), paralyzing anxiety and pervasive self-loathing, faulty assumptions about “what men want” and what is expected of women in romantic scenarios, and the belief that she is “too late” to enter the world of romantic connections and sexual exploration.  My individual psychotherapy work hit a wall a long time ago; what we discussed and explored in the therapy “room” was hard for her to translate into a real, embodied experience with an Other.  Conversations around intimacy, self-esteem, and interrogating assumptions of things she had “heard on morning radio” had a limiting-factor when she couldn’t access a corrective, lived experience.  Her beliefs became more rigid in the absence of evidence, including her deeply-held belief that she had missed the boat of all possibilities of physical intimacy and other forms of intimate connection. 

I first heard about Surrogate Partner Therapy at the annual conference for Division 39: The Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology, when I attended a panel on various modalities of body work.  Brandon Hunter-Haydon described the process and work of Surrogate Partner Therapy.  I had never heard of anything like it! My antennae immediately went up: Is this legal? Is this therapeutically sound? Is this a missing link to more effective therapeutic care?  I reached out to him following the conference and scheduled a consultation to inquire more about the process, specifically with this client in mind.  During our conversation I continued to be impressed with Brandon and the psychological sophistication linked with practical and real corrective experience that surrogate partner therapy seemed to be able to offer.  I brought it up to my client, not as something for her to do, but sharing with her about something new in the world that neither of us knew existed.  We thought about it collectively, with curiosity and interest and concern, like thinking about a planet that we didn’t know existed and wondering about what it would be like to go there. 

After a few months, I asked if she would be interested in meeting a local practitioner to ask questions about the process, with no pressure or intention to sign up.  She said Yes.  Brandon connected me with Jason Martin, who practices within our geographical location, and we set up an online meeting for the three of us.  I was excited, my client was nervous, and within minutes of being with Jason both of our nervous systems eased (we discussed this following the call).  Jason’s presence was instantly disarming: he was warm, slow, inquisitive, normalizing.  He asked questions in a way that normalized the answers, was non-pathologizing, and non-interrogative.  He allowed the conversation to flow between me as the therapist and her as the client, when there were answers she was unsure how to answer.  He asked her what her goals were and affirmed her for her desires, indicated no pressure to move forward with the process, but offered hope that her goals and desire were reasonable and good, with a lot of intention, support and hard work.  His presence was genuine, attuned, and non-coercive.  He suggested we think about it and reach back out to him if and when she wanted to take the next step.

We took the next step a couple of months later, and the two of them had their first one-on-one virtual “date.”  This was a first for her, and she reported that it was surprisingly comfortable and easy to talk with him, sharing a bit about their lives and doing a show-and-tell of things in their respective apartments.  Before meeting with her in-person, Jason offered to meet with me.  This surprised me, as I’ve never been a part of this process before.  We met at a convenient location and talked about the process more in depth, and some of the exercises he will do with our client, including the “Will you May I” game.  We played a couple rounds of it, to understand the gist of it, and I was simultaneously surprised by how hard it was for me (the I-am-woman-hear-me-roar psychologist, for the love of god) to play the game, as well as his gentle, playful, non-anxious presence.  It was okay to fumble with the game, even the practice version, to make mistakes, to laugh.  He was engaging, calm, spoke about the process of surrogate partner therapy in a trauma-informed way, and was clearly interested and invested in our mutual client’s growth.  My confidence in him and in the process increased further.

Since then, Jason and my client have met every week or two, occasionally limited by financial hang-ups and non-communication on her part.  She and I meet weekly.  Jason and I communicate between each of our respective sessions to discuss her progress, what we are collectively learning about the client, her needs and what blocks her from him, ideas for what feels important, ideas about the pacing, strategies for helping her communicate her desires, emphasizing the importance of her seeing herself as desirable, navigating the felt-loss that this relationship is “not real” in some ways and will eventually come to an end.  We’ve moved through waves of increased loneliness, acute grief, as well as the joys of discovered pleasure. 

The client and I have celebrated so many things we didn’t know about her as of six months ago: the types of touch she enjoys, the way her body can feel at ease while touching another, her capacity to have a conversation and ask appropriate questions of the other’s life, demonstrating interest and care.  She has smiled brighter over the last six months than the last 14 years.  That sounds cliché, but is objectively true.  She happens to have a gorgeous smile, but she has never shown it so much as she has over the process of this work.  It has not been seamless, nor all uphill—there have been dips, and moments of what feel like more acute pain—in the greater awareness of what she longs for and what she doesn’t have outside of this limited context, of what she has missed, of what she is afraid of not finding again.  We are tending to these things with greater breadth and depth than ever before: the grief, and the delight.

I am so impressed with Jason’s work.  To again risk sounding cliché, it feels life-changing.  He is an agent of healing care and my client— and myself!—are better for it. 

So much gratitude,

Dr. Sarah Taylor

Licensed Psychologist