By Bunmi Sofola

With many of our men complaining of different types of ‘accidents’ in the bedroom, it is no surprise that the help of what is now termed a ‘sexual surrogate’ could come in handy.  The average ‘sexual surrogate’ is not a prostitute but a trained psychotherapist who acts as a surrogate for men suffering from a variety of sexual problems which are hampering their ability to have a normal physical relationship.  Padma Deva is currently a highly successful surrogate based in the UK.  She said she’s never had a negative experience with a client, and far from feeling in any way degraded by her work, she finds it emotionally fulfilling.

According to her: “It is wonderful to witness the transformation my clients undergo, and knowing I have played a part in that is rewarding.  During an initial consultation with a new client, I recommend a client sees their doctor to rule out physical causes for their sexual problems such as diabetes or high blood pressure.”  If surrogacy is deemed appropriate, she asks her client to take a sexually transmitted disease test before hand.  Only then can the surrogacy work begin.  To start with, both client and surrogate may remain fully clothed, focusing on exercises such as touching each other’s hands, arms, shoulders and face.  As the therapy advances, the client and the surrogate may build up to removing their clothes, engaging in genital contact and, if necessary and appropriate, full sexual intercourse.

According to Padma, almost all of the clients she has seen for premature ejaculation issues have been able to improve the duration of their love-making from a typical 30-60 seconds initially, up to and beyond the male average of five to ten minutes.  Similarly, she says 90 per cent of her erectile dysfunction clients have learned how to gain an erection without relaying on medication such as viagra.  “Every client I’ve worked with has left the programme with new-found confidence,” she said.  One of such clients is Alan, a 28-year-old clerical worker, who decided to see her because he was a virgin with no confidence around women.  He says his life was miserable because of his lack of sexual experience, which he thinks results from shyness.  “It also made me think of myself as worthless,” he explains I once dated and fell in love with a lovely girl who seemed to be attracted to me.  I remember her writing to me to make the first move sexually, but I didn’t have  clue what to do, so I made up some weak excuse and went home.  I once read about the Mughal era in India, where they would send young boys to specialised prostitutes who would educate them in the art of love-making.  I remember wishing something like that had been available to me.”  To date, Alan’s had three sessions with Padma.  She has talked to him about relationships and female anatomy; and introduced sensual touching into their meetings.  “A session usually starts with Padma explaining the theory behind the exercise,” he says, “then we move on the physical acts.  In one session, we covered the naked body, hugs and sensual touching of the back.  I had a breakthrough moment during the massage exercise, when at first I went into panic mode, worried about my performance.  We stopped and did some grounding-breathing exercises then tried again, and I enjoyed it.”  Alan says his confidence has grown immeasurably, and he is now so optimistic about the future that he has signed up to a dating website – something he would previously have been too nervous to do.  As to be expected, some goody-two-shoes are turning up their nose at sexual surrogacy despite the veneer of clinical respectability.  They see it as a deeply controversial practice.  Critics, perhaps understandingly, have dismissed it as morally reprehensible, degrading, and, at the very least, of dubious therapeutic benefit.  Some have even questioned its legality, although there are no laws specifically prohibiting it.  Sexual surrogacy may sound a bit suspect but it is based on the clinical work carried out in the 50s by sex researchers: William H. Master and Virginia E. Johnson, who embarked on an 11-year study involving 510 married couples, 54 single men and three single women.  They recruited 54 carefully-screened women volunteers to work as surrogate partners with the singles.  Before then, sexual problems were treated by psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, with Masters and Johnson developed a two-week treatment programme they claimed was 80 per cent effective.  The success rate for the single men who worked with surrogates was 75 per cent.  In this neck of the woods, a lot of you guys have confessed you would for ever be grateful to older women in your village, most of whom were second or fifth wives, who put you through your paces when they deemed you ripe for the picking.  A lot of you have nostalgic tales to tell of how such women, your dads’ native wives inclusive, blew your brains out with raw sexual encounters.  Now that surrogacy is a possibility, both partners could benefit immensely with no guilt feelings.  “To the sceptics”, says Padma who’s made a tidy sum from her ‘consultancy’, “I would say that it is giving me a chance to have a life I could only dream of – and what’s wrong with that?”

Your husband’s ego needs massaging too!

How do you cheer up a man who is down in the dumps?  Every woman feels better for being complimented on her appearance, but what is the equivalent of: “You look beautiful” for a man?  The quickest way to compliment anyone is to refer to their sex appeal.  A man is turned on by what he sees; a woman turned on by what she hears. 

Hence, to charm a woman, a man needs only to tell her that she is beautiful but to compliment a man, you need only to let him know that what he says is riveting.  As every seductress knows, you start by making a man feel witty and clever.  That is not always a plausible response, but there is another route.

Men are notoriously bad at expressing their feelings, yet, deep down, they are troubled by them.  They want to be understood without having to go through the agony of self-revelation.  So, as he sits there, numb and depressed, neither witty nor clever, let him believe you understand how he feels.  (Of course, it helps if you don’t need to).  Vague expressions of acknowledgement such as “I admire how you’re dealing with this” or “I know it is difficult” will go a long way.