A local clinical psychologist said she believes fewer people would cheat on their spouse if they underwent sex surrogate therapy.
"Look what's happened with Ashley Madison," Dr. Christy Wise told 10News.
Wise is touting not just talk therapy, but also touch therapy from a sex surrogate.
"How are you going to go and tell your wife that you don't know why passion doesn't feel alive, you don't know what to do and you don't know how to bring it?" Wise said.
Mare Simone, a sex surrogate and tantric sex coach who works in San Diego and Los Angeles, said, "I started my surrogate training 30 years ago."
But how is this different from prostitution?
"For me, the major difference is the transformation, is the outcome. What does somebody get on the other side of an experience like that? Does it really affect and help heal or transform their issues? And, if so, then that's true therapy," Simone said.
Simone works with all kinds of people who have issues with sex -- married, virgins, even victims of sexual assault.
"But the people that most benefit from it are singles who really don't have partners to work with," Simone said.
Simone said she works in tandem with a psychologist, a talk therapist.
"And I offer the touch therapy so that they can feel again or connect into parts of them what haven’t felt yet," Simone said.
Wise said legally this is a gray area; it's not legal or illegal.
The therapy is not covered by insurance. The cost is similar to that of a talk therapist -- several hundred dollars a session.
