wow guest expert. this is ridiculously not useful. you have basically just minimized her question to talk at length about your own agenda, which seems to be judgement of they way the couple had chosen to proceed and your insistence that you know better what would work for them. you could have included a couple of notes about what they might do along with hiring a sex worker, but your first duty was to actually inform this poor woman how to go about finding what it is she is actually looking for. Dan, come back already!!!

How do we find this person?

Start here.

Dr Brotto will be answering our questions all week? Hmmm, that's refreshing, I've asked questions of at least a dozen Stranger writers over the years, and rarely rarely do I ever get a response. That's ok.

The Stranger practices Discrimination. I salute their blatant Prejudices. Their Xenophobia. Their stunning practice of Censorship. All quite beautiful aspects one's humanity. Except when they see it in their conservative enemies, they get all Schoolteacher and say 'tsk tsk you bigots.'

I have to agree with #2. This is not a response to the question. This is saying that the LW should live the way the guest expert thinks is right. The LW and her husband have worked through all the issues facing their sex lives and have decided that hiring a professional is the best option. Being judgement and saying they haven't tried enough is pretty dismissive and insulting. Unfortunately I don't have a suggestion as to where to find someone to work with. I do think the one suggestion the guest expert gave, to find a sexual surrogate is a good place to start. To the LW and her husband, good luck to you both.

Dr Brotto,
I don't discuss my hairdresser, massage therapist, or physician much with anyone. So finding one of these people well recommended like SSSW hasn't been exactly easy, but I don't care. I've been happy more or less choosing at random. What are your thoughts on this approach in today's highly determined free will zeigeist? No worries about the sex worker, my situation is fine.

SSSW desperately wants to have sex with her husband. She wants him to get laid. She doesn't want to be emotionally replaced. And she doesn't want a seedy experience for him. Dr. Brotto's advice seemed to fit the bill. If they still want a sex worker, he could vacation in an area it's legal, like Nevada. But she's still left desperately wanting to be involved sexually with him. They could try dirty talking about his adventures.

@2, @5: This is not a response to the question.

Right, that's because obviously Dr. Brotto has no idea where to find a good escort. I'm inclined to forgive her. How or why would she possibly know that?

I remember exams from school. If I couldn't answer the question on the paper, I would ramble on about things I did know. I made up my own questions to answer. The examiners saw right through my cunning ruse, and gave me lousy marks. This answer was to some other question, not LW's question.

Interview who? Shop around where? If you don't know how to find an escort, Doc, maybe choose a different question to answer.

Agree with @7. The response was sensitive, informative and offered suggestions based on the writer not wanting to be replaced. The question wasn't limited to escorts.

@8 - I don't understand why you would be forgiving her for this non-answer. Considering the renown SavageLove enjoys, surely LW wasn't the only person who wrote to ask a question that day. If Dr. B couldn't answer that particular question, perhaps she could have made clear whatever reason she had for non-answering a letter she chose to non-answer, rather than just throwing words at the page? That was the least helpful "answer" I've ever read on SL. It's time for Dan to come home and take his place at Ann's desk again.

The link in post #3 , SSSW, is the correct answer. You can ignore the good Dr.'s other suggestions.

Y'all are being a little bit unfair here. No, Dr. Brotto didn't really answer her question probably because, as @8 suggested, she didn't have an answer. But knowing that, she may have been trying to give the LW and her husband some options they didn't think of or know existed. How many average people think about assistive sexual devices or sexual surrogates for people with disabilities?

Article on misdiagnosis and other controversy around "chronic Lyme disease".
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and…

Short version: It's probably not a real thing.

If the LW bothered to read through any of Dan's archives, she would probay find quite a few suggestions that would answer her question about "how do we do this?" Right?

I'm inclined to also agree with @7 - yes, Dr. Brotto gave a long answer about a bunch of other stuff, but also did close with "seek a surrogate" which is a sex worker. Maybe that's because, like the Dr., I have no idea where one really looks for this.

I imagine that someone who is too tired to have PIV sex probably doesn't have the energy for dildos, oral, or massages either. Unless she's the one getting them, which really doesn't solve her husband's problem.

What @ 3 and 13 said. LW and hubby should to go to TRB and pose this same question there. They will get solid recommendations on who the best local providers may be and will hear from providers who would be happy and well-qualified to provide this service.

Agree, w/others: this was an amazingly non-responsive answer to a pretty simple question.

Wow a whole 20% of the response given over to actually answering the question. The first few paragraphs may have been interesting and useful, but they weren't the information the LW was actually asking for. Extra counseling is great, but I doubt the idea of oral escaped her (plus what @20 said).

Ok, so you think she should find a surrogate instead of an escort; that's cool, but how about actually telling her how to choose one? Maybe throw in a link to the IPSA website or--I don't know--anything that would actually help her follow the bit of advice related to what she actually asked?

It's interesting that out of all the people complaining about the answer only 1 has given concrete advice on how to find a good sex worker.
Also funny are the (presumably healthy) people writing in to tell the obviously sincere and conflicted LW that her ailment is fake.

@15 ftw.

Well-reviewed escorts can be found on The Erotic Review and Eros for starters. The husband will need to be screened. In the last week or so, there was another letter answered by I think Mistress Matisse explaining this. In short, your husband will either need to verify his employment status, or get a reference from another sex worker. Since he hasn't seen any other sex workers, he will need to provide employment info. Before contacting any sex worker, make sure you read her website and understand what rules she has ans what expectations she has with regards to etiquette. TER also has a newbie board full of questions and answers for those who are new to the hobby.

@26: If I was advising a local (Seattle), which this woman is (refs Aurora), I would strongly encourage to go with a provider who is well regarded on TRB. YMMV, but the signal to noise ratio seems to be far higher there than on any other site.

As far as the reference from another provider goes, from what I gather the reason for this is to avoid either John E. Law (popo) or Johnie Rotten (homicidal maniac/rapist/etc). Some full service providers will accept a reference from a FBSM (full body sensual massage) provider, so they may want to start there. The fact that the wife is willing to go along with this may result in dropping this rule. In any event, I think the letter writer should just post it to TRB.

My father contracted Lyme disease, was not tested nor treated for over a year, and developed arthritis from the infection.

People who ARE treated early in the infection almost surely do not have any lasting consequences, like the Slate article cited above makes clear.

But, you guys, those are two different situations that are being mistakingly muddled here.

@28 - I have had Lyme (and Ehrlichia, both are very similar tick-borne bacterial diseases, generally considered Rickettsias) and I know two others who have had it. Mine manifested very quickly - within weeks - so I got a course of antibiotics very quickly. My experience during this acute infection was very similar to what the LW describes: I was wiped out every day by the end of the day. My primary care guy didn't even bother to wait for the tests to come back to start me on the antibiotics.

These are tricky diseases because they are a form of plasmosis where the bacteria hide inside of various blood cells, and are not so easily attacked by antibiotics. I did a long cycle (21 days) of doxycycline, and was good to go after about three days.

The people I know who've had this longer-term (not diagnosed) experienced a lot of issues for a long time; one was on a heart monitor for a while since he wound up tachycardic; the other expressed concerns about arthritis, but ultimately is fine. These people were both untreated for over twelve months.

There is growing evidence that "Chronic Lyme" is not really a disease...or at least, it's not an infection of the bacteria (and research demonstrates lack of the bacterial DNA in the blood). I do wonder if forms of anaplasmosis which are even harder to treat, but are from the same family and hide out in white blood cells...purportedly this is harder to eradicate. YMMV, but I think "chronic lyme" is "fibromyalgia"...which puts me in @15's camp.

It really doesn't matter - the LW isn't up for sex with her husband, for whatever reason.

@1, don't discuss money ever. Note from her website how much she charges per hour. Discuss how much of her time you want ahead of time. Bring the appropriate amount in an envelope. Let her see you put down the envelope. Don't discuss money ever.

Once she starts seducing you, you can talk about sex. Being naked is not relevant.

You are paying for her time. If she chooses to spend that time having sex with you, that's up to her.

I guess I brought it up because if the doctor that diagnosed her was a quack, whatever treatment he/she put her on could be making things worse, not better.

I understand her suffering must be awful though, and I agree Dr. Brotto dropped the ball on her actual question.

Actual advice for the letter writer: get a copy of the book "Paying for It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients." Then look for ads on one of the forums mentioned by previous commenters.

THE LYME TEST IS REGION-SPECIFIC. If you get bitten in a back yard in North Carolina but go see a doctor in New York, they will give you the New York test, and you will get a false negative. You will wander around wondering why you are sick (because the test said it wasn't lyme) until you tell your doctor where you've traveled.

Remember not everyone gets the bullseye mark! Don't assume you're uninfected just because you didn't get a rash.

Also, killer answers to the sex questions. Those were good too.

@15 and @19 Either chronic Lyme is real or there is some other disease out there that looks and responds exactly like chronic Lyme.

I know someone who's been diagnosed with chronic Lyme by a reputable physician (more than one, actually). The bottom line: When they designed and implemented a treatment regimen for chronic Lyme, my friend—a young woman in her twenties—got better. When she went to docs who said, "Oh chronic Lyme isn't real! Let's treat you for this instead," she got worse.

The history of science and medicine is full of cases of people going, "Well, logically this can't be true" only to find out that it was, even if the underlying cause was something unexpected. When the midwives washed their hands, the women didn't die in childbirth. Germ theory was discovered after that.

As for the response, I was a bit skeptical about a Lyme PSA in response to a sex and relationships question, but she did address the issue. The LW clearly doesn't want her husband to have sex with anyone else, and, "Well maybe you don't need a sex worker at all; try this and this" will address the problem, even if it doesn't address the specific question of how to find a good prostitute.