Hamptons Sex Therapists Reveal Why Business Is Booming

Lee Phillips is the only certified sex therapist with a physical office in the Hamptons—the long stretch of beach outside New York City known for hosting the summer homes of stars like Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez, and Jon Bon Jovi. He only opened his Long Island location in August, but his practice is already busier than expected.

The main culprit? Stress.

“When people become big or famous or wealthy, there’s a lot of pressure on them,” he told The Daily Beast. “Because they’ve got so many events to go to—there’s this charity event, there’s this one, there’s this one. I’m [on] camera, I’m getting my picture taken.”

“When I think of pressure that leads to more anxiety,” he added. “And of course that can cause them to have some sexual issues.”

Phillips specializes in what he calls “sex-positive” therapy, welcoming clients from across the LGBTQ+ spectrum and various kink communities. He often treats patients looking to start dating, explore fetishes, or open up their relationships—the latter of which he said is becoming increasingly popular. Especially post-pandemic, he said, “people are wanting to get more curious about things, they’re wanting some more diversity.”

Sandi Kaufman, a certified sex therapist and licensed clinical social worker, previously boasted the only physical practice in the area, but had to shut down her Southampton location during COVID. She still sees a good deal of Hamptons clients remotely, however, and insists that in terms of sexual issues, the rich and famous are just like us.

Except, that is, when it comes to their schedules.

“I’ll have sessions with people when they’re in Spain or Mexico, or all over the place,” she said. “It’s hard to schedule, especially if it’s couple-work and the couple might be in two different time zones.”

Phillips already maintains offices in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., where he’s observed some marked differences between his patients. He compared his D.C. clients to a tightly wound telephone cord, always worried about making connections or landing their next promotion. His Manhattan clients, he says, tend to be younger, grittier, artsier types, trying to figure out their place in the world along with their sexuality.

His new crop of Hamptons clients, he said, tend to be older, more successful—and more entrenched in their issues.

“In the Hamptons you see very well-established people who are coming in because there is a long history of things they’ve never addressed,” he explained. “They've kept things in and now things are coming out.”

Unsurprisingly, those buried issues lead to a lot of problems in the bedroom.

“A lot of them are in sexless marriages,” he added. “Like, ‘We’ve been together for 10 years... and I still want to be sexual but I don’t think she wants to be sexual, or he wants to be sexual.’”

Some of the issues are a little more, well, physical.

“There’s also quite a bit of toxic masculinity out there,” Phillips said, referring to a cultural pressure on men to be strong, emotionless breadwinners for their families.

“What happens is when they get into the bedroom and they have something like an erectile challenge, they feel so defeated,” he said. “And they come into my office and they’re like, ‘Oh my God, I feel like I’m broken."

Phillips said he counsels these patients that their issue is extremely common, and walks them through the possible medical and emotional root causes. He says the men always leave with a sense of relief. “I’m like, ‘There's nothing wrong with you,’’ he said. “‘You’re gonna be OK, buddy.’"

Kaufman, meanwhile, tends to treat more women—usually older women with successful careers in the city, who came to the Hamptons to find more peace. The only problem? They also found a smaller dating pool. “I’ve got a lot of women who are facing dating issues up here,” she dished. “There’s a smaller pool of people, so it has its own challenges.”

But Kaufman added that she’d recently had a patient who started dating a local man, and fell “madly in love.”

“I think there are a lot of things that people want in a relationship... It doesn’t necessarily have to be that you have to have a certain socioeconomic status,” she said. “Once you’ve reached a certain level, it may become less of a priority.”

Despite their wealth and prestige, Phillips says, his Hamptons clients face many of the same issues as his other patients: breakdowns in communication, lingering resentments, and the other mundane issues of living with another person. He hasn’t delved into kink with many of them yet, he said—but that doesn’t mean he won’t get there.

“I find that I’m doing a lot of work with helping people communicate with each other,” he said. “But then when you also tell people you’re kink-aware, they come in and they’re like, ‘I have this fetish and my wife doesn’t know about it, or I’ve got this kink and I don’t want her to find out, or I don’t want my husband to find out that I’m sleeping with the pool boy.'"

Phillips’s new office space is larger than he needs, and he says he’s thinking of converting into a training space for other sex therapists one day.

Either that or he’s going to start a sex toy line.

“I mean, why not?” he said with a laugh. “There’s all kinds of opportunities.”