Thanks, all, for your recent comments on here! I'm finding it all valuable.

BlackCanary, I'm agreeing with you that my T seems to have retreated to a safe place. I guess therapists need safety too, LOL! Something definitely happened, and it might have been that "you love me" comment. I've only wished I could go back in time and erase that one about a million times. At first I wanted to erase it because I just felt I'd made a social faux pas. Now I want to erase it because it seems to have damaged our relationship in a quantifiable way. It seems more serious!

Sunrise -- interesting theory. I think I understand what you suggest my T might have been doing. It was just that I demonstrate every day that I go into therapy, that I'm willing to make myself vulnerable. I don't need to admire anyone else for doing that. A novelist once said (about writing) that it's easy -- you just sit down at the keyboard and open a vein. That's what therapy is for me, and I've been willing to do it. My T has even said that he sees how willing I am to forge ahead, go to painful places, consider outrageous possibilities, and unwrap scary things from deep inside myself. Why is he pointing at someone else, saying, hey, have you ever been vulnerable like that? I don't think he meant to be an a-hole, but what irks me is that he was deliberately (I believe) ignoring my plea to be comforted.

Someone had attacked me, and I just wanted my T to say, Hey, kitten, you're hurting, I understand. That was really all I needed from him. And then maybe another question, like, tell me more about it. The fact that he tried to turn it into some intellectual bring-the-email-jerk-into-the-session-with-us excercise just really frosted my waffles. Sometimes it's helpful to take something further outward, to hold it up and try to make it objective, or to do an excercise. Getting some distance can often help. It just wasn't one of those times. But I see what you're saying, that my T was trying to do something helpful. I'm willing to consider that possibility!

On the subject of comfort -- I was reading an old-school book about therapy the other day, and the author said: it's not the therapist's job to comfort the client. The therapist's job is to analyze the client. Granted, we don't think in terms of analysis in a strict sense anymore. And the guy called clients patients, which I also dislike -- puts the emphasis on pathology. As I said, it was an older book. But that really struck me. The rationale was something like, therapists have to be objective. Showing an inclination to comfort takes them out of the therapeutic zone, makes them less effective.

But how realistic is that? I mean, don't most people who seek therapists want to be comforted?

Rainbow, I like the idea that working on my relationship with T could be a distraction from getting down to my own issues. I think you're right on the money there. Another poster said that I might have a need to win over this person who doesn't seem to be responding to me, or does so only intermittently. It's like the thrill of gambling! And triggering -- yes, I think he is that. I'm not sure what he triggers. Something unpleasant around my parents I think. (My folks always discounted me, tried to get me to admire other children, who were always better than I was.)

My T is gone this week -- I scheduled a physical instead (maybe so I wouldn't miss him so much?). But I do plan to have an intake with another prospective T in the next couple of weeks. Got one picked out!

Thanks again for responding to my lame stuff all the time, I'm just about sick of it myself I appreciate your input so much!