For me, therapy is a three-some :-) There's me, the therapy process, and the therapist. If I think/feel I love the therapist and/or s/he loves me without going through the therapeutic process, without "discussion" with T, it's a little like how I feel about characters when I'm reading a book or watching a movie/show? I feel for characters on the screen, have had my life changed by some in books but they are not "real" people, there's no "real" exchange happening there because, in the end, a book is just paper and the other person's imagination and there's no real intercourse happening outside my head.

Yes, I CAN/DO love my therapist (because that is about me and how I feel) but I cannot say for certain what my therapist feels if I have not discussed it with her. I can see "signs" of what I interpret as love, but that is wholly my interpretation, going on in my head. Yes, my T may even, if I ask, say she loves me, but, even then, what that "means" is not clear unless it is fully discussed between both people.

My stepmother and I often told each other we loved each other, usually between bouts of hurting each other We DID in fact love each other, because we didn't only hurt each other but the relationship was such that there was a good 20+ years of relationship day in and day out. The relationship one has with one's therapist is not built for that "purpose", for a day-to-day living together sort of situation.