Thanks everyone

Crazycanbegood, thanks for understanding. I don't feel others were judging my T relationship, just saying that it wouldn't work for them.

I struggle to think of this as being about boundaries. My experience is that my T has very firm boundaries which she never crosses and never will. But I do fully recognise, as T puts it, that our relationship is quite unconventional by most people's standards of therapy.

Ts draw the lines which hold us in a therapeutic relationship. My T has solid and safe liens. It's just that she's drawn the lines in a different place to many Ts. Perhaps my T relationship has a wider box. Some of the lines are fixed and will never move (e.g. no touch). Some move according to what's helpful or natural (e.g. becoming more self-disclosing when we realised this was healing; saying she loved me when, after a period of time, she did actually start to love me). But I trust T to monitor it carefully and always act in my best interests. And (the hardest part) I trust myself to know whether she's healing or hurting me.

It can be hard to post here when I know we have an unconventional relationship which will elicit discomfort and words of caution from others. I understand that feeling very well, because I feel it when I read others' posts about 'boundaries' which I feel have been crossed (e.g. going to their Ts houses, Ts texting on holiday...). And I guess sometimes I wobble when others feel that about my T, especially because I have had very damaging T relationships in the past. But the truth is I know that what my T does is helping me. I know because I see it in how I'm able to live now. And I don't want to drop off the 'unconventional' end of the PC community because I value this space deeply and feel very much a part of it. So I'll try to be brave and keep posting, safe in what I know is true for me and T