Wow, this is the big issue for me right now. I am 55.5 years old, and the object of my obsession is only 31. I have two stepsons in that age range, one 30 and the other 32, with whom I am very close, but the ex-T seems so much more mature. I also have a bipolar nephew I am very close with who is the same age as the ex-T, and who also seems far less mature, because I watched him grow up. I am notorious for getting "obsessive crushes" but this was the worst. It did not even happen until half-way through therapy. At first I razzed him about the age difference and his dweeby clothes. I left therapy for a while, after witnessing a suicide on the road on the way home from a session. The guy always bugged me to wear nice clothes and makeup, so when I came back, I did that, and his reaction was amazing. Even then, I did not feel attracted to him. I thought of him as a "boy," but one day when I was depressed and arrived wearing rumpled clothes and no makeup, he said I looked like a bag lady. I got mad at him, and then he asked to hold my hand. Our knees were touching and I was shocked to experience sexual feelings. He WAS an extremely attractive young man with a beautiful, soft voice. He had already said I was beautiful on several occasions. He was married, but I did not know at the time that his young wife was pregnant. After the hand-holding, all I could do was think about him. I knew about transference. It was very difficult telling him about it, and I was disappointed by his cold, clinical reaction to it. I suspected that he was in a relationship with a younger client. I don't know why. However, the session after I told him, he seemed nervous and was crossing his arms protectively over his chest in a manner I'd seen a man who I'd had an affair with many years before do, in an effort not to touch me. We never talked about the elephant in the room, even though I badly wanted to. He kept changing the subject. This was October/November of last year. Then he said his wife was pregnant. That stung. Two days before Christmas he announced he was relocating to a better job far away and I wanted to die, but congratulated him. The last session was a dream of him saying beautiful, thinly-veiled romantic things to me that he never followed up on. At the end, he stood up and held his hand out to me, but he looked sexually angry. I was too terrified to take his hand, for fear that I would just force myself on him. He sat back down at his computer to do the last paperwork (which I stole). I bent down and gave him a soft kiss on that erogenous zone near his right ear. It was like he wasn't even aware of it. I didn't even look back. Two weeks later I had to be hospitalized. I never told my husband or daughter. It has been five months now and, of course, I have not heard from him. I can still hear that voice, "I can't stand the thought of not knowing what will happen to you," and the whisper, "You deserve so much better than that," when I described something very, very personal to him. It was like he wanted to give it to me himself.

I'm going on and on but I have a new therapist and she doesn't want to talk about HIM. She's good, but she's concerned about the here and now and how unprofessional this guy was and how he lied to me and led me on. Yet I am still deeply in love with him and it hurts so badly I cry when nobody is looking. The shame of being in love with a man young enough to be your son or nephew is unspeakable. I am hoping that time will heal. I have a loving husband but there is no sex and I am busy raising my teenaged daughter. I am getting old, but you remember that scene from "The Thorn Birds" where Father Ralph sees Mary to bed on her birthday. I still feel, I still want, and oh, how I love him.

I'm sorry this is so long, but in answer to your question, I know that, for me, it is going to take a long, long time to get over him, because I really fell hard. He said things to make me think he felt the same way about me, in a clinical way, of course, and would never forget me, but I do not believe him. I think he gave the same lovey-dovey speech to all his patients, especially the chix. He is busy now with a new baby, and my intuition tells me that he won't stay married long to his wife. I never even learned her name, though I did of the impending baby. There is a better term for how I feel: limerence. I was coined by a woman at the University of Connecticut, in the very city where he was born. I don't believe in coincidences.