Hello MLS

I am so sorry to hear that a therapist terminated you. Did she terminate you as a result of you telling her that you were having an erotic transference? If that is the case I am so sorry but also not surprised. It's not surprising you struggle to trust telling another T. Unfortunately, some therapists haven't done the training or the work on themselves to understand anything about an erotic transference and what it means.

The therapeutic relationship is such that normal feelings are amplified. Sexual and erotic feelings are as normal as sad or angry feelings so it is normal that we will experience them in therapy too. I expect you are accessing (in the transference) a part of you that needs to be healed through an intimate relationship with another (just as we need that intimate and often erotic early relationship with a primary caregiver/mother as a blueprint for healthy relationships). So, in that, many of those early love feelings that we get intouch with get translated into adult love/sexual feelings - that is how we all fall in love - drawing from the blueprint of the past - that first love affair we have with mother.

Falling in love as an adult will be influenced by how well (or not) that early love affair with mother went - and we will bring through the good and bad bits from that, which, with a sensitive and caring therapist, who can work through those early conflicts with us, can enable us to have much healthier relationships - it's reparative. It sounds like you are doing what you need to do - you are attaching to and falling in love with the therapist, who, in the transference becomes the mother you need but perhaps never had. You need to replicate that early love relationship to redo the bits that went wrong - you are doing just what you need to do. Your love feelings should be treated with care and respect - and a working through of the feelings around that will enable you to understand yourself better. But - it's often painful when we realise that the love cannot be what we need it to be in our fantasy - a full blown adult sexual relationship with the therapist. For the therapist to succumb to the projections of the erotic transference/love, and to act something out, is highly abusive - it is focused on adult needs and forgets the littlle child who is looking for healing - it is incestuous, repeats past trauma and abandonment and mainly ends in disaster for the client (even if in the client's fantasy it feels that is what is needed, in reality it never is the answer). The answer is to work through the issues with the therapist allowing us to be able to find a partner 'out there' to have a healthy relationship with. The therapeutic relationship becomes the new, healthier blueprint.

I hear it happens to you with all your therapists (who represent the mother in your transference)- so it is important when interviewing a therapist that you check they understand and can work with the erotic and what it symbolises for you. Not all therapists can do it. Some, if they have no understanding, will abandon - that isn't about you, it's about them. Look after yourself - you are normal and ok and your feelings show what work you need to do - and it sounds like you need to understand love and all those feelings, using your feelings towards your therapist as a way to do that. Your love is a beautiful thing and the feelings are all normal and ok. The therapist needs to be able to enter into it with you but must never act out with you in a concrete way (having sex with you). I hope the therapist you have now would honour your feelings, but if not, it is important to find someone who can work with you in the erotisised transference without losing the symbolic nature of it.

Good luck

Moon