I tend to agree with you there, monalisasmile. I think it can be a ‘dangerous’ thing to do esp for clients who are quite vulnerable, have dependency or attachment issues etc. Hearing this could raise so many expectations, hopes, desires, fantasies and so on.

As such, I believe Ts ought to be very very careful bandishing this expression willy-nilly. As in, be sure of the effect it will have on any particular client. In this sense, I would hope they know their client pretty well in order to be able to assess the impact of hearing it from our T. But yeah, generally speaking, I would be wary of this.

PS: actually, the more I think about this, the more I think it is not appropriate for a T to say it. You can show it (e.g. by consistent/thoughtful actions etc) but for a T to use those words, I don't think it has its place in the therapeutic 'space'.