As I understand, you do not want to have any further contact with me, unless it's mediated by another therapist.

I've thought a lot about the pros and cons of a joint meeting, and for right now, I don't think it would be such a good idea. I am uncomfortable with the implied power dynamics, wherein you unilaterally choose the terms of our ending.

I am unable to see what good would come from me trying to come to terms with ending therapy and to say goodbye while in the presence of a third party. I feel to do so would reinforce the idea that I need protecting, that I am fragile. I feel it is pathologizing. And there is nothing wrong with me. I'm still unclear why you feel you need to take away my autonomy in this way.

Even if you are able to forget me, it doesn't work so easily in the reverse. I still think about you everyday, seven months since I last saw you.

[Husband] and I are going in to see [couple's therapist] next week, for some follow up work. When I talked with [couple's therapist] to schedule, he mentioned that you had sent someone to him recently, which reminded him of his time with [husband] and me. It was a terrible punch in the gut to hear him say your name. I was flooded with memory and emotion. It is awful to think about you.

I hope that you have sought further consultation and have a better understanding about what happened between us. I still feel that you badly mismanaged what I believe was countertransference. This is understandable, you are human after all... but that understanding doesn't negate the pain that I've experienced over the past months. I need you to know how damaging this has been for me, given my difficulties with attachment. I would hope that you could understand how destructive it was for therapy to end abruptly, and without any hope of ever starting again to be able to work through the enactment taking place.

I am still angry. And hurt and sad and confused and ashamed. I am hit intermittently by waves of grief that leave me reeling. You are right there. And yet, you are so far away. That might be the hardest part of this for me to reconcile. That I will not see you again, not because you're actually gone, but because you will not see me.

I still love you. I think I understand now that I scared you with the intensity of my feeling. I spent the first part of my life learning not to need and the latter part learning to allow myself to need again. Now, I'm suspended in this middle place. I do not want to renounce need, but I also do not open myself to others. The thing I feared most - opening myself and being rejected and cast out - happened. You didn't understand in our last session when I told you that ending therapy was a betrayal. I wonder if you ever considered that further, if you came to understand that this played out as a recreation of the very kind of relational trauma from other individuals I was trying to work on with you.

I spent years telling you the good - what I learned and appreciated, what I was grateful for and what I enjoyed in our relationship. I have made great efforts not to allow the pain to negate these things. Sometimes it works, sometimes not.

Through writing this, I've decided that I would like to request that we meet once more, without anyone else present, to discuss our respective understanding of the end of therapy, to honor the relationship, as you once said, and to say goodbye in something of a more fitting fashion.

If you are unwilling to do this, I would appreciate you letting me know your willingness to speak with candor about your own experience in a final joint session. I can't yet bear the idea of never seeing you again, and if it has to be on your terms, I'd like to at least know the full extent of those terms.

If you choose not to respond, I will live with that as well. This will be my last contact.

Sincerely,

Likelife

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"But you frowned like thunder and you went away."

W.H. Auden