Not at all suggesting that you should go back to therapy, just finding your argument very flawed.

Do you think nurses and teachers care about their patients and students? Why does no one ever suggest that if nurses really cared, they'd do their jobs unpaid? Does getting paid cheapen the compassion they show to people who are ill and dying? Is the only good T a destitute T?

I have friends who listen to me for free too. I feel lucky to have them. But I also listen to them, they are not bound to keep what I say confidential, they are not all good listeners and there's a limit to what I can fairly ask them to hear. I love that paying me T absolves me of any other responsibility toward her. It's all about me. I can't ask that of a friend.

Also, do you really want to work through issues of abuse, grief, shame, abandonment etc with a friend? I don't. I pay my T for her skill set and knowledge. I don't think it's a job anyone off the street could do equally well. It takes a lot of work to be a good T.

Finally, you know what? About renting out love: being good at sex work no doubt takes a lot of work and skill too. I think that comparing every financial or emotional transaction to sex work, as though that somehow renders it cheap or insincere, is such puritanical silliness. I could say "I really wish I could have more from my T than my one paid hour. It makes me feel sad and angry that I can't." Or I could say "T is a [hooker] for not loving me and taking me home with her!"