I think leah and hankster bring up some great points and pose some questions worth thinking about. You seem to be approaching this situation-- of the unlikely scenario of encountering a T at an intimate gathering-- as black and white, right or wrong-- as something analytical instead of something emotional. In therapy, it's really helpful to think about how you feel and why you have such strong reactions to certain things. Usually, that means there is something deeper there that needs to be explored.

You said that one reason you are in therapy is because of problems with your friends and family. What problems are those? Do you feel isolated or rejected by them? Do you struggle with boundaries with them? Do you feel like they just don't understand you? Are you lonely and looking for T to fill some of that human connection that is missing? It might be helpful to take a step back from the issue of boundaries with T and think about whether any of these same issues come up in your RL relationships. For instance, do you find that you get into arguments about who is right and who is wrong with your friends? Do you find it difficult to walk away from an argument or agree to disagree? If you can get more insight into your feelings and emotional responses, you might be able to understand your relationships a little better and start making some improvements. After all, the reason you are seeking out a therapist is so that she can help you improve your real life-- not so she can become a part of it or substitute for it. Really, she's there to help you figure out how you can be happier in your every day life and make the changes that you wish to make.

I'll say one thing about the boundaries with T topic-- and then I'll leave it alone because, honestly, I don't think it's the point. I think the bigger issue is what seems to be a sense of loneliness or a fear of rejection that is causing you to want to connect with T outside of therapy, or a refusal to accept that others have different opinions than you and that's okay; we don't always have to agree. That said, what it seems like might be missing in your hypothetical scenario about running into T is your ability to consider the situation from T's point of view and take HER interests into account. You only seem to be concerned with what you want-- you want to talk to and connect with her if you see her at an intimate gathering. And, you want her to want the same thing. You think she SHOULD want to connect with you if she sees you there. But what if she doesn't want that? Can you allow for the possibility that she could be a great and caring therapist who likes you as a client, and still want to keep her professional and private lives separate? As someone who works with students all day, I can say that I spend the majority of my time working for them, putting their interests ahead of my own, and caring about them and their education. I like them and I see them as individuals, not just faces and not just my job. However, it can be very tiring to spend your day putting yourself aside so that you can be there for other people-- clients or students. As long as my students are there, I feel "on guard." That's how I can do my best job for them. So, when I have the opportunity to go somewhere fun with my friends, or with a date, or with a family member-- I want to let my guard down, NOT think about work, and just relax. I do see students out and about fairly frequently and I will say hello, but every time it happens it takes me out of relaxation mode and puts me into "work/on guard" mode. In between the time you posted your initial thread and now, I also happened to run into a former student at Pride, at a lesbian venue. It's not quite the kind of intimate gathering that you were talking about, but it was a place where was feeling "communal" and boundaries were pretty relaxed. However, seeing my student there immediately made me feel "on guard"-- which is not how I wanted to feel at Pride. I like my student, but I just don't want to celebrate Pride with her. I want to keep my private life private, and I want to enjoy Pride with the friends I came with, who I don't get to spend enough time with. I said "hello" to my student, and then I asked my friends if we could move on to a different venue, across the street, so that I could have the good time I wanted to have, where I could just be a "person" and not someone's "professor." The whole thing is that it had nothing to do with my student; it was all about me. I wanted to have my Sunday to myself, to enjoy with my friends. Monday through Friday gets to be about my students; my weekends get to be about me. It's only by having my weekends to myself (where I get to do what I want!) that I am able to be there for my students and put them first when I'm teaching them, meeting with them during office hours, and grading their papers. If I never got to recharge my batteries or have a private life, I couldn't do my job. I would just be too burdened all the time by my students' needs, questions, e-mails, etc. I would suspect that a lot of therapists feel similarly. When you are in their office, YOU get to be the priority. YOUR needs come first. But, if you run into them outside of the office, your needs don't come first anymore. That is their free time. They get to chose how they want to spend it. If they want that private time for themselves, don't they get to make that choice? It's not a reflection on you or an indication of how committed they are to you as a client. It's just that their free time gets to be about them. They get to take care of their own needs, and they may very well need to disengage from anything and anyone that they associate with work in order to feel relaxed. By taking good care of their own needs, they are then able to take care of you in session when it is "your" time.