Been there, done that. STILL doing that. It stinks, I know.

But isn't what you say above exactly the point? I think, in general, that there are a lot of Ts who wouldn't ever tell any client they love them even if it were true. And I imagine there are plenty who don't love their clients. But even Ts who love a client and are willing to say so probably think very carefully about the individual patient when they're deciding whether or not to say it...

If one particular issue you need to work through is your feelings about your dad not loving you, it wouldn't serve you or your T well for him to say he loves you, I think. One problem is that feeling/knowing about T's love short circuits the therapeutic process around the issue. That is, T's love feels like it fills the hole or corrects the damage your father left you with. You come to depend on or assign significance to T's love in a way that makes handling the issue with your father seem less urgent. But T can't be your father, and when reality sets in you still haven't dealt with your father issue, and now you have an issue with T on top of it.

I understand. I very much want my T to love me, and I think that if I were brave enough to define what I want that love to look like, it'd look like T being my mother. It's horribly painful, but I think when they don't rush in to save us from our feelings, they're really doing what's best for us. Blech.

Hang in there. We've got to believe that the prize at the end will be worth the pain in the interim, right?