The way it works is that the therapist will set clear boundaries (or should) early on in the relationship. Then they will say anything beyond that is allowed.

This gets weird because in reality nobody comes out and says their boundaries to you like that. And nobody would put up with your stuff if all you do is talk about yourself 100% of the time. But that's how it's set up and for a reason.

It took me a while to get used to it. I have no similar relationship and I don't think it would work to do this one-sidedness with others. But then again this is a professional relationship and they get paid to hear my problems and offer advice or empathy, with the goal of helping me function better. And just as I would not let it a random person just touch my body but would allow a physiotherapist to manipulate it, therapy too has its own logic.

But it's best not to think those feelings wrong, cause that's what I did in the beginning. Like thinking here was another relationship I was not doing right! It frustrated me to know so little about T, to not be able to give gifts or show appreciation in the way I usually did. Though some things are not allowed, the feelings are fine. Therapy is the thing that's strange, not one's tendency to want a real mutual sort of relationship. So it's okay to be upset about not knowing more about T or able to reciprocate in emotional terms (not financially).

But at the end of the day, this relationship is clinical. It's not supposed to replicate outside relationships which is a two way street and where intimacy comes from mutual sharing. And yet in some other ways, it's supposed to help us with relationships in our daily life. It's funny how that works. Again, I think of it as physio, somebody oddly manipulating your body and yet that is supposed to help you when you yourself are walking and doing things quite different from the ones in the physio's office. Therapy tries to get to the source of psychological problems so has to use a method quite unusual and unique. Just cause a T is not using some medical tools, doesn't mean this is a relation just like any other ones we have with other adults.