Yes, it was reciprocal. Actually T initiated the emotional dialog and acted more or at least more overtly on the feelings than I did. I was always the one asking, what are the boundaries, what are our roles, what is okay, should this be happening, sorry this happened, etc. And T was the one going "no it's fine, no big deal, this is a relationship, I don't have a problem with it" etc. I saw that T had feelings and it was very frustrating because I felt unable to talk about what I was seeing and experiencing with T deflecting or trivializing my observations yet continuing to act in the same way and giving me the same blatant special treatment that pulled me in emotionally, obviously struggling with herself to stay responsible yet acting like everything is fine. I got inconsistent treatment, inconsistent expectations, T doing and saying things she didn't remember and wouldn't have repeated, T getting closer on autopilot then becoming self conscious and backing off, etc.

Pretty much the whole way, she consistently encouraged me to need her more, depend on her more, trust her more, be more vulnerable, be more intimate. And she acted like she was different and could be different than what I experienced with people in the past, all the while acknowledging why I might be afraid to do that. And when I actually did the real version of the things she encouraged me to do, she couldn't handle it.

But, what I'm saying is, there's two sides of every story. If I had been a different person behaving differently, T also wouldn't have acted that way. And I kept having this cognitive dissonance.... despite how intense my feelings had gotten, I never really seriously insisted on talking about it, for the longest time. I was paying T to be my T but not demanding it of her. T was brushing off the extent and effects of her feelings, but I was also actively hiding the extent of my need and my longing to be loved, my fear of being hurt, and my willingness to put feeling the feelings above addressing them.

Is it T's fault? Can it be T's fault when I left out critical information that would have changed her assessment of the situation? Was it T's responsibility to read my mind? I don't know. I mean ideally she wouldn't have kept rationalizing her reactions to me and would have acknowledged the fact that something was wrong. Ideally she would have paid as much attention to her own behavior as she did to mine. But, just like she brushed it off when I drew attention to her feelings, I brushed off a lot of her attempts to reassess how therapy was helping me, I agreed to things I didn't really want and said it's fine, I held my tongue a lot, I left out many of the heavy or shameful topics, I protected myself too.

If T hadn't behaved the way she did, if she had been 100% ethical and healthy, the truth is that I most likely would have just gotten frustrated with therapy and moved on until someone else met me at this same level of psychic game-playing.

A perfect T would be able to do both--meet me at my level but lift me out of it too. My T couldn't do that, and that's my one major complaint. T ideally would not have ended the therapy once it got difficult and ideally would have recognized that it was going in the right direction. But at least I was able to do that for myself. Maybe I just outgrew my T, or the outgrew the specific combination of T and me together. It's not that T created more new harm relative to what anyone else would have created, it's just that she happened to be the person I enacted my ultimately harmful patterns with.

That's what I'm focusing on. There's always two ways of looking at it, relationships are always mutual, so there's my contribution and T's contribution. An unhealthy relationship can't exist without T's genuine contribution to it existing, but it can't exist without my contribution either, and my contribution is the one I can change. Also, more importantly, my contribution is the part that will follow me around and actively seek out the people who will reciprocate my level of functioning. I can try to get T to take responsibility just like I can try to be vindicated and fixed by any other person or thing outside of myself. It would be nice if it reliably worked that way. But in my experience, it generally does not, so I have to vindicate myself. By not being the right thing for me, at least my therapy gave me a better idea of what would be right, and now my choice is either to focus on the pain I feel, or to learn from it so I can find something better.

I used to resent the claims of therapy and therapists, that this was safe, that it could protect me, all that stuff, I thought it was a load of crap. And I still think that. I don't think therapy is much better than any old relationship. I don't think therapists are generally much better than normal people at it. But, most people are imperfect, most people don't have it fully together in life and learning to wade and sift through the crap is unfortunately par for the course..... if there was one good thing about therapy, it's that at least the framework of therapy prevented me from creating real-life, long-term obligations to my T, that I might have created to someone else I ended up in a similar situation with. I did make rash decisions due to T and jump to conclusions and force myself, I did make mistakes due to T, but at least the structure protected me from some of the fallout that my mistakes would have otherwise caused, so I'm at least grateful for that part. Truth is, my condition was bad, and it had already lead me and was going to lead me to even worse places in life if I didn't let myself confront this pain.

Again, all of this said, I'm not trying to erase the abandonment I feel either. Ideally I would have had the space to work through it all with her and safely outgrow the dependency. But, I'm just trying to make the best of the situation and see the value that I took from it in whatever places it can be found.

I don't really know if, or how my thoughts apply to your situation, but I guess the question I would be asking myself would be, "what could T have done different, knowing what she knew about the situation?" and then "how will I know when I meet a person that's able to do that for me? How will I make it easier for them to do? What can I do to get the best of both worlds?"

I like to focus on the thought that none of the positive feelings I felt have gone away even if there's nothing around to trigger them right now. They are still a part of me and nobody could take those from me, even by rejecting them. I like to give myself permission now to have my whole fantasy checklist in a possible best friend or a lover or whoever. Not because someone has to be all those things to me, just out of recognition that I am a person who's able to experience such a deep and valuable connection to someone else. T may have pushed me away but, who cares? It's not like she can pry her likeness out of my head and force me to give up on how happy it made me to feel important to her. I didn't lose anything. I like the person I am when I feel that way, but I don't like the person I am when I try to artificially protect myself from losing it, and when I need to know that other people want it from me. Because the truth is, it is inside of me, I can't lose it unless I voluntarily give it up. I don't know when I will find the right place to feel that in my life. I guess I was never really looking for it before. I was never paying enough attention to people or to myself. But you know what, it's like, why should I let myself be held back by anyone else? If they don't want to be a part of it, their loss, right?