On the dependency issue, I'd say that it looks something like this: an intense, increasingly felt need to see or be in contact with your therapist. For example, you have a session and leave and feel as though you want to see the therapist again, right away (pretty normal), but the need doesn't go away after a few hours or a day, it just increases and gets more and more demanding. It begins to crowd out all your other thoughts and interfers with you daily functioning. You text, call or email on a daily basis and if you are restricted from this action, you feel panicky and rejected (some therapist allow this kind of contact and the client does feel less panic). You feel unable to make day to day decisions without your therapist's input. You feel the need to ask for more and more frequent "emergency" sessions. You find yourself unable to "self-soothe" between sessions and seek out your therapist's reassurance. Some therapists are really good at managing these feelings, encouraging contact but keeping firm boundaries so that things don't get out of control. They might give the client a tape with their voice on it helping the client self-soothe when in distress. Some will use short phone calls with "coaching" type advice to get the client to be more pro-active in effectively using their skills to calm him/herself when upset or dealing with a tough issue.

Of course, many of these feelings can be felt by ANY client in the midst of a really intense period of therapy and it isn't about getting too dependent. It can simply be part of that client's process and if the therapist responds appropriately and with a calm, rational but empathetic manner, the client can move successfully through this rough period with some real healing under his/her belt. I think the important thing you might want to do is ask for very SPECIFIC examples from your therapist regarding what HE sees as signs of you becoming too dependent. I think this is particularly important because you aren't feeling the same way about your level of dependency in regard to therapy. Often therapist's forget that they can have counter-transference and their discomfort in a particular situation is some of their OWN stuff getting in the way. Perhaps he has some of his own issues regarding dependency. Some therapists really get the hebbie jebbies when they think a client is coming too close and they chalk it up to being the client's issues when it's actually something he/she needs to own. Talk with him about his perceptions of your dependency behaviors and then give him your perception. If after considering what he says and comparing it to how you feel and you still don't feel that dependency is getting to be a troublesome issue for you, I'd definitely encourage you to challenge his thoughts. Sometimes I think we're too ready to allow therapists to have the controls/decision in these types of issues and we don't trust our own instincts. Good luck!

PS I'll leave the "love" issue to others to explain because I have to admit that I've never felt that particular feeling in my therapy experience and wouldn't be much help in that department.