What an interesting discussion!

SallyBrown, thanks so much for sharing all that. I really enjoyed reading your posts and must say that I relate to your experience and thinking very closely, it's eerie actually. I think that mutual and spoken attraction with a T is not necessarily negative -- in my opinion it depends on the actual situation and participants, each case and person combination is unique. I also have a history of getting attracted to male authority figures... and actually getting involved with them. I even chose a T that fits my pattern out of a few that I researched before I started therapy, and it wasn't unconscious. Apart from knowing that I would most likely trust a person who fits my pattern more than one that does not to speak openly about myself, I had a clear wish that I would finally want to investigate this whole thing in depth in therapy using the transference. I also imagined that my feelings, if they develop, would possibly not remain entirely one sided based on a long chain of past experiences.

My T has not shared feelings for me, but I sense something is up from many subtle reactions. I have not been seeing him for a year yet so it's still fairly new. In my case, I actually like that he's relaxed and does not verbally impose strict boundaries, yes it encourages my feelings but I was interested in exploring these kinds of feelings from start in an analytical way. Am I in danger of something destructive? I don't believe so, but who knows for sure?

I plan to start asking about his feelings but it's an excellent point to ask myself first whether I truly want to know and why that is or isn't the case. I've already figured out a lot over the years by myself, but analyzing the transference is not something that many people are interested in doing in "ordinary" relationships. And if I am able to understand his reactions, that would most likely help me understand how others relate to me. I do want to know that, so why not use therapy for it if possible? Yet at the same time, I also kinda want to keep the mystery of the imagination, and I don't really want to find out that what I suspect is possibly not true. I guess we can say that while I am keenly interested in investigating the repetitive pattern in my life, I don't really want to let go of it fully.