why can't T be a friend afterwards? **please read the end note about responses before replying**

i understand the dangers of any romantic or sexual relationship with one's T. i understand how he cannot truly be a friend now because things would have to be two-way instead of focused just on me. i understand the potentials for various types of transference.

but i do NOT understand why he can't be a friend later.

a friend said to me that i don't know anything about his outside life so my feelings of wanting to be friends are transference. i'm sure some of it may be... but i don't choose my friends based on what i know about what they do or how they spend their free time, never have (which incidentally is why i have an ecclectic mix of people who often don't share a lot of interests with me). i choose who i'd like to be friends with based on their personalities, my sense of the sort of fabric they are made from.

i have an overdeveloped ability to read body language, minute stuff that most people don't notice. i trust it and it rarely lets me down... it's kind of like how they can replay a tape of a person's face to show tiny changes when they lie.. well, i register that as it happens, so i know or feel i know when someone is lying for example. i am good at it. i am not good at much, but i am good at that. i have even given a "reading" for T on what he was feeling one day when he asked, just to test out what i was saying.. i was dead on even though he wasn't feeling anything extreme.

so i have this "gut feeling" thing that i trust, and that is how i gravitate toward people as friends. My feeling about him is very good. i like who he is as a person, without knowing, or needing to know, whether he likes chocolate or vanilla ice cream. We click. We share the same absurd sense of humour and many values.

honestly... i think we could spend an afternoon talking about things that had little to do with me specifically and still get on fine. In fact, there have been times when we have had to corral (sp?) ourselves because we get off on a tangent of some mutual interest.

he never, ever crosses the line to tell me about his personal life or "stuff." So that point is valid. i just know i would know anyway. Just recently in a session i had been kind of snotty and unreasonable and i knew he was frustrated so i called him on it. Sure enough, yeah, he was. But he was open about that and it was quickly dealt with.

i don't understand why we can't be friends later. i mean, i wouldn't expect that restriction on any other of my health care providers.. i'm sure it would be fine to have a coffee with my orthopedist.

i ask because it matters. i ask because i cannot find a way to reconcile the dynamic in my head otherwise. i don't think i can ever become completely open with someone who i know is just going to walk away later... it's not even "you might leave me," it's i know he will.

i do not understand

and please... please be gentle in any response.. please do not give me a cognitive BS or "rules of therapy" stuff. i have never ever adhered (?) to absolutes in anything. The world is not an absolute place so absolutes are impractical at best.

be kind because i am fragile.