This is interesting... I never thought that what I felt for my therapists was anywhere close to love but I did like one of them very much. It was probably most comparable to what I often experience in other professional collaborations and work relationships with compatible partners. I would actually find it mildly disturbing if a T told me that they loved me and would much prefer to hear that they found me interesting or had respect for me, both of which I did hear from them without asking. They also told me somewhere mid-therapy that they thought I was easy to like... probably not at the end at least for one of them

I think that love can be a very obscure word, it clearly means many different thing to people. I personally get why Ts would not say it to clients - I also don't say it to my work collaborators or students, and for me the relationship with a T is more comparable to those than the personal ones with friends and family. I don't even like when friends use it too lightly and generally as I don't do that either, when I say it I do mean it and usually it is not very transient.

I am glad that you find it useful to address these kinds of "difficult" questions in therapy, Scarlet. I think it's not an easy thing to handle for a therapist because there can be all sorts of interpretations and possible subsequent demands, and it's not easy to maintain.