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Originally Posted by Yellowbuggy
When you emailed MC the day after the "love" email and clarified that you meant platonic/paternal, I get the feeling you did that because you were worried you had said something inappropriate. This is likely because professing your love for someone other than your husband - your marriage counselor, no less - is fraught was difficulty. I think, however, that your feelings ARE romantic... and that's ok. It's scary to admit because he is your marriage counselor, but your feelings are what they are.
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I worried that it was unclear. I felt like I had to clarify, because "love" can mean so many different things. I don't know that I was 100% sure what I meant even, what I was feeling. Because for weeks (maybe months?), it had seemed like the transference stuff (whatever it actually is) had been fading (which I'd told T and MC), and I felt this sort of emptiness. Then I went to that concert, and it was like I felt this rush of feelings and felt compelled to share them (live music can have a cathartic effect on me). In retrospect...I should have posted on Dear T instead of e-mailing. Or saved the e-mail as a draft and revisited it in the morning before sending.
When T read the e-mail I'd sent MC, he said it very clearly sounded like a love letter, how all that was missing was, "Let's run away together!" I was like "Oh ****" because I hadn't realized it had sounded like that. And T, in that session (an emergency one after the MC phone call and before our session with him) kept asking me how it might have felt for MC to receive an e-mail like that (both on a professional and personal level). It's a topic I wish I could have actually talked to MC about, like I should have apologized for it, for putting him in that position. But of course, I'm not doing that in the middle of a marriage counseling session...Especially when I'm not even sure what I was feeling or what the intent was. (I'd told him I just wanted him to say it was OK that I felt those things, to which he said, in his response, "Of course it's OK." Which is what he says about *any* feelings because we can't control those.)
What's interesting is that up until I'd showed him the letter, T (who I've been seeing 3 months and to whom I've talked quite a bit about MC) said he got the sense it was all just paternal feelings/transference for him, that any sort of romantic sort of thing was more how children idolize and "fall in love with" their parents. So he thought it was like that, even as I'd expressed fears that, at least at one point in the past, it was something else. So clearly I need to explore that topic more with T.
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I think what you're trying to say is that you think he has romantic feelings for you, as well. It's hard to say out loud, I know. I don't think you'll ever know the truth. If he has feelings for you, he won't share it with you because it would be unethical. If he doesn't have feelings for you, he won't share it with you because his job is to focus on you and your H, not him. If he was an unethical therapist, he would have already divulged this information to you - thankfully, he is not.
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Putting this in trigger warning, just in case
Possible trigger:
I'm not saying I think he necessarily has *romantic* feelings for me, per se. Like, I don't thin he's madly in love with me or something. More that there seems to be a sort of chemistry between us (that's more than therapist who has known me a long time). Just in how he acts toward me at times, teasing me, joking around with me--it's even happened in session (with H) a few times. I was explaining an exchange to ex-T a while back, and she was like, "That sounds like you were flirting with each other."
And the second (of two) individual sessions we had when I was first dealing with the transference was...weird. He was telling me this long story about a girl he'd had feelings for in grad school and what happened with them (she ended up dating someone else). I think he was trying to draw some parallel, as he generally does with analogies/stories, but I don't know who was who in that story... Like he said at the end how he and the girl were talking about her relationship with the new guy, but in doing so, they were actually talking about their own relationship (or something like that). The whole mood of the session was different...that was where at the end he said his door was always open to me (individually), then months later pulled back on that, saying it had been a mistake to offer it. I sometimes wonder if that's why he draws the line at individual sessions, while phone calls, e-mails, etc. can be OK (though more limited now)--maybe he sensed something weird there too?
I know if I ever asked him about it, he'd have to respond in a certain way. I've seen people on here share that their T's *have* admitted to reciprocating feelings for them but not being able to act on it. Something like that would really mess with my head (as it did theirs). In some ways, because I know he's ethical, these feelings and the joking back and forth and stuff feel safe--much safer than if, for example, I was doing that with a friend.
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I think you need to spend more time working this through with T, not MC. The answer is not with MC.
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Yeah, I definitely need to spend a lot more time talking to T about it...