True...I think what's so difficult about the stuff with MC is that he was able to hold so many strong feelings of mine...until apparently I crossed some sort of invisible line, and then he couldn't. And T talks about how MC is psychodynamically trained and thus more familiar with transference and the stuff around it...so I worry that if it develops for T, he will be out of his depth.

I think maybe part of it too is how in the beginning, he seemed more...I don't know, detached. Like I didn't get the sense he tended to get as connected to his clients as MC or even ex-T. But then, just the past few weeks, I've felt really connected to him. It's like there's something different in how he interacts with me, particularly as I'm leaving. This probably sounds silly, but his "Have a good Christmas," just felt so warm to me. And then his recent lengthy response to my e-mail... and how he's been the past few sessions.

Maybe my first impression of him was just wrong. Maybe I put too much weight on ex-T's comment about how T had once said to her, when she seemed stressed, "Don't work so hard!" (they used to work together). I took that to mean that T didn't care about clients as much as ex-T. But then, when I mentioned that comment to T, he said he had no memory of saying it, how it was probably just some random thing he said without much meaning. (It's entirely possible, too, that it was more ex-T--who has basically admitted to countertransference--reacting to my seeing someone else and trying to share negative stuff about him...)

And an e-mail he sent a few weeks into my seeing him made me think that maybe he was just an arrogant d-bag...I think it's just confusing seeing how he's proved that impression wrong. Like, could he actually be this really caring guy who will be there for me as much as he can, within his clearly defined boundaries?