My T is 40 and I’m 34. I like there’s not a big age difference, although this wasn’t a criteria when I was looking for a T. I had no idea until our first meeting that we have children close in age—I have a 4 year old son, T has a 3 year old son. Having sons of similar ages has been delightful, I love talking about parenting and stages our children are going though.

Besides that, we’re both originally from the east coast but now live on the west coast, so T gets it when I talk about how I’ll always be a yankee at heart. Maybe partially because of being from the east coast, but T and I both have a similar dry, sarcastic sense of humor. We both also connect over our shared love of reading—the only times my T writes anything down is when I mention a particularly great book, I also love getting the occasional book recommendation from him.

Overall though, this coincidences are nice and helped us connect on a surface level, but mutual interests alone wouldn’t have kept me coming back in therapy for these past 7 months. I think a deeper connection was forged with time and with my T’s kindness, empathy, and genuine nature. I appreciate that he’s always his same stable self, that I have the same gentle, kind T each week.