I am like others in that I pretty instantly knew that someone was not right for me; interviewing T's it was relatively easy to eliminate those I couldn't stand or seemed dumb or somehow didn't seem to understand me.

I prefer female T's, but I have had 2 out of 3 male T's for longterm periods. For my current T, I wasn't looking for trauma work, more like my personal life was not what I wanted it to be, I wouldn't have chosen a male T if I thought I was going to dive in the trauma stuff. It turned out he was great at it.

For the life-sort issues, I thought he was promising right away because he was smart and articulate and also gentle and thoughtful. He still is. But it took me awhile, maybe 6 months, before I was secure that this was someone I could really work with. Before that it was more like "this is going okay and I'm too busy to look for someone else, it's better than quitting".