Well. I never had any difficulty with what are usually touted as tough topics in therapy. And, although I was really sad that one of my shrinks, who I’d been with for over a decade, had made a decision to take a research position in middle-America, I wasn’t distraught: we had a professional friendship but I wasn’t completely emotionally invested in him.

The most difficult topic, for me, was discussing the child that I fathered and abandoned. I had to adjust my perception of my long-deceased father as the perfect saint to an all-too-human who had abandoned me for two-years after the death of my mom. And I had to admit that I had — without intention — abandoned my son.

I had severe abandonment issues (BPD) long before I had a child, long, long before I abandoned him. I was hospitalized between April of 1999 and September of 2002 and I think that the abandonment pustule burst in late-2001 or early-2002 when one of my terrific shrinks said, “Do you think that you’ve been thinking that your father would never have abandoned you as you abandoned your son when, in fact, he did exactly the same as you?” (Paraphrased)

I responded with heaving, long, choking, sobbing unlike any that I have ever experienced.

Sometimes it isn’t sex or attachment or other evils that we men do that causes our greatest grief. I feel lucky that I had professionals who were able to complete the 1,000-piece puzzle that I had started.

I keep reading of deep emotional attachments that many here have for their therapists and I don’t understand why.