Quote:
Originally Posted by LonesomeTonight
This makes sense...I mean, it could be, too, in the beginning, he knew I pushed lots of boundaries with my marriage counselor--and ex-MC let me do that, too, and would relax his boundaries. So maybe T was trying to be particularly strict about his boundaries, because he was expecting me to keep pushing them. But then...for example, when he told me I had been intrusive with the one text, I haven't texted him about anything but scheduling since (and actually, one of those was an e-mail because it wasn't overly urgent). So maybe he realizes that once he's clear about boundaries, I *do* respect them. So than he's OK with loosening them a bit because he believes that I won't take advantage of them. Maybe I just had to prove myself, in a sense.
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I think when people hear about "boundary pushing," they generally think about somebody who needs to do a lot of testing and limit-pushing to see what they can get away with or what the other person will allow. It's clear that you have the ability to make space for the other person's rules and preferences as long as they are consistent and you know what they are (MC seemed incapable of that last bit). So I'm guessing by now he knows that you have the emotional intelligence to generally not exceed his personal limits without him having to be really firm all the time. That said, he seems to have slightly ambivalent feelings about texts, so I would probably stick to email in your situation too.
I have found that my T is sometimes more chatty and reveals more about herself than her usual baseline. She definitely does that over the phone and sometimes in session too. I usually like it, and I think it has enhanced my understanding of her as a person and deepened our connection. It happens more now that I've been seeing her for a while and almost never happened in the beginning.