Of course love for dogs, children, students,,sports coaches friends, parents, places , avocations- all manner of loves that aren’t romantic but do resonate hugely through life.

I guess for me, romantic love has been a safe space and rewarding - more so than tough early childhood.

I easily relate the love in therapy to romantic love- not a platonic ideal or a troubadour , but I see it as benevolent . I love my dog infinitely , but not the way I love another human.

It is difficult for me to understand a feeling for an opposite sex T that is preoccupying and consuming in this way that is commensurate with love for a dog, but that may be a shortfall of my imagination.

I like the idea of un-enacted on underlying romantic love as part of therapy bc it seems safe and sweet, and part of what I understand, what feels familiar. I comprehend transference intellectually, but my T is my exact peer in age. I am comfortable with some romantic feelings in the air more so than in superimposing traumatic paternal feelings onto him etc.

My love for dogs, my dog, is timeless and pure- It just isn't like in texture, heft, complexity- like loving another human. That is just me, and you know you.

Only you know if the love you experience for your T is the same love you feel toward you dog. Only your T knows if he feels love for you, and if so what kind.

To the overall question though, human relationships get messy a percentage of the time. I doubt most therapists love most patients. Yet, in the galaxy of therapist- client relationships out there on the spinning globe, for sure there is love, and many kinds of it.