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Originally Posted by Xynesthesia2
This all is interesting because, from that email he sent you, I had the impression that he is indeed looking at his role in it pretty strongly - just won't share it with you. And now you start speculating that something might be off in his life.
Here is how I personally see it. If you want to use this situation and the comments here for your benefit, I would probably ask myself the question whether this pushing people's limits and wanting them to turn into something else (wasn't it the case with MC as well, who quite massively deviated from his professional role?) only happens in therapy for you or also a tendency in your everyday life. I guess stopdog was getting to something similar above. Because, as you can see from many comments here, people react to this pretty strongly and not necessarily in a positive way. Especially because it is quite subtle, often appealing and sophisticated, it can come across as a positive challenge... perhaps that's why you succeed... but people will inevitably have limits, therapists or not. Unlike MC in the past, this T makes it clear where his limits are when they are reached, and will take responsibility for it ("it is not about you"). What else would you like him to do? To satisfy your wishes, of course... but, my feeling is that if you reach a certain level with the demands, people will likely start reacting the exact opposite way and distance themselves further, and you will remain even more dissatisfied with the reactions deep down and feel hurt. Dunno, just something to maybe consider. Again, if it only happens in therapy, it may not be too important.
On seeing him and another T in parallel - I am also often positive about juggling them and using each for what they are most suitable/useful. In your case though, I am not so sure... I could see it turning into a situation where you have one main T and another one to provide therapy about what's less satisfying for you about the main T... Spend a lot of money on that, instead of the things that are relevant to your normal life and relationships. Just my opinion, I am sure many others will see it differently.
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I think I to some extent do this with other people in my life as well, though I think I do it a bit less often now. Like with friends, I might tell them something about myself that they could see as a negative (like being unfaithful to my H 3 years ago) and see if they'll still accept me. So another form of testing. T has made me more aware of how I do this in real life and talked about how I don't have to tell everyone everything. And that includes him. So where with ex-MC, if, say, I googled and found his wife, I'd feel this need to go confess it to him to make sure it's still acceptable. Whereas with T, I did this in the beginning, but now I usually don't bother telling him about things like that. Because why does he need to know? (I did tell him about his wife posting in the autism group I'm in, but that wasn't me googling, that just showed up, so it wasn't a guilt absolution thing).
So I definitely think it's a pattern I need to do more work on. I think with T--and this was a thing with ex-MC, too, due to the nature of the relationship--it's like I try to get evidence of caring from him. He's not the most demonstrative, so I try to get something from him in email. And then I'll get something from him, maybe he'll seem particularly caring in session or an email, so I want to have that again. But then maybe I need to push for it a little more.
Honestly, the stuff with standing and what he says at the end--that really started as more of a conversation of what would make it easier for me when I leave session. We also talked about my paying at the beginning instead, because it feels like a weird ending--disconnection and underlining the fact that it's a business relationship--and then also makes what he says/does after I pay and before I walk out the door feel more important. So I was saying how it bothered me that he never stood, and maybe that would help. And then he just got so defensive about that in session, that it became kind of a mess. And I tried talking about what he says right before I leave, and that was a weird conversation, too, with his also getting defensive and saying he didn't want to have to think about it that much. But it's not like he offered up any other suggestions for making the ending easier. He made it about him.
And in session, with the standing, he didn't say that he had personal reasons for not doing it. He said, "I'd have to stand up then sit right back down again at my desk. I'm not changing my routine." Had he said the "I have personal reasons for it, it's not about you" in session like he said in the email, I'd have likely taken it differently. But instead it just felt like he couldn't be bothered. Which is different than if say, I don't know, it would bother his back--I'm not insisting on knowing the reasons, just what he actually said to me seemed defensive. When I presented it as "This is something that's bothered me the whole time and it feels so silly and stupid, but..." I really didn't expect it to turn into this big thing at all... then again, that seems like how any of our ruptures start, with me saying or asking something that I expect to be an easy 1-minute conversation then blows up.
As for the stuff off in his life, I've felt that for a while now, not just in reaction to this. He's seemed a bit different for a while now, like kind of sad. Though toward me, it seemed to have been more in the other direction, that he seemed more gentle and caring toward me. So this just felt jarring compared to how he had been.