Definitely. Because he's said that's part of why he's concerned about disclosing too much, that things will become too about him. And he knows I care about him. At first (like 9 months ago maybe?) he didn't seem to accept it, like saying, "You can't care about me, you don't know me!" But it came up again recently, where I explained that I cared about the person I knew him as, who he was to me--I mean, we spend 2 hours a week talking--and he got it more and seemed to accept it. He also said I do know quite about him, like not his autobiography, but other things about how he presents himself and does therapy.

So I appreciate that he's trying to keep the focus on me, but it's hard at times. I'm a naturally caring person. And it was really difficult with ex-MC when at one point he said, "You're not supposed to care about me, I'm doing something wrong if you do" (yeah, he was doing lots of things wrong, but I'd likely have cared about him regardless). As I've said to T, therapy is just such a weird, complicated relationship, and there's nothing else in life I can compare it to, so it's hard to know how to handle it. He seemed to get that, too.

Also, today he shifted to talking about my goals in therapy, so I think he was trying to step back from talking about the therapeutic relationship.