Haven't written in a while but I want to today. T and I have been through a ginormous rupture that I thought could end our relationship, but we got through it. By the end, he told me that he was retiring from most of his work next year and is only continuing to see a few clients, no more training, supervision etc. etc. I think I may have been picking up on an ending vibe, and that may have driven some of the rupture. I felt really pleased he is continuing to see me, and he said I was one of the deciding factors between semi-retirement and full retirement.

So anyway. Last Friday, I was searching google, something to do with my T and his (art related) hobby, when up popped a picture of him doing his hobby with his daughter. I saw this totally by accident. I felt fine about it, and not jealous at all (which is brand new for me) but I worried a bit how he would feel.

That night, I had a dream, with lots of facets to it but basically it started where I was going to do some online video training with my T. I switched it on, and he was sat eating his breakfast. I was like "this is mundane, why am I seeing this?" (I think this was about the photo, as it felt not for my eyes, and also not that interesting to me).
Then, something very specific happened, I don't want to say what it was, but let's pretend it was that the training involved a video of a waterfall. Then later in the dream he was doing something else, a fairly unusual (sport related) hobby, and something specific went wrong. He didnt seem worried about it in the dream. I said "I have dreamt about you [doing hobby] before, T" (in reality I have no memory of dreaming about that before.

So, first of all, T was fine with the photo thing, in fact he was most bothered about it being an unflattering photo. I talked about not being jealous or hurt and how I feel good about that.

After I told him about the dream, T said two things jumped out at him. He said firstly, that unusual hobby WAS his actual hobby for a long time, and that specific thing that I dreamt went wrong did actually happen to him. Secondly, he was currently developing a training programme that indeed DOES involve [a video of a waterfall]. He has never used anything like that in his training before. He said he sees that as a sign that we communicate unconsciously in ways we can't possibly understand. I find that so very difficult to get my head round, but also can't deny these are two weirdly specific things. And it's not the first time this sort of stuff has happened between us. There have in fact been quite a few over the years. It flies in the face of my logical brain.

We had a long period of silent eye contact. It felt wonderful. I told him he is very special to me. He said that's nice to hear.

He told me that he had thought about making his current art related hobby, the one I had been searching for, more visible, because people have been asking to see more of what he is doing. He said that me searching for it makes him feel like "oh echos would like to see that too, that's another reason to make a website so people can see it". I said how we can feel more relaxed about the boundaries because we have been through enough ruptures to know where they are and trust each other not to cross them.

Time was up. And without thinking, and I seriously have no idea where this came from, I said "Anyway, cuddle time!". We stood up and as we hugged he chuckled and said "did you say cuddle time" I felt a bit embarrassed and I was like "yes" and he chuckled again and said "just checking I heard you right". I felt weirdly embarrassed. I don't normally ever feel embarrassed in therapy. I think the strangest part was that it wasn't just that it evaded my internal filter, it's also that I have never even referred to my hugs with T as "cuddles" in my head, so I wasn't even aware I thought of them as cuddles. But clearly on some level I do! I really want to email him like "wtf how embarrassing I have no idea how I did that" but I think I am going to sit with it and talk about it next week.

I love him.