I completely understand. I remember with ex-MC, when I found out about his wife being sick, I expressed something about caring about him. And he said if I cared about him, it meant he'd done something wrong because therapy is supposed to be one-directional. But I said I'm just a caring person in general, so why wouldn't I care about someone I spent an hour a week with? Ex-T agreed that it was natural to care. I felt some desire to take care of him during that as well, but didn't really share that.

Now with Dr. T, the "take care of him" thing just comes out occasionally, one time being early summer when he said he'd been out one day for a funeral (though he ended up coming in that morning to see me, I think?) And seeing that he hasn't been wearing his wedding ring for a long time (and from, uh, some other info I may have found...), I get the sense he's going through a divorce or at least separated. And part of me wants to sort of support him with that, but I doubt he'd even be honest with me about it if that's what's going on.


And at one point, maybe 6 months into seeing him, I mentioned caring about him, and he was like, "You can't care about me, you don't even know me!" That came up again earlier this year, and he said that he now realizes that I might not know him in his outside life, but I still know quite a few things about him, so he understands and accepts the caring about him now.


Therapy is such a strange relationship. I can't think of any other place where you can be so open and honest and vulnerable with another human being, but they're not the same with you. It can be confusing and frustrating and painful.