Yes. I had already seen my T for 9 years straight when I saw her the second time so I knew in the back of my head we could be seeing each other a long time again. That was very useful to me when I'd get frightened, I could remind myself "we're not terminating now, it's not the end, keep working".

Even when we were terminating, we did with a year and a half window. That sped a lot of things up that probably should have been sped up all along :-) but I don't see how they could have been without that termination deadline being explicit and that has problems of its own as you can imagine. But the pressure to work in the remaining time was very helpful to me, I didn't get bored ever or think a session was wasted, etc. I was more focused.

I ended up taking a full-time job to pay for therapy. But I didn't have any children to worry about like you do. My husband was consulting also at first and my full-time job provided our health insurance (also not a problem for you?) and I had a retirement plan I could contribute to, etc. so my working full time helped me some, made me feel like I was contributing and not just making enough take-home to pay my T bills (there was very little extra left over beyond paying T). But I looked at it too, as subtracting some of the drain on my husband's income, paying for "myself"/my "hobby" LOL.

What was really nice about T for so long and working was, since it was only paying for T, when I finally terminated, I could also quit working :-) I worked a month or two after I terminated to get some "extra" money for the household (we were moving so had some extra expenses) and to help me with some of the feelings from termination (I was only working part-time at the end), help me with feelings of continuation and familiarity so I wasn't terminated too many things at first like I had the first time we stopped therapy after the first 9 years. That time I moved, my job moved and changed (our company had been bought and there was lots of turmoil), I quit therapy, left all my friends (moved too far away) and only had my boyfriend/now husband as my support. It was not a pretty experience for 3-4 years. But I learned from that and didn't quit things all at once and planned a European vacation to look forward to after termination, etc. I created ties to a "future" life which I called "bridges."