So the first time I told my current T that I cared about him, I want to say it was within the first year of seeing him. And he responded with, "You can't care about me! You don't even know me!" And that was...very difficult. It felt invalidating. I said how I care about a lot of people that maybe I only know in a certain way, like, say, neighbors.

Maybe a year later I mentioned caring about him and brought up what he'd said before. That time, he said he understood it, because he felt like I did know him pretty well by then. And I think he said something like it was OK and that it made sense that I cared about him. That certainly felt better than the time before. (Now, my asking if he cared about me...that's its own long story, which I can share in a separate post if you want. It led to a bit of a rupture at one point actually. But I didn't think that was what you were asking about here).

With my former marriage counselor, when I knew his wife was sick, at one point, I told him I cared about him. Maybe in the sense that I was concerned about whether he was doing OK? (This was like 4 or 5 years ago.) And he said that if I cared about him, that meant he was doing something wrong, because the care is only supposed to go one way in a therapy relationship (from client to therapist). Which also made me feel invalidated... I said something about how I was just a caring person in general. And he seemed to kind of accept that? Though we ended up having a brief phone conversation that night because I still felt bad about it.

So...I don't have the best history in this area. I forget if I ever told ex-T.