[nessaea]

I've heard a couple people here say that they feel they love their T, or they they have told their T they love them, and that got me thinking about love and therapy.

English is such an imprecise language, especially when it comes to love. I love pizza, and I love my cat, and I love my parents, and I love my boyfriend...but that is the same word used to describe many very different feelings. Thinking about it, I realized that I also do love my T, but in a special and unique way, probably best described as a combination of a close friendship love with an affection and admiration of someone I have a great deal of respect for (kind of like the love you would have for a teacher that really inspires you). I have never expressed this feeling directly to my T, and never really felt a desire to.

So, I was wondering, do you feel like you love your T? If so, how would you describe the kind of love you have for them? Have you ever told them you loved them? Why or why not? Have they ever expressed any form of love to you?

(Note: I didn't put this in the "Romantic Feelings" section because I'm asking about all kinds of love, especially non-romantic ones. I'm wondering more about relationships and connections rather than any transference feelings, if that makes sense.)

[tinyrabbit]

I don't know if I love my T. I sometimes feel what I would call therapy love. And I know I'm very attached to him.

He has told me he cares about me and that he is pleased that our relationship seems to be sustaining me somehow. If he mentioned love I would probably freak out.

But I am just remembering a scene in In Treatment where Gabriel Byrne's character says he finds something to love about all his patients.

I do love my T, in a friend/mentor/supporter kind of way. He knows that, although I don't know that I've ever verbalized that to him as "love". He has told me he loves me a couple of times -- again, in a friend/supporter, etc. kind of way. He does care deeply about me, my husband, and my children which is so evident in his actions. Actions are more important than the words really.

[Willowleaf]

That had me thinking. I am very attached to my t but not sure I love her. I want her to care about / possibly love me but not sure it is reciprocated.

I feel the love & hate a child feels toward their mother toward my T.

I love my t as a woman who has helped me come back to life. I love her as more than a friend because a friend would not walk through this journey with me nor would a family member. I love my t because she never judges and always supports.
There are times when it feels more than this type of love and more the romantic type, it is very confusing to me because I can't imagine being intimate with t, yet I yearn for her touch and for her to hold me and care about me.
This is a great thread Nessa, thank you.
There are so many type is love but I feel my love for t is real and pure love like I have never loved anyone before.

My t and i say i love you a lot to each other. We just love each other as people. As christians we boh have a natural love for others.

I love my T. She is something of a mother figure/mentor to me. There are times where maternal transference/attachment has took over, but I know I also feel a genuine love and caring for the - human - person she is. 'Warts n all'. I know she cares for me, too - appropriately, and with boundaries! She hasn't said she 'loves' me, but she makes me feel loved.

[1stepatatime]

Greetings
Thank you for inspiring this topic!! For me I don't quite know ho w to define my feelings but clearly they are there. Let me see...here are some words that would represent how I feel about my T.....admiration, respect, attraction, flirtation, care, dependency, like, like,lo**???

[content30]

Originally Posted by nessaea

Thinking about it, I realized that I also do love my T, but in a special and unique way, probably best described as a combination of a close friendship love with an affection and admiration of someone I have a great deal of respect for (kind of like the love you would have for a teacher that really inspires you). I have never expressed this feeling directly to my T, and never really felt a desire to.

I feel the exact same way about my T. I have told her she is a fabulous T and that she has helped me tremendously, but I have never told her that I love her and do not plan on it. When I stop going to see T regularly, I will again express my gratitude and let her know that she means a lot to me...I'm sure that she'll get the picture!

[ready2makenice]

Interesting topic:
I have this love/hate relationship with my T but overall I do love and have love for her.

I admire my T as someone I would look to be more like,someone I look up to,less than a mother but more than a counselor.

She actually was the one who first said that she loves me and initially I wasn't sure it was appropriate but I was distraught in the moment and eventually I told her I love her too. We don't say anything we don't mean and we both felt that it was needed/welcomed,plus I'm really honest with my T about my feelings towards her.

Love that people have these awesome relationships with your T

[Anne2.0]

My perspective is that I'd have to be made of stone to have shared what I've shared with T, and have him respond with compassion and understanding, and not have feelings of non-creepy love for him. I find many people in my life, if I have a significant relationship with them, very easy to love-- my child, my friends, my mentor-ees, some of my coworkers. My T is also easy to love. The only people I have found tough to love at times are my H and members of my FOO.

I am not talking romantic or erotic or even sensual love here-- ick and ack as it relates to T's for me. I am talking about the generic kind of love, which is more than like and different from "I think you're kind of cool."

[EllieBear]

I love my T in supporter/ mentor/ mother figure kind of way. I have told her a couple times. She actually told me she loved me first and has told me a few times over the years I've seen her. Love for me was always attached to something bad growing up, so I struggled a lit with that word. The "L" word...I always called it. So when she told me she loved me, and I realized I felt love for her too, it was a totally different kind of love than I'd ever experienced. I would describe it as pure, unconditional, peaceful, healing love. Innocent almost. Unjudgmental, accepting, motivating, lifting. That's how I would describe the love we share.

[scorpiosis37]

Let's see... I love my T more than pizza... less than my best friend... and I don't have a cat for comparison :-) In all seriousness though, I would say that I love my T very much and i would characterize it as "therapy love." I suppose it is some combination of platonic/friendly/maternal love, but I think it's more unique than that. She's the person who's there every week to listen to whatever I have to say, supports me in anything I do, gives me genuine and unsolicited compliments, tears up on occasion as I share things with her, sits next to me when I tear up, and shows a real commitment to my well-being. I've told her before that while there are many aspects of the therapy relationship that only go one way, caring goes both ways. And she agrees. I don't think I've said "I love you" to her but I have said "I care about you" and she's said the same to me. I've also said "my girlfriend thinks its weird that I love my T" and my T said "that isn't weird at all; we have a special connection and she just doesn't understand it." I've never asked her outright how she feels about me because I don't think I need to; I already know.

[stopdog]

No. I would not say I do. I am not even sure I would say I like her. There are times I do not dislike her. The woman has said I am attached to her. I feel no special bond or anything with her.

[Perna]

I use to have fantasies of rescuing my T; but then, I also had fantasies of her rescuing me :-) My T helped me and I am very grateful and if I were going to a desert island, I would not mind taking her along :-) I like her, personally and she's in my Top 10 people to have ever entered my life but, I don't know if I know her well enough to say I love her.

[BonnieJean]

I don't know mine well enough to love her either. All I know is her therapist role toward me. I don't know her.

[franki_j]

I love my T very much, to the point where it can be painful. In a mother/mentor kind of way is the best way I can put it. My feelings for her are very intense.

Last week, we had a disagreement and I got very angry and sent her an email telling her so. She replied and apologized. This week when I saw her, she asked me if I felt disappointed and if I still thought she was a great T. I guess maybe she expected my getting mad at her to change my perspective of her, b/c it would show her as a human being and that she "messed up", and so it would change me thinking of her as a a great T, but it didn't.

[southpole]

I love my T but I don't want to tell her, and I think I'd freak out if she told me the same. Mine is definitely therapy love combined with wanting to care for her. I don't have transference romantic love, thank ye gods! But I do think about her a lot (perhaps too much?) and I would like to express care for her, and for her to do the same.

But not "love" though. That's a weird word for me. I'm only just starting to use it IRL and understand what it actually means, so T has been helpful for that. I wonder if it's because this sense of "care" that I have is actual love, whereas the scary, icky, dangerous ideas I have had about love in the past are best avoided.

My current T is the kindest person I have ever met, but I have never felt anything else. Which is partly why I know I need a different therapist (because we have just been stuuuck and I have been more depressed).

And I don't know what I feel re: the new T yet...he's very different from my current T and gets me thinking, which is good. And he's super funny and very perceptive, plus he'll self disclose and tell me cases where something has applied to him (in an appropriate way) and I find that VERY helpful...never had a T do that in all my years of Ts.

So I don't know what I'll end up feeling yet, which is kinda scary.

[Asiablue]

My exT i loved. Maternal love and just a real like for the person she was. My new T.... i like her can't imagine ever feeling love for her.

[autotelica]

I love my therapist. I don't think I've ever said "I love you (I have said "I care for you"), but I really do love her very much. She's the only person outside of my family that I can say this about.

And she loves me. Not only has she told me so, but she shows it consistently.

I love her because she has listened well to me through the years. She can be so ditzy and absent-minded about all sorts of things, but her memory is like a trap when it comes to me. Even after five years I am still not used to this. It still feels magical to me.

I love her for sharing with me so much of her life and who she is. I am under no delusion that I know her through-and-through, but I do feel like I know her better than anyone else except for my twin. I probably wouldn't want her to be my friend. She'd drive me up the wall with all her nagging. We're nothing at all alike--almost polar opposites. And yet I still love her.

Experiencing love has been therapeutic for me. Much more than anything else.

[sidony]

I love my therapist. I've said it to him before. It's pretty clear that I cast him in a father-figure role, but I'm okay with that. I'm sure he is too. And I know he loves me too. I do think he said that at least once (I don't tell him I love him often though I know I have once for sure). Love is obvious in our communication though. I even feel it in the room, almost like a palpable thing.

[archipelago]

Love can be a very powerful word if used in a certain way. The real love of just two human beings together is such an amazing (and healing) thing. Since there is an overlap of the use of the word with either romantic or parental love, some shy away from using it and use "caring" instead. But I think that caring sometimes reaches to the point of love. An unconditional respect and acceptance, a natural responsiveness and attunement, an endless well of curiosity and wanting to know--these all are part of a great therapy experience, and they also define love.

I know that my therapist has deep love for me as a human being as I do for him. We have gone through transferences, erotic and not, but underneath it all and beyond them, is real love. We have been through too much together and been too intimate to not have that be true. Plus we genuinely like who we are and who we are together. But the kind of therapy I do is "relational" so it focuses on the relationship as the key component. There are of course other things to what we do as well, but it's the relationship itself, which is considered like a third entity on its own from the two of us, that congeals over time. From this relationship, I've felt a huge set of changes. It's given me what is called a "secure base" to explore beyond. Recently I discovered that what matters is not necessarily the love just in my relationships, but the notion that I feel lovable. There is a difference and I finally understand and feel it. Learning from a loving relationship that you have the capacity to be loved and love as well gives you a different sense of yourself in the world.

[InRealLife45]

Originally Posted by _Mouse

I feel the love & hate a child feels toward their mother toward my T.

i feel the same way. sometimes I love her exquisitely, other times I hate her so much I could just explode.