Should I end this counseling relationship?

First of all, I will try to make the context clear. 3 years ago I was going through some mental health problems, I lost friends and I got therapy in 2016 but also had been applied these people who could help me get my life on order, accomplish some goals. I don't think there is a real term for it in English (I am from Europe), you could compare it to social work. The person is not a therapist, l but their job is to counsel people and help them get their lives in order again.
For the sake of this post I will call it a "coach", it kind of is like that; they also have to write reports and all when they come to a client's home once a week and discuss whatever has been discussed.

As of early 2017, my psychiatrist told me that I was all in the clear and that I did not need medication anymore. I am mentally healthier now.

Over the past 3 years I went through 3 different female coaches, they ended up quitting because of a pregnancy or they decided to have a job change. In March 2018, I had a female coach who I had for a year already. There was a family health problem happening at home and I was not sure if I could cope with it well, so we all agreed that I could have a second coach. The female coach, she assigned a male coach who she thought would be a good fit to help and there were no other women in her group who were not over 40 (I am 28 and I liked to have a coach closer to my age). I took it, with some initial hesitance. Because it shouldn't matter, right? It makes no difference.

So, in the present, I am grateful that my sick family member is doing much better now and I did not suffer from the same mental health problems as I did in 2015. Those are positive thing.

And as you can guess while reading this, I am not sure what this thing is with my male coach. He is 31, so very little gap. I did not feel this way for him when I met him in April 2018, but these feelings have been happening recently, or I started to acknowledge these feelings in the past two months that got me in a bit of a state of panic.

He has been in a long-term relationship and I understand there are ethical boundaries - I wouldn't want him to ruin his job or relationship.

I don't know how much of the personality he chooses to show is real, I asked him a while ago how different he acts in his personal life and work environment, he said that to a certain degree he is just being himself, he feels like it's more comfortable for clients. He acts more professional in settings where a more of a professional attitude is required, he says.

Honestly, I never really had male friends offline (I used to be super shy),, so he is pretty much the longest contact I had with a guy who is not over 40 or who is not related to me. And he comes once a week.

Lines are starting to get blurry, and I am not sure if it comes from me or even possibly from his side too. I've always respected his boundaries, he respects mine. I do think he is professional. He doesn't make me uncomfortable, it are just the little things that he does that make me wonder sometimes and I don't think he does it intentionally. Small things like staring at me and then giving me a small smile, one time he looked away for a moment as he chuckled at something I said. Sometimes it's what he says that makes him sound almost protective like one time when I got emotional and someone asked why I got emotional or sad like it was a bad thing and he asked, "Why? What's wrong with it if she is feeling sad?". One time I noticed him raising his eyebrow and smile at me as I opened the door, saw him do that in the corner of my eye as I turned around.

Am I imaging things? Am I overanalysing him? Is he just friendly like that? He feels like someone who is sensitive to someone's emotions and is careful with his words, he can be serious but there also have been moments of him being more energetic and very smiley.

I feel like he understands me (which shouldn't be a bad thing because of his job) I asked him questions about himself out of curiosity because I am a writer and I needed some character inspiration, I ask his personality and what he learned in life and how he was like when younger and he seems willing to share things with me about himself. He gives me encouraging compliments (nothing inappropriate as someone in his position would). We can tease a little sometimes as well.

When I am around him, in the past few weeks I have been starting to feel a calming energy from him, and warmth in my whole body. When I am not with him and I think about my feelings, I feel that energy again.

I think it's possible that somewhere deep down he might have feelings for me, even just a little, whatever it is. And maybe I have an romantic attraction to him, what is it? Transference? Projecting? Something genuine? I don't know him personally, I don't know all of his flaws, but I feel so at ease around him.

I worry that if I continue with our work relationship, I will become too attached to him. I know one day he will be out of my life, and I hate the idea because I feel like if things were different it could have been something really special whether it would have lasted or not. Part of me wants to hold on to him for as long as I can, but is that a good idea or should I let go of him much sooner before I would want that to make it comfortable for myself and him? I can't be friends with him, so it's either this what it is now or nothing. Part of me is longing for him to say I'm worth staying in touch with and he'll find a way

I feel like I could still learn a lot from him, he said he felt that way too and I'm one of the few who points out things about him he did not think of before which was nice to hear and I hope he meant that. I don't want him to be uncomfortable if I told him the truth. I probably shouldn't tell the whole truth of how I feel.

I worry I am just meant to be alone forever. And I have not accomplished the goals I want to accomplish yet but in the past few months I have been becoming more motivated and allowing myself to have faith in my abilities to achieve any goals.

What does this situation mean? What is the best action to take?

Maybe I should just look at it at something that could have been beautiful if things had been different, but someone to let go as I will find someone who is actually single and there is not some power imablance relationship comes along (I don't have much hope for that though(.

I think your post eloquently sums up the difficult and confusing feelings that come up in the therapeutic relationship for many of us. Your therapist sounds warm, empathic, genuine and it sounds like he is responding to you in a caring, human way. I think you are questioning whether his responses to you with things like his eye contact are overstepping boundaries? I don't know the answer to that question. What I do know is that with my (female) T, I have moments of sustained eye contact, when she smiles at me, and I feel that soothes my early childhood wounds. I think that warmth and connection from a T is the thing that is the most helpful. For me, I don't think about therapy as about learning anything, I think of it as an experience of connection with another person. One of the problems is that the connection can feel painful and we know it can't go on forever, and that it is also a unique connection created by the therapeutic relationship which wouldn't exist if the person wasn't our therapist. I can't answer your question, but I hope my thoughts are helpful.

If I found myself in this situation with my previous experience of being trapped in emotional dependency on therapists, I would end it. This is a short answer to your question. If you want me to elaborate, you can PM me and I will do it privately.

If I start elaborating here, it'd turn into yet another contentious thread about what is and isn't normal in this kind of a professional relationship, but I don't think you are looking to start a public debate on this topic, you just want an answer to your question.

It looks like you are new to this forum and may not know that your story touches on one of the most sensitive and controversial topics here that make people fly off the handle. So, I can explain to you privately what I base my opinion on, but not here.

I think the fact that you are making progress on your goals and your confidence to achieve them is the most important thing. From what you've described, it's impossible to know what his feelings are towards you, but I would say I've experienced the sense of connection and warmth you describe with a number of men I've worked with (not as a "coach" or helping professional) but as a colleague. Never went anywhere and I didn't really desire that because I still wanted the working relationship and as you acknowledge, you can't have both.

It would be ideal, maybe, if you could address your feelings for him with someone else. Even though your feelings for him are normal and perhaps in spite of the relationship as opposed to caused by it, I'd try to focus on the work-- your work-- rather than the distraction of your feelings for him. Sometimes when I'm making progress on a work project I do a little sabotaging by distracting myself with something tempting but ultimately hollow. Sometimes I get too close to my goal and I have to get some distance from my worry about the end--- which means some sort of evaluation, even if just self evaluation.

Yes, get a woman. I think any situation w a therapist is hard to leave because the person focuses solely on us for the counseling session. However, spending so much time obsessing over what the counselor is feeling takes all the focus off what you are supposed to be working on, yourself. This is the classic situation of transference which people are supposed to avoid.