Your therapist loving you

It's so hard to imagine my most recent therapist saying this to me. He's never come close to expressing any kind of feelings for me as a person. Actually, I've seen four different therapists in my adult life and none of them ever made it known that they had feelings for me. Oddly enough, the closest any of them came to expressing this was the last time I saw my ex-therapist. We ended on bad terms, but she hugged me very tightly at our final meeting and had genuine sadness in her eyes when I left.

My most recent therapist did once say that he "loves all his clients," but it was in a general sort of way without much emotion in his voice. I always get the feeling from him that he doesn't want to deal with the repercussions of crossing any boundaries and he stays mostly detached, which is smart, but it also keeps me from sharing everything that I would like to. Some of what people have written here in this thread sounds so alien to me, and I don't even know how I would handle it if a therapist suddenly expressed this amount of emotion toward me.

The way you describe it, rather than any sort of ideology about what should/should not happen in therapy, makes me think this is probably a misstep on her part.

I view mu relationship with my therapist like any other relationship. I will never be the first to express my love. To express those feelings opens me up to way too much pain. I loved T but never told her. I care about T and will likely never tell her.

I'd actually slap my T if he threw such nonsense at me.

I used to believe completely my long term T loved me... he never said it but I felt it... however now...I realized how untrue that all was. I don't believe therapists love clients. They may love their job... or care about clients but not love them. I'd never trust a T who said such things.

I like to think that my T does, but I'm not sure. I wish 'love' wasn't such a loaded word. I'm fond of my current T and have warm feelings for her, but idk if I'd call that love either.

Thank you for this response. My gut stuff is hard to listen to because my gut tells me to not trust anyone. And thank you for responding on Reddit, it was not my intention to sound critical of the posters there. I appreciated people sharing their experiences and airing their warnings - much of it was an echo of my thoughts.

I suppose I am trying to move beyond my infant responses of slapping and throwing, although they are still strong instincts. For me, having such visceral responses sometimes tells me that perhaps I am rejecting the very thing which I crave.

It seems reasonable for you to describe that your therapist didn't love you, but it seems erroneous to extrapolate truths about all therapists and all clients based on your experience.

I like my t but I absolutely don’t love her, I am sure she doesn’t love me either. Now caring is different, she cares

I've told my T that I love her, a few times. She never answered, but did keep looking at me. Once I was telling her about how I wanted to hear her say it, and she wouldn't, but she did say, "Don't you know?" At that time, it wasn't enough. Lately, though, I am pretty sure that she does, because of various things she has said or done to and for me. But she still hasn't actually said it.

"Don't you know?" seems like a provocative and evasive question to me. I wouldn't have liked that at all, I am not surprised you had a feeling of that not being enough.

I thought I loved my ex-therapist, but in retrospect love shouldn’t have felt so painful. Most days I didn’t even like her - so obsessed or codependent might have been a better descriptive.

That said, I craved my therapist’s love intensely. We discussed it across many sessions, and the best I got back was that she cared about all of her clients. Those discussions triggered a really dark period in my life and unreciprocated love ultimately led to my retraumatization and re-enforced my deep seated fear that I am unlovable.

Love in therapy remains a pretty big trigger for me.

i think love is quite a drastic feeling and i don't doubt T's care but they love their family, they love their friends there is no need for them to love clients. why do so many have a need to be loved by T's? why isn't care enough?

why would you want to pay someone to love you? quite sad really

It is so hard to explain. Working together for so long over the years there were many things both big and small that may themselves may not sound like much but all together added up to a lot.

Also, in my communications swith her significant other after her death he has said that he knows how much we meant to each other.

I think this illustrates really well why love is such a tricky and painful issue. It's hard to see a best outcome. The therapist doesn't love the client (or doesn't use the word love) and the client can feel an existential rejection which leads to core hurt. The therapist does love the client and the client can experience a retraumatisation of "being special" (and all the associations of the language of abuse), of boundary breaches, and of unsafe practice. And yet, in many ways, a kind of love is inevitable.

I think there is a naivety in this post. I don't think love in therapy is about conscious need or deliberate decision. I don't think most people experience intimacy in such calculated and planned ways. I don't pay my therapist to love me and what she has described to me is not something for which we contracted or something which I (or, it would seem, she) expected.

I understand that you don't value relationships and that you are hurt by the experience of your therapist not loving you when you invested so heavily in that relationship. That is hurtful and hard stuff. However, you might want to consider having some sensitivity for those of us who are struggling with love in therapy (either the longing for it or the suspicion of it). Describing clients as "sad" for struggling with emotional nuances (even though you prefer broadstroke and black/white thinking) could have a hurtful impact. I didn't like reading it.

Well said.

This is among one of the reasons I find therapy as a whole to be an impossible situation. At least for me. It served me well for a little while, but eventually I realized that the only way I could be happy was getting out and meeting those needs with people outside of therapy.

Yes. I was trying to do this, and felt humiliated and degraded during and after the fact.

I'm quite sure my current T would never say he loves me, even though I feel love from him at times. And he doesn't use the phrase "I care about you," but will say "I care very much about your well-being and your success," which he said again Wednesday. I asked about the difference, and he said it's the type of caring, that it's within a professional relationship rather than a friend. But when asked, he said that distinction has nothing to do with the amount of caring, just the type. And I'm OK with that--I liked his clarifying that it had nothing to do with the amount. I did kinda tell him I loved him like a year ago, but I said "I feel love toward you." I clarified it was platonic love. He was like, "So really, you just like me a lot then." I was just like, "Uh, yeah, sure, yes, that's what I meant..."

With ex-T, at one point, I said I loved her, then said I know therapy is a weird relationship, so I understood that she couldn't say it back. She agreed with it being a unique relationship, then added, "That doesn't mean I don't feel love for you, too." Which felt nice. With ex-MC...well, the third time I told him I loved him led to a rupture that ultimately ended our relationship. And actually, each time I said it, he got weird toward me for a while after. Though he said the first two times felt like paternal, while the last felt more romantic (despite my saying was platonic), which is why he was suddenly all "BOUNDARIES!!!" When he'd been so loose and inconsistent with them before. Yet I often felt love from him, too. That was a complicated and messy relationship...and it makes me appreciate current T's boundaries, even if at times they frustrate me.

@LonesomeTonight I like how your ex-T said, "That doesn't mean I don't feel love for you, too." I think especially when you work with someone for a while, it's hard to not have a kind of love for them. Right now I could never imagine telling Current T I love her, though part of me does. I didn't start saying it to former T until about year 8. And she never said it back until our last session ever, even though I suspect she did feel a sort of love toward me for a while before then. But had she said it prior to then, it might have been weird. At the end, I definitely needed to hear it, especially as the termination was forced by her illness and not something either one of us wanted.

I am really interested in the number of people who are describing feeling love from their therapists even though their therapists do not or will not express it. I can't imagine assuming love without hearing those words. I guess that is a piece of work which my therapist has taken away from me, amongst others.

There is different kinds of love though. I don't believe T loved me like she loved her son or family, however, I do believe that she loved me the way a person loves somevody the have a close relationship with and care about.

It's not about needing to love clients but rather being a person who loves other human beings.

I never paid T to love me. I paid her to be my therapist and because she was a caring, compassionate, and loving person it happened gradually over the years.