Do you feel therapists' partners/families get jealous of their clients?

Just wondering.

I have no way of knowing this. I guess they might if the therapist is fed up of listening to people talking all day and doesn't want to hear more chatter when they get home.

On a related note, I wouldn't like the idea if my partner was a therapist and they had clients talking about their erotic transference. I wouldn't be jealous of the client, but I would feel possessive and also worried that my partner would be turned on and get a big head.

I doubt it. Mine were pretty good about compartmentalizing and keeping their work at work. I never got the feeling they spent much time thinking about clients while at home; their personal lives were pretty darned busy.

Personally, I don't feel they would have reason to be.

I became friends with T1 after she didn’t work as a T. Once I moved from my home town I would go home each year for a week and stay with her and her husband, help with an annual gathering they hosted, and spend quite a bit of my “home time” with them. In the beginning she was still a T but a few years after she retired. Her husband was an engineer so they were both very smart and I believe both held PhDs. Dinner conversations were insanely academic, breakfast was often political as they would pass the news paper back and forth over tea and coffee. He would talk about projects at work and new scientific breakthroughs impacting his field. She also kept her conversations to the field of psychology, how it was developing and how these developments agreed or disagreed with her years of experience. I never heard her speak of specific clients although I know that they had a conversation about me before I went there the first time as she asked my permission to share some things with her husband (I was afraid of men and he was a very loud, emotional, passionate person who could easily trigger me unintentionally). He was never jealous of me even when I took way more of her time and attention than I deserved as a client. He was never upset at my adolescent rebellion and verbal abuse of her when I was a client if he ever even knew about it. He was not jealous of the time she spent at her office or her religiously checking her voicemail at 9pm every night and returning any emergency calls.
Current T is a work aholic and his wife has been retired for a few years now. She is wanting more time with him, more freedom for them to fly off and see grandkids more freely. She seems wary of all the planning it takes for him to leave the office and go off on an adventure with her. So, they are discussing his caseload and how he organizes his work. So, I think it would be fair to say that she envies the time he spends at the office away from her and is sad about the lack of spontaneity they have because of his work. Now, I have never actually had a conversation with her this is based on what T shares and some insanely lucrative google dives... but I am usually on target with him (to the point that it frightens him some days). I think I can say in full confidence that she is never jealous of his clients, she is proud of him and his work and is happy to support him in helping people live better lives. She does co-facilitates groups with him so at some point in the future I am confident I will meet her. I am worried about a personality clash but I have no worries about still being able to be “me” with T which includes hugs... sometimes longer than socially normal hugs.

Once, when discussing if what was happening between us was real or not, my therapist told me that the therapeutic relationship is wholly unique and very intimate. He added that he knows me better than most of his friends and some of his family. I got the impression that he values the relationship highly and it is better in some ways than some other types of relationships. If my partner were a therapist, I'd probably be wondering what his relationships with his clients were like. I'd probably feel some jealousy at times.

@Omers I know your T is very “humanist,” but to be honest I find it really surprising that you know so much about his spouse and home life, even with his humanistic approach. And your integration with your previous T - I’ve never heard of anything like that. Very interesting.

I don’t think I could handle either of those sorts of T relationships... the transference would be too much, and I wouldn’t know where the boundaries were meant to lie.

Very curious as to how this relationship will evolve with your current T. This isn’t meant to sound judgmental, it’s just interesting to me.

To answer the OP question myself... I suspect my T’s ex-spouse (I think) or children may have gotten jealous at some stage on holiday, because of something he said once. His boundaries are looser than some therapists and he will check in with clients while away and whatnot. I can see their perspective in wanting clear boundaries between work and home... seems reasonable to me.

My T has said similar and I think from what she has said that there has been jealousy from her family members on occasions.

As my (sometime obnoxious) therapist would say, can you hear your projections here?

@Blueberry21 if you have questions feel free to PM, I am pretty open. I just don’t want to derail the thread.

I did have one time when T1s adult daughter was a bit put off by me. I was helping at their annual event and this was the first year she had been home while I was there (she had been working overseas). I unintentionally took what had traditionally been her responsibility. I missed subtle clues that she needed to help not just enjoy the event with everyone else. She got a bit snippy, T watched from the other room but we worked it out ourselves and T went back to her guests.

I doubt Emdr Ts husband is jealous. He is a college professor so I suspect in many ways it is like a T

Either T am dont think is was jealousy of the actual clients but wanted her to be less of a workaholic. She was always available to her clients even on vacations. When she moved to his house 2 hours from her office he really wanted her to retire. Hr understood though that she still lived her work and wasnt ready to give it up.

My husband is a therapist and sometimes i get jealous of his clients. He listens to them, doesnt judge them, gives them his undivided attention. He is not that way at home.

My ex was a therapist and sometimes when he spoke (very very vaguely), about a case that he was worried about or he felt his day was particularly difficult, I couldn’t help but feel instinctual protectiveness - to shield him from the ‘bad’, but simultaneously worried I couldn’t be anything other than ok because he was dealing with lots at work too. I also felt jealous when he spoke of clients making great progress, and his pride and sparkle were so apparent and I never quite got that with his interactions with me. And obviously I wouldn’t, because he wasn’t MY therapist. We didn’t have that relationship. So I guess the hard thing was that it was just a completely different side of him that people had access to, and I found that hard. And I was sometimes jealous if his clients. I do think as well that because he was a very new therapist, he was more acutely affected by things than a very seasoned therapist.

I’m the child of two doctors and my siblings and I could definitely be jealous of our parents’ patients. Not individually but as a group.

I would imagine it could be the same for therapists’ families.

My partner used to have a PR-type job where he had to talk to people all day and act interested, helpful etc. Then he would come home and shut down. Sometimes I wished that he would act interested and helpful to me, like he did at work. So I can imagine a therapist's family might experience something similar, if the T came home and just didn't want to talk or hear about anybody's problems.

On the other hand, my T has never said anything to make me think he acts that way or that his spouse gets jealous or envious of clients.

I don't know for sure, but I do know that when my T's H was really sick and my T had to take a few weeks off, she said her H said to apologize to her clients for missing sessions. Her kids are still pretty young.

T doesn't talk about his family life much but I do know that he has a wife and very young daughter. He also mentioned that he's basically gone from sunrise to sunset for work. I can't help but to wonder how his family feels about the fact that he's away so long. Especially his young daughter.

I'm not gonna lie, I tend to see my therapist as a father figure even though he's too young to be. I'm excited all week long to see him for less than an hour. My dad was at home, he wasn't a runaway dad. However, he was never actually involved in my life. He would go to work all day and just come home to sleep. Even though realistically I'm sure T takes good care of his daughter, I just can't help but to worry if she feels the same way I did. That her dad is there but not engaged. I guess it's just the 'daddy issues' in me speaking.

Thank you all for replying--very insightful.

RainbowSadness, I feel you. I see my T as a father figure too. He doesn't have kids though--I think my jealousy would shoot through the roof if he did, so I can only direct it at his partner. Not in a mean way I guess...it just hurts that she has access to him in so many ways and I only get him for an hour a week. I know this is how it's supposed to be, but I think the jealousy comes from a young part of me. In any way, I think that the partners of therapists being a bit jealous of clients shows that the bond between T and client is very particular and very personal and even though we don't wake up with them, eat with them, go on holiday with them etc, we still have them in a sort of intimate way that is inaccessible to anyone else. So I guess I'm like a little possessive kid in feeling that for that one hour a week he's mine and mine alone. In a weird way, it makes the boof feel stronger to know that what we have is real enough for others in his life to feel a bit jealous? Ofc, I have no way of knowing that his partner is in fact jealous....i just like to think she is. Just a tiny bit.

I feel exactly the same. I feel quite jealous of my T's kids and family because they get to see her everyday for free and I have to pay to see her for an hour a week. But it helps when she tells me the relationship is meaningful and more so than a lot of relationships in her life. Obviously she doesn't mean her kids, but it does help. Plus my T comes from the stance that therapy is about loving another person and that love isn't limited to a few select people in her life. She feels when you work closely with someone and see their vulnerability you can't help but love them deeply.

oops, not the "boof', the bond! haha

I would think there was something wrong with a therapist who thought the therapy relationship was better than their real relationships. Would make me think they must be controlling and also probably scared of being vulnerable to think that.

'Meaningful' is a different word to 'better.' In therapy there can be the benefit of working closely with someone in a really deep way and that's different from relationships in everyday life. My T is as far from controlling and afraid of being vulnerable as anyone possibly could be. I would say she's just the opposite of those states. People are just different in how they see and experience things, doesn't mean there's anything wrong or bad.

Someone else used the word better.

You are in a therapeutic relationship with her. You don't know what she's like in a personal relationship and if she's controlling or has vulnerability issues. You only know her as a therapist.

I just think there's something concerning if a person finds their professional relationships more meaningful than their personal ones. At the very least, it indicates that person has a void in their personal life.

Totally respect your view

ex-T said something similar to me in the very early days of working with him, how he sometimes found the relationships with his clients more 'intimate' than his everyday relationships with his family and friends. this comment he made never really sat right with me...at the time, it definitely set off some internal alarms, which i ignored and brushed aside. instead, for a long time, in my mind, i referred to what he said and used it as a way to flatter and convince myself that i would and could be more special to my T just as a client than i probably really ever truly was. i believe it fed into my transference and unhealthy attachment with my T. as i eventually learned more about him as the years of therapy continued and post therapy, i learned he definitely had his insecurities and fears which unfortunately often played out in the dynamics of our relationship and hindered my progress and the focus of my therapy. i know some about his personal life, and there is dysfunction within his immediate family as well. i sense he is getting many of his needs met from the relationships with his clients because he was/is not quite getting those needs met from the relationships with family, partners and friends. and because of this, therapy with him was harmful at times for me.

i agree with what you are saying, that when a T says something like this, definitely proceed with caution.