"Sexual Healing..."

Pink, I see so much of myself in your posts. Esp this one--erotic transference was major issue in my therapy; more so than most. I won't elaborate.

I can relate very well to what you've written in this thread and other recent ones on this same topic. I think “get" what you say about the certain dialogue with your therapist.

What I got out of your T's comments was that he was trying to express the universality of transference--erotic and else wise, even for the ostensibly objective, professional-only T. My T did that; probably all do in some way. She talked about it happening in general at a feelings level--sometimes erotic, usu. otherwise, too. Right? Counter-transference is more than a necessity it is certain--but necessarily erotic. She talked about it happening to her with her T; all to help me adjust to the letdown of erotic transference and realizing it wouldn’t lead where I wanted it to.

I had some things said by my T on the issue of attraction that some have said were questionable/borderline, or actually inappropriate. Others see it the way I see it, given who I was and what I was. At the time I was 23/4 and not very experienced.

I had a false dichotomy with women. Either a woman was attracted to me, not meaning to be involved—she could’ve been unavailable etc., but some feeling of chemistry from her that an involvement wouldn’t have been impossible based on my appearance, or I felt and felt that she felt I was absolutely worthless as a "man." The ugliest most monstrous male alive. So for any woman that I picked up on a distancing feeling of not being interested—the lack of chemistry, deliberate on her part, as I saw it, I interpreted it as her seeing me as this grotesque monster. I took it as complete rejection as a human being. I developed no platonic relationships with women; I refused to.

It was an absolutely central issue to me for dealing with any woman, due to the mental abuse and torture my mother put me through about myself physically and in relation to (first) girls, women&relationships

I needed to know from my therapist that she wasn’t one of those rejecting women. That, even though there was no possibility of an involvement between the two of us, that were we not doing therapy, that there was the possibility—in terms of physical attraction (discounting all else)—that a relationship wouldn’t have been out of the question. Not that I was the most attractive looking guy, but that I was even just .01%. above the rejection level. “Good enough.” I hammered and hammered on that forever.

Because of my special circumstances, she saw a difference in my insistence and the erotic transference. He comments were attempts to help boost my self-esteem by holding up a mirror to me, in a nearly literal sense since they related to physical attraction. It was a reality check, in part. I think it fit my situation, and a reality of who I really was. It worked; it was extremely important and beneficial to me.

There was a trust issue involved, and I had a barrier to opening up, and until I received some of the validation, little progress was made. After, much.

I wonder if you’re operating with a sort of binary that way: Even though you know nothing can happen with your therapist, you want to know that it wouldn’t be impossible were you not in a therapy relationship and you both were available. That you want the validation from him that you sort of meet his standards, in whatever ways—physical and other—so you can feel that he’s taking you seriously in whole as a person and as a woman, not merely a “client.” And that to be secure that he’s taking you seriously, truly respects you and could be interested but for….., you want that. What is it you’re looking to get from him?

I guess I see it the way I think you seem to be. Your talk of feeling so rejected matches what I felt exactly. The salve for me of not being able to have the relationship—to save from feeling like I was sitting across from a woman who had to go puke after our sessions because of how ugly I was--was knowing that it could have been possible—actually, more than it wouldn’t have been impossible based on the thing of concern to me, given this and that and that and that and that. Not would have been, but possibly. I received that validation several times in different ways. But since it wasn’t that and that and that, it was moot.

I’m probably missing much of it, but I think the general idea of wanting to hear a direct, explicit validation of sorts, knowing an actual relationship was out of the question, is what you seek. There’s a binary, maybe, with rejection representing something catastrophic for you as for me far beyond that person in the other chair.

Make any sense?