In the long run, do people who fall in love with their therapist get better?

i think its valid. .i thinking embracing there feelings and not admitting them to the therapist can be harmful to them, because then they are not being honest, it depends on how the therapist then goes on dealing with it!

i on the other hand have been working through similar issues, i do not feel in love with my therapist that i have now. But i however had been "in love" with my therapist.. My last T.. i believe had mutal feelings ,, she did not come out and say i am in love with you, but did tell me she did cared about me, and did have feelings for me. she allowed me to feel my feelings way to much, by letting me show a sexual side to her and not telling me that i was not to do so! I had the "in love" feeling and i felt as she was my mother also very very confusing,, she crossed boundries by touching me in a mother way, bandageing my wounds instead of telling me it was wrong to cut my self, she wanted to see them and make them better.. and used me to dump her secrets and problems on to me,, when i first came to this site i did not understand why when i told my therapist my trauma why she resonded the way she did.. and i am now learning that because i was in love with her.. and she fell for me too. She allowed herself to feel and express what she should have kept to herself.. and when that happens it can damage a patient so badly, it added onto my trauma,, it was so traumatic for me i am working through it now in trauma therapy...

the thing that really hurt me is i will always love her.. and after i left her she tried to get me to come back, i had a convo with her on FB and she will not and probally will never come out and tell me that she loved me the same.. i will never know. All i know is how she acted, and how she responded to me.. she never told me to stop when i exploited my self sexually she only watched me.. and she showed a true caring mother/daughter relationship and it felt very real to me.. She only tried to protect her career in the end.. i didn't matter.. she used me for her own sick amusement.. and even though i know that i still and will always care about her. Getting myself to admit the true feelings i had for her to my therapist now, was hard i felt guilty for loving her as if, if i told her the t i was in love with her, it would change the whole outcome of what happened... that it would be my fault for what she did!!! Coming on here helped me understand that its normal for people to have these types of feelings for there therapist. And def. helped me relize that a therapist is not suppose to allow you to cross boundries, and they there self act on them. That attachment is okay if its healthy, but me, i cant hold attachment anymore.. because right now after 3 years, i am still in love and attached to my last t.. and i don't know whats going to come of it.. and i am scared to lose that.. but, learning that it was not my fault is my main objective.. SO IF A THERAPIST DOES FALL FOR YOU, AND YOU FALL FOR HER.. MAKE SURE HER BOUNDRIES AND YOUR BOUNDRIES ARE IN CHECK.. IF HERS ARE NOT.. ITS NOT HEALTHY FOR YOU AND IT CAN DAMAGE YOU TO THE CORE OF YOURSELF.. this is the worst experience and feeling i have ever had ,, the feelings are intense and i am in torture every day.. it feels like my mom is gone, and i will never see her again.. so that's what CAN happen if your therapist allows herself to fall for you, i never new it could damage me until it happened to me!

I actually think this is an excellent question. I think your point that to heal we should be able to separate our hearts from our minds so to speak is very true. I imagine the inability to do so is what brings so many people to therapy in the first place. I don't mean that we shouldn't form a genuine connection or even have a slight crush on our therapist. But the emotional investment many of us, have in our providers (myself included) is a little troubling to me also. I've spent more than a year thinking about this issue. Even though my pdoc is very helpful to me and a good influence, I'm nervous that the love part is detrimental in some ways. There are pros and cons for each individual so I guess it all depends. I consider myself lucky in that I don't use therapy as much as some other posters on here and do have a support system in my real life outside of therapy. But I worry for some patients whose T is their support system. Is the therapeutic relationship helping people form and keep healthier relationships in their own life, paving the way for independence from their T. Or does the relationship get transferred to another provider. Even worse are some people left alone if therapy ends? I purposely put up a wall to try to avoid the ultimate heartbreak that would come from getting too close. If we chatted about casual things so much that we started to seem like friends, or if he told me he'd always be there for me and wouldn't leave, I don't think I could handle that. That would feed too much into the fantasy for me. I think my pdoc is on the same page which is appropriate I think.

I recently went through a similar situation, with a transference that started to occupy far too much of my thought process, especially as how I'm in a very very awesome marriage with a man I adore and love, and have extreme passion for. My transference made me feel that I was betraying him, so I finally sought additional help from a friend, that made me realize, that these feelings were coming from inside of the SESSIONS, not inside of my actual....core, not my actual feelings. Once I realized that this was true, after a very agonizing two weeks, I was freed of the burden.

At the risk of sounding callous and cold, please understand that I am in no way judgmental of anyone here, but having seen the transference issues of some of the forum here, I am all the more relieved to be free of mine, and overtly concerned for the majority of the cases I see here. I think it speaks volumes about the mental health of a person, who would be of a mindset that they secretly hope they have a disreputable therapist who would step beyond the boundaries of the practice. I think when you enter into a place where your fantasy of a person potentially threatens to usurp everything you hold in balance or hold dear, you have a fundamentally steep incline to deal with. Transference, is the result of having someone's rapt attention. If you, like so many here, felt abandoned, ignored, overlooked, etc...and this is the first genuine source of someone paying explicit attention to you, it's very easy to delude yourself into thinking that this is "love."

Love however, can not exist with a person you don't know. Anything else, is a crush, or an infatuation.

Your therapist, is...at the end of the day, a paid gun. He's got a gig, and his gig, is to help you help yourself. You do not know this person, as a real person. He is an "idea." Therefore any feelings you have toward this person, have absolutely nothing to do with reality.

So when I see here, how many people really feel they are "falling in love" with their Therapists, I have to wonder....how many people here are aware that they are falling in love not...really with the therapist, but the idea of the therapist as this "person in your mind that you want him/her to be...?"

And as bad as my infatuation for two weeks was with mine, it's nothing compared to some of the situations I've read about here, and it's concerning.

Your therapist ISN'T REAL.

I do agree with Coltranefantic, and I too worry for individuals who place this much emotional investment into another who, no matter what, cannot invest the same into you. I don't necessarily agree that this says volumes about one's mental state however. Feelings are feelings after all and no one, not even the most stable of personalities, is immune to this when placed into the therapeutic environment. We see what we want to see when we're attracted to someone and once we get beyond the initial infatuation and are faced with who they really are and you might not like it so much. But unless your T has ice running through their veins, they ARE going to show you aspects of the person that they are. It's not as intimate a relationship as many people would like, but I don't think it's as distant as some are making it out to be either (unless that's what you want).

I think a lot of the dependence on T's is seen with teenagers and college students and is to be expected. They are young and are still grappling with parental issues so having someone step in as a good parental figure can help a lot. Eventually I think these people will grow out of their T the same way a kid would a parent. So long as the T is competent and encourages independence at some point then I think its really helpful. I do think it is very different when adults have this level of dependence on their T though. At first I know it happens, it happened with me. But then at some point you do have to snap out of it and realize too much dependence is not going to help you in your outside life. There were times that I was upset in the last few years if my pdoc wasn't available on demand. I was lucky that he accommodated me in those darker times. But the truth is that if I demanded it often or became distressed at his going on long vacations, he may have reacted differently. The goal is to establish relationships in real life where you can go to someone in a time of need. If this isn't possible even after lots of time in treatment, then the T needs to address it differently, not become that relationship. The goal is for the client to see how their actions affect others, as well as how other's affect them and how they can better handle it.

One of my biggest concerns when I become a T is to be sure I really help my patients learn among other things, skill that enable them to reach their fullest potential in their own lives. If I am needed for guidance with that that is still of course ok, I think that is healthy. But it is not the job of a therapist to be the sole source of emotional connections or support. Your Therapist is REAL, they are a real person and I do believe that good T's really care and it's ok to care about them too. Even if they are a permanent fixture in your life, then they are still really more of a teacher, a guide, a support...any of those things. But they can't be a parent, a husband or any other real relationship.

Lauliza, I agree with a lot of what you are saying. I have learned these hard lesson in a really painful way.

Almost 20 years ago (when I was 20) I had an inpatient therapist that I really loved very, very much. I had been inpatient at that hospital for quite a while and had been there numerous times over the period of about 2 years. I had always had this same therapist when I was admitted.

This T always gave me really special treatment in comparison to the other patients there. She had been written up for the special things that she did for me and had almost been fired for going against some of the things that the other staff were doing to try to correct some of my behaviours. She would have special little parties for just her and I in her office and would see me for far longer than any other patient.

When I would get discharged from the hospital I would be crushed that I was leaving this T. I would soon be looking to get back into the hospital to see her again. She was like the mother that I had never had growing up in foster care. She fought for me ferociously like a mother would for a child. She would tell me that I was like the child that she had not yet been able to have.

In the end she finished her post-doc work and had to leave that hospital and had to move on. I was crushed. Yet another "stand-in mother" like all of the foster mothers that I had lost.

Fast forward 20 years till now: I still think about this T all of the time. I have been unable to connect with another T since. I have child parts that are still pretty much stuck in that time when there was this T there to protect and care for us. They beg to see her all of the time.

On an adult level I now believe that it was probably the worst thing that could have happened to me. I don't connect with Ts now out of fear that I will get that close to them and then lose them again. I know that most Ts will never let me get that close again without trying to bring me back to reality.

I have just come to realize that they can't be like a stand in mother to me. Mothers don't have office hours in which to be there for me. Mothers don't have other families (real ones) that are more important to them than me. Mothers don't have rules in place to keep them from getting too close or allowing me to get that close.

Now I think I look for a T with really good boundaries to keep me from falling back to that. I'm also super-conscious of any time that my T begins to share a little too much about his personal life.

I did feel attacked as well, until I realize that the post was about struggle. The others that post here are struggling too.

As someone who " got lucky" and had an unethical predatory therapist, I feel the need to warn people of the long term consequences of getting involved with your therapist.