Fantasy vs. Actual want. Would you really want your T to pursue you?

My T pursued me and I'm, also, dealing with the damage more than twenty years later.
He should have been working with me about my naive and trusting personality. He exploited me, emotionally, financially, physically and sexually, instead.

You may think everyone's human or we're both adults..but he took all the private things he knew about me and used it to manipulate me.

I didn't even know, for instance, what he was doing is a felony in the state we were in. Would you want a t willing to commit a felony? He was married but tried to get me to believe they were broken up. Would you want a relationship with someone who was eager to cheat on his partner?

Afterwards, he stopped the intimacies yet wanted to remain my psychiatrist. He never explained himself. All the subsequent sessions turned into me asking what did I do wrong? If intimacy was a such good idea before, why did he stop? Subsequent sessions were all about my confusion about our intimate relationship and never again about what brought me to therapy in the first place. Also, I didn't feel able to confide in him about psychiatric issues like dissociation or self harm because I was afraid I would make myself more undesirable to him. Therapy stopped.

Afterwards he became paranoid, afraid I would tell. He tried to refer me to a neurologist. I wouldn't go. I think he was setting me up to commit me. Who would believe a mental health patient? Eventually I discovered he did this to other clients. A year to the month after our intimate relationship occurred I read in the paper he was arrested for something similar with a 19 year old client.

Up until then, I wasn't sure if he was good man who had just made a mistake with me. I found out there were six other clients who came forward. I realized I was being exploited and I sued. Litigation was another several layers of trauma. I'm not through sorting it all out yet.

I agree with JD, therapists like this are predators...they are worse than predators. If he wanted to have an affair he should have chosen a colleague, a waitress, a neighbor. Why choose a patient? Why choose me?

I hope this never happens to any of you.

Mike J,

While I'm assuming you are not addresssing your comments to my situation, I want to add- he told me sex with him was an important part of therapy. It was supposed to "get me out there" into the world of dating. It was not a "fling" to me.

Like the stupid naive gullible person I am, I believed him for the longest time.

Plus, he forced me to do something sexually I had said, "no" to.
I didn't even have enough mental clarity to realize I had been assaulted until years later.

for those of you with romantic transference... When you really think hard about it, would you really want your t to pursue you?

I've been thinking about this some more, lately. Last session, I hugged my T and felt - nothing - absolutely nothing sexual at all. For me , the hugs are grounding. It puts me in the real space with her. While my emotions and mind all get stirred up, my body in the real world is saying, "Um this is nice but that's all - meh"

It's so weird. I have sexual fantasies about my T all the time but when I'm in session with the real person, and we actually touch, the imagined chemistry completely disappears— or defuses, I guess.

I can relate to this, though I have only had a few sexual/romantic fantasies. The few times we have touched, there has been nothing more than 2 people touching and when I am in session (with the exception of 1 time) there has been no sexual thoughts about or in regards to t.