Posted by crushedout on December 19, 2003, at 14:29:50
In reply to Re: following your tangent-Crushed, posted by Rigby on December 19, 2003, at 12:37:35
wow, rigby. that was an interesting story. thanks for sharing it. i kind of feel envious. that cancellation policy thing makes me mad. it seems unfair. (that's not the part that makes me envious, obviously.)me, i'm doing pretty well. i identify a lot with your story because i feel like my therapist has special feelings for me, too. (i hope it's not just wishful thinking.) and of course i'm totally in love with her. we still haven't addressed it very directly, but last week i read her a poem i wrote about her. so it's out there. as i've told you before, she's brought up "the sexuality between us" on a couple occasions but i've skirted around it. i'm scared to hear what she has to say. i don't want to be disappointed. nor led on. so it feels like a bad road to head down. but i also think we need to address it at some point. i'm hoping next week we can do it. i have a dream that i want to tell her about it, which could be a good segue. not extremely erotic, but maybe some undertones. i think she wants to talk about it, too, so all i need to do is open the door a crack.
the whole thing gives me anxiety. i want so much to marry her. but she's already married. and, most importantly, she's my therapist, and a great one at that.
it's so frickin confusing!
anyway, thanks again for sharing your story.
crushed
> Hey Crushed,
>
> It's kind of difficult to describe but I'll try.
>
> It began with a discussion around cancellation policy. I said that I assumed that if she could cancel with zero notice (she had to once b/c of illness) that she would understand if similarly I needed to do that too. She said, "No. The 24 hour cancellation policy would apply no matter." We went back/forth on that one for a bit. I didn't like the one-sidedness of it. She then said that she had to be careful, especially with me, of making exceptions because she was drawn to me. I said, "Huh?" And she said something where she tried to make it generic, that I have a personality that draws people in, including her, that I'm magnetic. I then asked how she could be objective about this comment if she herself felt drawn to me and she said that it was possible for her to both feel this way and be objective too. Within this same conversation she said there was no away around "it." When I asked what "it" was she said, "Your specialness." I asked what that meant and she seemed almost frustrated saying that she just isn't as close with her other clients. She referred to a plant I'd given her and a book as "evidence" of this. I'd never been told I couldn't give her anything. And she accepted these things. I told her I gave her those things as things that represented my work in therapy. She said, "But you gave them to ME."
>
> It was a bizarre exchange and one that impacted me for a long, long time. She would not revisit this with me--got defensive about it for months. Finally she admitted that she felt horrible for saying what she did--she was on meds where her tongue was a bit looser than it should have been. She said she wasn't taking back anything she said. She just said she couldn't believe she actually said this stuff *to* me.
>
> She said sometime over the past few months that she felt that she got "lost" with me in terms of her boundaries and that she had not done me any favors by doing so. She said that she and I are alike--and at times too alike. She said I was rebellious, like her, that we connect too well. I didn't ask exactly what this meant but just absorbed it.
>
> She and I, I think, could easily fall into something--and I think she works pretty diligently now to not have that happen. I sometimes fear that she'll be overly strict with me and inflexible as a knee-jerk reaction to whatever sort of emotional pull there is for her. I've admitted I've had transference issues with her and sexual attraction that I do not like to have but do have so she knows all that. I also know that she was lesbian in her 20s then married a guy in her 30s. I don't know if it's good for me to know this stuff or not but I know because the person who referred me to her was her roommate a long time ago--the person who referred me to her said that she felt she and I were very similar so she would probably be a good person for me. Interesting. That's kinda come back to bite me in a sense.
>
> Phew. Long story, eh? How's it going for you?
>
> > this is a fascinating topic. but i'm even more interested in the boundary crossings of which you speak, rigby. would you be willing to say more about them? and what bothered you about them?
>
>
poster:crushedout
thread:291099
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20031213/msgs/291654.html