That sounds painful Liese.

Just kinda wondering why he didn't work with you on why you felt you needed to do what you did right now? If it's public info on FB you haven't done anything wrong - I think it's normal to want a connection with someone you have been talking to a while?

I'm seeing a T. But it's through an organisation. They allocated me a T (you dont get to choose) and I know literally NOTHING about this woman, other than her first name, which oddly, I have never used. Oh, and she told me she'd worked for the organization for 8 years. I have no info other than that. I also have no contact with her what-so-ever between sessions. Or with the organization - other than their office number that I can use if I decide to stop going. If I missed a session, without informing them, I am immediately terminated - that's the contract (stops time-wasters I guess?).

It kinda feels like she doesn't exist though. How do you make a connection with someone you have no mental image of? Wondering what you need from this Liese? I'm not sure why he feels you are trying to control him - wondering if you are rather trying to feel safer, closer or more connected somehow?

Hearing you though and hearing how scary it all feels.

sb

(((SB)))

He's not very skilled at psychodynamics being CBT trained but he trys hard. Unfortunately, we get stuck here every so often. He tends to make it about him instead of helping me move through the grief. Oddly, I feel okay because I feel like I made room for my anger and grief. Until now, it felt to me like he had a boundary but didn't expect me to get upset about it or have any difficult feelings in regards to it.

The only "mean" thing he said (and i put that in quotes because it hurt my feelings and I told him so) was that he was concerned about my ruminating about his private life. I asked him if he thought my involvement on MyShrink or my reading David Wallin was any different? Wasn't it all about feeling connected to him and safe in the relationship?

It disturbs that that he thinks that way but I can't control it. LOL! I don't want to feel that my ruminating about his life is sick or wrong. I've known him for 6+ years. I carry enough shame around. Personally, I think it's idealistic to think that a therapist could do therapy and expect to stay "not known". I'm also not convinced it's healthy. At least for me. I come from a family of "secrets". Loads of things we couldn't talk about. I even told T that I'm trying to get away from that. I need to be able to talk authentically with the people closest in my life.

My whole relationship with him is a freakin childhood enactment and I just haven't been strong enough to move on.

I read this on a blog and found it really helpful:


Robin S. Cohen, Ph.D. is a training and supervising analyst at ICP, as well as President. Her website/blog is at Robin S. Cohen, Ph.D.

How do we first begin to experience love? Perhaps as babies, as early psychoanalysts Fairbairn and Guntrip believed, the only way we could feel loved was by having our needs met. The language of bodily transformation was the language of love. Mommy feeds us, changes our diaper or picks us up and we feel satisfied. This feeling of satisfaction and security may be the early equivalent to feeling loved. Love becomes represented by how satisfied and safe our caretakers make us feel; how easily and well they transform our bad feelings into good ones. As a result, I believe that we continue throughout life believing on a primal level that our loved ones show us that they love us by meeting our needs, and as a result, how well they meet our needs indicates how lovable we are. This is the way we reason, early in life.

This is not an unreasonable perspective– we do want our loved ones to be attuned to us and to care enough about us to do what they can to add to our lives. Of course, we would like to do that for them as well….sounds great, doesn’t it! There is a pervasive flaw in this system. If I am meeting your needs, there is a chance that I will ignore my own needs. In order to maintain my own sense of self, I need to be able to take care of myself as well and therefore can not always meet your needs. It is not possible for me to meet your needs all the time or for you to meet mine. We grow up believing that we are entitled to have our needs met by others, but there is no possibility that we can possibly meet all of another’s needs, nor they ours… and when our needs are not met, we often feel those early feelings of unworthiness, because our childlike reasoning told us that if we were lovable or valuable, others would want to meet our needs. We believed and believe now that if someone doesn’t meet our needs, that they don’t love us, or that we are “too much”, too “needy”, and become filled with a sense of deprivation, defectiveness, shame or rage. We begin to believe that depending on others is dangerous and only leads to disappointment, hurt, rage and/or shame. It is easy to see, when we think about it this way, why intimacy is associated with such vulnerability and combustibility, and why many of us fear love and dependence. We don’t want to subject ourselves to the possibility of feeling unloveable or valueless when someone doesn’t care for us and we also don’t want to be subject to feelings of guilt and badness when we disappoint others and are not able to fill their needs. In addition to the ecstatic feelings of worthiness and belongingness we feel when we feel loved, we also feel much insecurity and fear at times. Loving someone can be so fraught with fear and anxiety that we may erect strong defenses against feeling close to someone in order to save us from these overwhelming feelings. Rather than being present with another person, rather than feeling our feelings, we push our loved ones away by being distracted by work, emotionally unavailable or disconnected. In addition many of us feel wounded when our partner choses not to attend to our needs. We get into conflicts about whose needs are more important and who is more deserving of having their needs met. These disagreements sometimes take the form of highly emotional battles since they don’t just represent what they are about. They become unconscious signifiers of who is more valuable in the relationship and who is insignificant and small, and therefore the dispute becomes, on some level, a fight to the death to assure that one does not feel the pain of insignificance and worthlessness.

How can we negotiate this impossibly thorny paradox of love if we both believe deep down that we can only feel loved if someone loves us enough to be who we need them to be? Can love be something beyond just meeting needs and having our needs met? Can lovers be anything other than “objects” that help create feelings of safety and security for us? Are there feelings other than satisfaction and security that can contribute to feeling connected and intimate? It is easy to conceptualize another way, such as encouraging another’s growth…. but when the rubber meets the road, it is so difficult to let go of our attachment to our sense that we are only loved and therefore lovable as far as someone meets our needs.

D.W. Winnicott speaks of a developmental need for our parents and other’s to “survive” in the face of our attempts to control them. He speaks about how only a real other (and not someone who only plays a role in our own drama or fulfills our needs) is necessary for us to feel safe, related and loved. Jessica Benjamin takes this further and discusses a continuous cycle between emotional domination and submission in our relationships with a need for us to feel connected to an other who is him or herself, rather than only a product of our needs and fantasies. So, I believe that it is healthy, as difficult as it is, to be in a relationship where each partner feels (as much as possible) that there is room for them both to be themselves. It is important to begin to understand that someone’s “otherness” is not a statement of your unworthiness, nor a behavior that indicates that they don’t love you. You are two individuals, hopefully quite different in a multiplicity of ways, who have come together to explore life and love and to grow and develop together. When someone choses to follow the beat of their own drum, it is not a statement of our unimportance or unworthiness. In the best of all worlds, relationships then become a continual negotiation and give and take between supporting each other’s separate goals and selves, and giving as fully as possible to our partners.

((Liese))
I am sure you know how much I can relate to your experience in therapy, the attachment you have to your T, and your struggle with not knowing him. I think you were both strong and honest it telling your T the truth about your anger and grief at his boundaries. I don't think I can help you sort it out because I feel like I am stuck in a similar (but not identical) enactment.
Thinking of you,

Hi Liese,

Just wondering if there is anything that sparked this now. Or has it been bubbling under since new year's?

I think I remember you said something about how making stories to fill the blanks (like that his wife is dead) was a defense against feeling confused/shut out in childhood- is that right?

(((COGS)))

Thanks for your understanding. It helps to feel less alone.

(((JONES)))

Yes it's been bubbling under since New Years. And yes you are right about feeling shut out in childhood. Any thoughts?

Nothing specific - just that maybe it would help to dig in to those two areas - what in particular triggered this/sharpened this recently, and what in particular in childhood it's bringing up. You can decide he's not right for you and you want to leave at any point, of course, but maybe that's a form of defense too, if these particular feelings feel threatening. Lots of times you have written about feeling satisfaction in the compromises you two have come to, so it feels like something in particular might have sparked this.

(((JONES)))

I'm not sure but I think that what sparked it is stuff that is always there and unprocessed. I'm able to block it out most of the time until I can't anymore. I think it might be anger (hurt) at not getting my needs met but he has a difficult time or seems to just simply accepting that from me. It's as if he expects to set a boundary but that I'll just accept it and not be angry or that it won't change the way I feel about him or the relationship.

I say that because when I bring things up he says he feels like I'm trying to control him when I feel like I'm trying to process it with the person I trust the most in the world (on an emotional leve) but also he is the person who is hurting me at the current time.

When he draws those lines, I feel an intense amount of shame - which then impels me to seek approval and love from him in exactly the way that he has forbidden, i.e., the hug and because I am in a place of shame already, his inability to somehow comfort me and not get defensive or not feel like he's got to draw that line again, then traumatizes me.

I actually have a consult today at 5 with the psychologist who wrote that book. I understand from what I have read of her book that I must be touching upon one of his vulnerabilities and that is helping me to understand his reaction.

Him not being able to hug me or put his arm around me hurts. A lot. And I can't seem to be able to turn the corner there. I don't know how to feel good about myself because I think it's such an essential thing to my therapy.

And because I think it's essential, then I feel like I'm giving in because I like him so much and don't want to hurt his feelings. And because I feel like I'm giving in, I lose respect for myself and then I also feel angry with him because he doesn't seem to recognize that I am losing respect for myself by ignoring my own beliefs.

We were trying to sort this out via email and I wrote to him that regardless of what happens, that I want him to know that I truly appreciate him and that I do love him. Then I wrote that I was trying really hard NOT to feel ashamed of saying that because I truly believe that it's a lovely thing to say to someone and there shouldn't be any shame in it. I also wrote that I didn't want him to worry that this was a Glenn Close scenario.

His reply was that don't worry, he didn't think it was a Glenn Close scenario and he'd write more the next day. Actually, that one never came through because he forgot to hit send and I didn't hear from him until the next day.

Until I did hear from him, I tried to stay calm. Why should I feel like shit for loving someone who has helped me a lot? Someone who has helped me more than anyone in my entire life? Someone I've worked with on a deep emotional level for over 6 years? It's not like I'm saying it to the guy at the corner gasstation or my obgyn.

Well, he never addressed that part of my email. He never said, Liese, you have nothing to be ashamed of. It IS a lovely thing to say to someone and I appreciate it.


I totally get that he has a hard time in that area but I am someone who has a history of trying to get love from people who don't love me and I'm worried that I'm hurting myself. I think that I'm just getting strong enough to honor that part of me, that IS worried that ultimately this is just some bad-ass reenactment. I expressed that to him, that I was honoring myself but he didn't seem to get it.

I do think he is going to be limited in terms of how much he will be able to help me work this through though I am glad I recognize it. I'm also glad that I have the apt. with the consult today.

Sorry to have rambled on so much. Thanks for listening.

I agree with sb...if it's public info you have done nothing wrong. I understand a T's life is private and if they don't want to tell us anything but their name that is their choice, but we don't have to tell them everything about us either. How do we know they don't search the internet? I know they could probably care less but my first T knew the exact price of my house once. Lucky guess??? Maybe, I just found it strange. Your T should not be mad, it is the chance you take with sites like Facebook.

(((((FRUSTRATED))))

Thanks for the support. Wow, your T's guess was weird. Something like that happened for me recently. I went on vacation in the Florida Keys. T knew about it. He also knew we were kayaking in the mangrove trees. When I was snooping around his daughter's fb, I came across photos of her two weeks ago kayaking in the mangrove trees in the florida keys. It could have been pure coincidence or did he mention kayaking the mangroves to her as a potential activity she could do?

With your scenario, as with mine, if communication was more open, the T's might tell us, "hey, I was curious about the cost of your house and so I checked it out" or "I'm familiar with the prices of houses in your neighborhood .." or in my case, "I thought that was a really cool excursion you were going on and I suggested it to my daughter" or "my daughter is kayaking through the mangroves too."

I think it would lead to an increased sense of connection, a sense that we are important to them and do have an impact on their lives. Unless you or I get up the nerve to say, "hey, just how did you know that or how did it come about?" it's just pure guesswork and speculation.

Like you, I was a bit jarred when I saw the pics of her kayaking in the mangroves just two weeks after I had done it. Maybe it is a popular excursion and many people do it. I don't know. It's just not something I thought about doing until this trip and did some research.

In any event, I do feel bad because I know T values his privacy and I care about him. He told me once, when I asked, if he had a lot of friends. His answer was, "I have a lot of acquaintances and a couple of close friends." I KNOW he's private. That's the part I feel bad about. The whole world has changed now because of the internet and I do think it's a bit naive and endearing that he doesn't think or somehow blocks out that other clients may have googled him and/or his daughter. Surely, I can't be the first though I am the first to fess up.

Liese, i need to be quick, but wanted to respond now. recently after 3 years of therapy I looked up members of my T on Facebook (he does not appear to have an account). I also saw things that brought up deep feelings, but I’m not sure I could ever share that with my T. I wish I could but I just don’t think I’m brave enough. I think you are very brave for sharing what you did with your T, and I can understand his upset at least initially, but I feel as others do here, that what you can see on FB is public information, and people should realize that. Also, I very highly doubt you are the only client that has done so, maybe it’s just that you are one of the few that is honest enough to disclose that information.

Anyway, I’m sorry for the difficult feelings this is all bringing up. I am confident you and your T will come to some understanding, at least. I hope your phone consult is helpful to you in getting some of this resolved.

((((CD))))

Thanks for sharing that. I'm not happy you had a similar experience but knowing that the pics touched on deep and complex feelings as well helps me feel a little less abnormal. I've been seeing my T for a long time and would NOT have been able to be honest with him about this at the 3 year mark. I'm excited about the consult. She seems incredibly and I hope she will help give me some insight into how to navigate this phase with T.

Wow, Liese. It is amazing you could get a consultation with her. Do you live near her practice or are you doing it online? (if that is not too personal) I borrowed that book from the library yesterday after you started talking about it. I had thought about it in the past when TN discussed it but let it slide. Now I'm going to try and read it.

I can completely relate to this

quote:

Well, he never addressed that part of my email. He never said, Liese, you have nothing to be ashamed of. It IS a lovely thing to say to someone and I appreciate it.

My T and I do this dance so often. I think my T doesn't even hear the implied question in the statement assuming that you wrote exactly what you said it was actually a statement. I'm trying not to be ashamed... The question version would be Do you think I should be ashamed.. or Would you be ashamed if ... Anyway my T doesn't respond to these kinds or requests for reassurance or input. For a long time I thought it was because he couldn't tell me what I was asking about was okay (without lying). Now it is because I think he is incredibly literal and hears it as a report and not a request for his reassurance. I haven't quite managed to ask many questions directly though because it feels like I'm putting him on the spot and he has to respond.

Let us know how the consult session goes.

((((COGS))))

She is on the opposite coast so we are having a phone session. I'm thrilled that she could meet with me so soon. If we didn't talk today at 5, we wouldn't have been able to talk until next week.

The love stuff is hard and complicated. I am learning new patterns of loving from T. It's a bit difficult to feel love towards someone and to feel rejected yet to stay in therapy with them. LOL! At the same time, I really think it should be okay to love him and there isn't anything to be ashamed of. I've owned that and I think I've stopped trying to get my T to validate that for me, as of the last 5 minutes. LOL!

I do think I get stuck in a feeling state and want that validation/mirroring from him - which he either can't or doesn't always give. I would like to preserve any sense of feeling good about myself and be able to hang onto and own my feelings regardless of what T mirrors back to me. I'm a work in progress.

My T did tell me yesterday over the phone that he is reading David Wallin and accounts of his therapy sessions and while he likes them and finds them helpful, he is not there yet. I do know that there is one account in David Wallin's book when he tells the client that he feels love in the room. Or something like that. I don't know if that's the passage T was referring to but I do think Wallin is probably more open generally about his feelings than my T is.

I would hope T would be okay receiving my love. It would make me sad if he wasn't okay but that's out of my control. I don't want to feel ashamed of my feelings for him.

Liese,

The kayaking trip is weird too! The only difference is you said he knew you were going but what are the chances his daughter just happened to have the exact same trip planned two weeks after you. I just remember wondering what the odds my old T took a guess about the price of my house and was right on the money when there are ways of finding out through the internet. I still think you should not feel bad, it's not like you found out something really personal. If it was it shouldn't be on Facebook! I'm SURE you are not the first or last of his clients to search him on the internet. No worries...

I've looked on the internet for info on therapists. I bet they do it to us sometimes...

(((FRUSTRATED)))((SB)))(((COGS)))

So I'm back from my consult. She was amazing! I would highly recommend her to everyone considering a consult. Her name is Dr. Sue Elkind. Her phone number is: (925) 254-7411. She's in California.

She basically said that he and I have both worked really hard and done a lot of good work together and that we should continue to work together. She said that I've taught him a lot and he's really stretched himself to meet me. She said that I am probably bumping up against his vulnerabilities and defenses which fuel my issues and basically render him unable to help me. It's a vicious cycle. She said that I probably have to accept him the way he is but that he is interpreting what I say too concretely and that is due to his inexperience with the unconscious as well as his issues. She recommends that he receive consultation so that he can learn how to help me better. I'll see what he says on Thursday.

Oh, and she also said to trust myself in terms of my feelings and perceptions about what's going on with T. She also said I didn't do anything wrong by googling him and his daughter.

Liese, another thing that comes to mind regarding the googling, etc. is i wonder if that's proximity seeking behaviour. i know a fair amount about my T, but i still felt the need to creep on him via the internet. i think it's only natural to want to know more about our T's, and even more so if they are very blank slate. how could ones' curiosity not be peaked?

i'm happy that the consult was so helpful. that's really good feedback that she gave you, Liese. you were smart for seeking her out. good luck with your T on thursday!

(((CD)))

Yes, it might have been. Or maybe just wanting to know more about him might have been. Ultimately when I did google him, though, I was really angry with him. Like, REALLY angry. Like rage angry. I think it stems back interactions with my Dad. I was actually "banned" from talking about the past. My parents didn't intervene at all in terms of parenting us kids. We could do whatever we wanted to each other. I was the youngest. My sister was verbally abusive and that was what I would complain to my Dad about. He would tell me I was too sensitive, etc. When I didn't stop complaining about her on my own, he would say, "What, you are still talking about that? That happened a week ago." Then I was told I was not allowed to talk about the past. Unless it was a happy memory - which became fewer and fewer. He told me that I was like this dramatic actress, Sandra Bernhart, and that I was making it all up. I remember going to the mirror, touching my tears and saying, well, they feel real but they must not be because he says that I am making this up. Way to go, Dad.

My sister used to beat me up as well. She was a scrawny little thing even though she was 3 years older than me and I was, well, not so scrawny. I used to let her beat me up until one day I realized that I was actually stronger than her. When she was mean to me once when we were playing with the neighbors, I lifted her up and dropped her on the ground. I pounded a couple of times in the middle of her back and knocked the wind out of her. She ran home to get my Dad, who came back mad as hell at me. The neighborhood kids, God bless them, stuck up for me and my Dad retreated. Some of them were her friends as well as mine and so to get that validation from her friends was incredibly valuable to me. From then on, I was allowed to beat her up whenever I wanted - which I only did when she was mean.

I share that just so that you can see how much anger and rage I must have inside about not being able to talk about things. When my brother axed down his bedroom walls in a rage, I asked why he did it but was told it was a planned demolition. The secrecy and lies were very hard to deal with and I did not have an accurate emotional meter in terms of who to trust. Secrecy and lies are what feel familiar to me although now I find them very triggering, which is why I think I am having such a hard time with T.

This too will pass, as they say. Thanks for asking and thanks for the good wishes for tomorrow. I'm very nervous about it today. I'm afraid T is incredibly mad at me still although we had an email contact Monday night and all seemed okay. All I can remember now is when he said to me over the phone, "It (the hug) will NEVER happen." There was such a sharpness and firmness in his voice. I know I've probably pushed every button for him and feel like I continually sabotaged my relationship with him when all I really want is for him to love me. It's an awful place to be. It's awful to be me. Well, I say that but I do know that T HAS helped me come out of isolation and I know I NEVER want to go back there. Where I am IS a much better place. It's just been one hell of a struggle to get here and it's not over yet.

You know what bothers me about not getting the hug? I'm not running around hugging people on a random basis. Actually, I don't let a lot of people touch me. I don't let my husband touch me right now. And there is that part of me that is saying to T, I trust YOU enough to let YOU hug me. I don't go around just offering myself to anyone who will hug me. That rejection hurts.

So, T is hurt. I know it's his shit to deal with but I suppose he's not doing either one of us favors if he can't resolve this enough in order to be able to help me.

We will talk in person tomorrow and see how it goes. Consult is willing to help.

Did he say so, Liese?

I hope all works out and his 'stuff' (as much of a relief as I imagine him disclosing that) doesn't impede your therapy

It was brave to be honest with him, I hope it's resolved.

(((LIESE)))I just want to say that I think it was very brave and very self-caring for you to find a consult, to help sort out these issues between you and your T.
You are right when you said "rejection hurts". Its a very personal thing, and sometimes its hard to understand and hard to deal with it. Wanting to be loved back by our T's is really a tough and difficult situation. I just want you to know that I'm thinking of you and praying that your session today will have a positive outcome, because you have worked hard to make that happen. Wishing you the very best.

((((CAT AND EME))))

Thanks for hugs and support. Yes, he did say he was struggling with it but that he knows I didn't intend to hurt him and that he's keeping an open mind.

The consult thinks it's his inexperience with the unconscious/attachment - that people choose CBT for a reason - but she also said he's worked really hard and stretched himself very far to meet me so there are positives there. She also said he and I have survived many ruptures - also a positive.

As for me, she said that I might need to accept his boundaries, that it's part of the organization of his personality. I hardly understand my own personality much less his except that his hurts mine. LOL!

I am struggling to understand how this hurt him. Did he think he could protect himself from being more "known"? Does he think I'm the only one who every googled him and/or his family? And he's now struggling with a sense of safety? Did he underestimate my pain? Was he naive in thinking that I would be able to process this pain within the parameters he was giving me?

I guess I will find out today. Wish me luck!

(((Liese)))

I wish you luck and the continuing strength to be true to yourself and your feelings for your T.

Well he didn't terminate me but he's burnt out on me. I still have an apt on Monday though how could I really go back?

So, he said he wasn't angry but he sure had a lot of complaints.

The very odd thing is I felt like I had been searching for his anger all along, knowing it was there. I just had to find it. And I did. And it felt like the first real conversation I've ever had. Like I finally found a real person under there and that's somehow oddly satisfying.

Does that make sense to anyone?

He said he will still work with me but how do we turn this corner?

I hope you can go back... But I know it is terrifying (it was for me). I had a rupture last year with T2 where quite a few things were said by each of us - it was a supremely personally stressful time in her life and things got messy. We made it through. A different relationship - just like all are individual.,. But we made it. I know it's not the same, just maybe hope that sometimes things like this can lead to growth.

It seems like, not sure if this is true, there is a lot of time spent outside of session, in books, or in consults doing psychoanalysis on your T. I am hoping this won't become about him in the room so much as understanding the relationship. He can only do it his way - and I hope it can work.

I told him to fuck himself in session and threw my cell phone at him.

As we walked out, he told me that he was proud of me.

Why does it feel like we really did something real and we made progress but it's ending?

I told him to stuff it when he told me he was proud of me.

In some weird way, it feels like my anger/rage made me real, hah, like the Velveteen Rabbit. One of my favorite books.

I'm processing ....

So, he went on with the list of things he's done for me .... we've had contact on holidays and vacations, etc., etc., but nothing is ever enough.

I HAD to point out that he was the one who gave me his email address this past summer, that I wasn't even expecting it and that if he had asked me what I wanted, it would have just to have been okay with the feelings in the room, that I was going to miss him.

He told me, you could have said that you were going to miss me. I replied, yes, but you would have stiffened (he agreed) and then I would have felt ashamed.

I told him that is never any room in the room for emotions.

Okay. All the bravado is gone. I'm crashing.

(((Liese)))

I think the crash is to be expected not that it makes it any easier to survive. It sounds like it was good that you got angry and got to see his anger. I think I understand completely what you mean about feeling like you had your first real conversation. I am still waiting in one sense and in another I am far too afraid to have one. I think you couldn't get that angry until you reached a point where you could accept it might end, which isn't to say that I think it will end. I don't know where you go from here but I hope you do go back on Monday

He told me that he's always been intensely private about his family and that he was disappointed in me that I looked knowing how he felt.

Funny thing is I'm disappointed in him. More about that later.

He kept talking about expectations. I guess it's my constant criticisms that he's never doing enough, never saying the right thing, never doing the right thing. What do I expect from him?

However, if he is disappointed in me, then what did he expect from me?

I am disappointed in him. I am disappointed that he didn't learn what he needed to in order to help me. I'm disappointed that he kept me on all these years, thinking he had changed, moving boundaries for me and then ultimately coming to resent it.

((((COGS)))

Thanks for understanding. Thank goodness for consult T. This is her area expertise. Helping therapists and clients during these difficult times.

It's all very hard to wrap my head around.


He also said that even if I hadn't told him about the Facebook, that this has been brewing since New Years.

That said, it's all been brewing since his vacation last summer. I've been begging him to help me work through my feelings for him. I suppose my answer had been to want to know about his life so I can learn to accept the boundaries of the relationship. Ironically it's through him not letting me learn about his life that I had to learn about the boundaries.

I guess what I find odd is that he seems threatened in a way by all this when I see it as a healthy sign. Gosh, what does he think I've been doing all these years obsessing about therapy? I felt it was important for me to show him what was inside so he can help me but ironically that's what drove him mad. I had been hiding it and hiding it and trying to be the good girl.

I feel like I'm just talking into space. I'm sorry if I'm freaking anyone out. He didn't terminate me. And I only pushed because I felt ready to handle it. It's like I read in a magazine, that we are most powerful when we are ready to leave a relationship if we don't get our needs met. Well, power wasn't the point but it had something more to do with the relationship being equally satisfying.