Liese - Wow, you are being so brave with your feelings with T! I am amazed. That's so wonderful. I can relate to the need to be loved. In my case, my T has skirted around it with those same terms "special" and "cared for" and "connected." In terms of my parts, he has actually even said "loved." I read it as "...by God" and told him so, but he said by God and him, but from our discussions I know it is a love he has for all of his clients that comes from God and is not love in the way that he is counting on the relationship to provide him with something. He may get things out of it, but he doesn't "need" me. I sometimes wonder if I want him to love me, which I think he actually does in a very appropriate, spiritual way...or if I just want him to NEED me, because then I am safe and he won't leave me. To me, it sounds like your T does love you in a way, but what he is saying is he doesn't need you.

I sometimes wonder if Ts can't use the L word, not only for liability reasons, but because many clients' ideas of love are badly skewed by their early experiences. For example, my mom did not say "I love you." She did not hug me or give me affection. She did not notice my needs or respond to them when I was open about them. She wasn't attuned to how I was feeling and didn't address my emotions appropriately. She controlled and manipulated me by utilizing those needs and feelings when revealed, rather than meeting me in them. Yet, from her perspective, she "loved" me. Her love felt like her needing me to take care of her. So, if my T used that sort of word, maybe I would be imagining, "I need you to take care of me, so I will never abandon you." It would feel safe and familiar, but it would be so unhealthy for me to view the therapeutic relationship in that way. When my T expresses love and care for his clients, and me in particular, I think he is wanting to say, "Your pain affects me. I want to help you. I see your needs and want to address them or help you to do so. I feel like we are partners in this journey you're on. I WANT and CHOOSE to be in this with you." If I could believe anyone would want and choose such a thing, that is a very safe sort of "love" to receive, but because I can only believe in being needed...that's how my whole family relates to me (excepting those who have abandoned me). It wouldn't be healing for my T to make such a statement.

That said, I will risk censure and say T accidentally did make that statement in a totally unintended way in my phone session and I think that's one of the reasons I have been freaking out. I made a funny joke about being able to continue our session into his dentist appointment and he said, "You're cute. That's really funny. I love you!" kind of spontaneously. I ignored it and he kind of stuttered after that, so I know it was a mistake and I know what he meant was, "I really enjoy your sense of humor and have fun talking to you sometimes." Even knowing this, hearing those words made me panic a few hours after. Because, T cannot love me in the way that I experience love...and the idea of him needing me feels so unsafe. I am coming around to him NOT loving me in that way is the very best thing for me.

So, I guess what I am saying is that maybe what you are asking for from your T is something he is already giving in the only way that is safe for you. He can enjoy the connection without needing it. And if he needed it, he really couldn't help you in the way that he is...I feel like I just made no sense.

((((Liese)))))

I recently told my T1 in an email that sometimes I think I love her and wish she could be my mother. She wrote back that she , "Cares deeply for me and wishes that in another life, she could be my mother and would be proud to have me a a daughter".

I hated that "care deeply for you" crap. Ouch. She doesn't love me. And I'm sad about that, but it has also been a good dose of reality that I am, in fact, getting way more out of this relationship than she is. Its simply the nature of the relationship. I know I shouldn't take it personally....but of course we take it personally when our Ts don't love us back. There is a part of me that is actually angry...like, "WTF, I can't even PAY people to love me?". Isn't that what our Ts are being paid to do...to emotionally whore themselves out? Yeah, that's an ugly way of putting it, but we are indeed paying them to care for us because other people haven't. and its a huge slap in the face when we finally realize that even these people don't love us.

Anyway I don't have any advice. Just offering up my experience and saying yeah, it sucks but its good to talk about it out in the open with our Ts, don't you think? Better than keeping it in. Better to realize they will never love us than to keep trying to earn their love.

wow, liese, i'm also really impressed that you are able to talk about this stuff with your T!!

this is definetely unknown territory to me but i was thinking that maybe you misunderstood that your T might 'love' some of his clients and not others. that doesn't make sense. its like a parent who says he loves only some of his children. i think each of those relationships he has with his clients should be special and therefore the feelings he has for them too. maybe he's just weary of using the word love - i think its probably not in many T's dictionary.
but as i said, i wouldn't know... never dared to go there.

good luck - i hope you find some answers and even if they are not exactly what you wish for, they're easier to handle than what you worry about now. sounds like you're doing great work!

puppet

Hey guys, thanks for telling me I'm so brave. The first conversation about "love" was the hardest. It does get easier to talk about because now I know he won't get mad at me for bringing it up. But each time we talk about it, different (or the same?) pain and fear pops up. He told me that he doesn't expect the fear to go away right away and we're just going to have to keep chipping away at it and chipping away at it until the fear is gone.

I don't know about you all because I know we're all different but I think I had closed myself off to loving others and it feels so scary to love again. I think for me it was important to learn to love again and that it's okay to love. For the two days that I felt really good, I was much more "loving" with my family. It was amazing to see it really working.

Yaku, I know what you mean when you say if he told you he loved you, you would take it as the kind of love that you had with your mother. I know it wouldn't be healthy for me either and this is heading towards a point that DF makes down below. I really don't have a very well-defined notion of what love is and what love isn't. And, so when I feel feelings for people, I say I love them. What does that really mean? I'll have to do more research and study on that one. It just feels like the injured part of me, the small part of me, just really needs to be loved by T, whatever that means. I think that part of me is very hurt and it needs to be nurtured in some huge way.

LG, I hate that "care" about you crap too. What started off part of this for me (because I was doing okay with everything until .. ) was that I was reading on another forum. One of the threads was about this woman who just had to start with a new T because her old T retired. And recently they were gazing into each other's eyes and the T asked the threadster what she felt. And, the threadster said, "I feel love." And the T said, that's right. You can tell when a T loves you. And then I started to freak out because, well, you know why.

DF, thanks for telling about how you love all your pets. That really helped. It did. Some of what I feel for my T is romantic, no doubt, but a huge part is parternal, needing that paternal love and nurturing from him. I use the L word so loosely, oh, I love that person, I love this person. But T has been doing this for a long time and has no doubt sorted out his feelings as he goes along and it seems that a mutual need is included in his definition of love. I guess I wish I could just FEEL what he feels for me, just know what it feels like. Well, only if it was good stuff. But just generally, what does he feel when he thinks of me. I wish I had a template for it. He doesn't even love me like his dog. I didn't think that was too much to ask for.

Puppet, thanks for telling me I'm brave. They've been some of the hardest conversations I've had with T yet but also very fruitful. On good days, I feel more connected to him than ever and really feel as though he IS there for me, all the time, if I really needed him. It's nice to know that. On bad days, intense jealousy takes over and it isn't pretty.

Thanks for pointing out that I might have misunderstood that he loves some of his clients but not all. He didn't actually say that but he didn't refute it either. I feel like the child who has to share the parent with the sibling. It's just reality. It seemed obvious to me, though, from the look on his face that he does care deeply about others and so really couldn't say anything that would really be helpful in that regard or put my mind at ease. It's this godawful insecurity that I just wish would go away. And really, if he didn't care about his other clients, he'd be a sociopath, right? And, so it's a good thing that he does care for all his clients. I don't know how much to press the issue with him because I don't know what is relevant here. But the reason he gave for not loving me was that that would mean he was emotionally involved with me. And, so you would think that would apply across the board, right? And, so, one would think he would be able to say that without hesitation that no, he doesn't "love" any of his clients. But he might care deeply for them and I'm not sure what the distinction is, except for the mutual need part. But .... is it going to be helpful to me to press him more and say but you told me that the reason you don't love me is because ....

I don't need to know that he loves me the most. I need to know that he doesn't love the others either. Because if he loved some of his other clients and not me, then I don't think I could stay with him. Does that make sense? I need a T who is going to feel deeply for me, if not love me, especially after all the time we've been together. And if he did love some of the others and not me, then in my head, I would go all out trying to win his approval and love. Not a good set-up for me.

Anyway, I suppose the conversation will be continued with him on Thursday.

Thanks to all!!!

xoxo

Liese

Monte,

Thanks for understanding. I am in so much of a better place tonight because of all the support here and wonderful replies. I know he's doing me a favor and that what he is doing is wise and loving. I just wish I hadn't read that thread on the other website. It made me, in a small way, want to go find that T who does love the threadster. If I can't get it from my T, maybe I can get it from her. Ohhh, I know that would be so wrong to do and I can't help but wonder if that T is doing that woman a disservice. (I guess I'd like to think so since I'm not getting that from my T.)

A friend of mine expressed concern that my T told me that we have a special relationship but I feel as though I can handle it now. Had he said that a year ago, I would have spun out with hopes that we would be running off together in a few months. But I was really glad he said it partly because of the deep love I feel for him and not that I think he has to match it because I know he can't, but in a way, he at least met it in the way that he can and let me know that I'm important to him as well. As AG says, it IS a real relationship. Maybe he was also letting me know that it's okay to love him. It would be nothing short of a miracle if I could learn to love again, instead of always worrying about being loved. And, for that, I should really be grateful.

Hi Liese... you have been having really interesting conversations with your T lately. I'm glad you are sharing with us. I can only add that I never spoke of love with oldT... it would have sent him fleeing and freaking out and I knew this and so I stayed away from the subject. Oh, we discussed attachment to some extent but never the "L" word. That is a shame because I do believe that love was the elephant in the room with us.

With my current T... he only says that it's impossible for a T to be in a long term psychodynamic relationship with someone and not have any warm, affectionate and yes, even loving feelings for them. He believes that my oldT felt love towards me and that freaked him out and he ran from me. Of course, he keeps emphasizing that it was HIS issues and had nothing to do with me... as in I'm too horrible to love and my loving someone would make them run from me.

My T does not shy away from this subject but so far I have because I'm just not ready to go there yet. I know my T likes me, likes bantering with me, says I'm interesting and very smart and that he is always happy to see me. He told me he missed me when I was on vacation. This is all very nice to hear and is fine for now. I'm not sure I even WANT him to love me because when old T loved me he ran away from me and I still have that experience fresh in my brain.

OTOH, I also feel that my T loves lots of other clients and that I'm just a number and I'm also very convinced that since I'm the newest (I think) patient, he loves his other longer relationship patients more than me. In the beginning it didn't bother me so much... like when I was too numb to care about him... but now that I do care for him it seems more important that he love me too.

None of this is easy to figure out. I think part of it is that we all have different definitions of what love looks like. And I think the love we are REALLY searching for is that unconditional parental love, where we are their center of the universe kind of love, that we never had.

TN

((((((TN))))))

I know how it feels to feel like just a number. I needed to feel important to him because like you felt like that for a long time. Of course, now I really feel like I'm not a number anymore but I'm struggling with other things. But what we've been working on (and what I need to focus on) is my relationship with him and building that up. He's let me know in ten million ways that I'm important to him. He's moved things around when I've asked him to. It seems as though he never denies a request unless it would cross some boundary he's uncomfortable with. (I should have put that on my other thread).

Anyway, I know you will have the conversation with NewT when you are ready. You are so brave and NewT so steady. I know he won't let you down. It WAS so hard to start the conversation. And still hard to bring it up a second time. He reassured me that it wasn't just going to take one conversation. We're going to have to keep talking about it and keep talking about it. The hard part for me and what I told him is that it just keeps growing. It's not like I go back and he's not nice to me. It's quite to opposite. I keep feeling like I'm walking into a minefield. And, those feelings of love and intimacy have been buried (nonexistent?) for so long, and like you, they are attached to pain. So it's all very much a mixed bag.

But you sound so sad about feeling just like a number. And, so I want to encourage you, when you are ready, to have that conversation with your T. He's reassured you in so many ways that he can talk about his feelings and he's much more comfortable doing that than OldT was. I just know he'd be there for you in the way that you want/need him to be. But you know, as well as I do, that you have to bring it up only when you are ready.

That was so nice that he told you he missed you while he was on vacation.

xoxoxo

Liese

I too think you are VERY brave! This can be a really hard subject to broach with T!!!
Its sad that he won't say he loves you... I'm sorry about that
I am very lucky that I have a T who is easy to talk to, and we are always saying "I love you" to each other.
What strikes me though is something else your T said-- he doesn't want to get emotionally involved with you? Isn't that part of being a therapist? I don't know...that just hit me sorta wrong.

Hi there everyoneinside,

We haven't met before. It's nice to meet you. You are so lucky that you and your T regularly say "I love you" to each other. I would kill for that. But then again, knowing me and knowing my issues, it would probably also really screw me up.

I know he is emotionally involved with me. He couldn't be doing the kind of therapy with me that he's doing if he wasn't emotionally involved with me because I think he's basically reparenting me. How could he work with me for so long and not be emotionally involved? I think what he was talking about is that he is not getting any needs met in my relationship with him. Nor should he be. Because this is all about my needs. Even if he feels that I should do this or that and if I don't do what he thinks I should do and I wind up getting hurt yet again or screwing something up yet again, it's not his job to be the approving or the disapproving parent. He needs to remain impartial. His ego can't be part of the equation.

I can tell from the way he's reacted on several occassions that he does care about me very much. And I do suspect that he worries that I'll leave therapy prematurely. He's told me he's committed to me, that our relationship is special to him and that he does care. That's all I really need to have. Yes, I would love it if he loved me but then again, if he did, I might not look elsewhere to get my needs met. I'd settle for this crumb, this love that I get from therapist twice a week for 45 minutes and not look for love IRL. And, I suppose I deserve to be loved in real. Or at least that's what he wants me to believe.

Hey, Liese- I think that the kind of love a good T offers is actually the closest approximation of unconditional love that is available from another human being, in this very imperfect world of ours. The kind of love where a person gives care and help to another, needing and expecting nothing in return. So in that sense a good T loves their client. Have you ever read about the three types of love I think it was Aristotle who developed them? Eros, philia, and agape love? Reading, or re-reading, about some of this may help you to identify the kind of love that your T offers you- and- also help you to grow in the type of love you so beautifully, aspire to within yourself. I freely admit that I am pretty much at the eros stage (what can I get) in most of my relationships- but- there is hope that I may in time move past that. I still hope for that- however, it is crucial to recognize, that in the T relationship, it is very useful to remain in a state of "eros," because there is an authentic reflection of what is supposed to happen in that relationship- (we learn to humbly receive without having the ability to "compensate" the other emotionally) and can lead one to a state of deeper awareness and ability/desire to give more. Like the idea of completing the developmental stages. Most of us find it painfully compromising to be in this position, there is why therapy often equals pain. But the paradox of coming to recognize how much we need, and how little we have to offer in return, can lead one to gratefulness- and- a deeper love for one's fellow man- philia- and eventually, even agape love.

I'm really sorry to wax all "intellectual" on you- especially since very likely you know more about this than I do- but I find your thread very interesting indeed, and thought I would add a few thoughts as they came up!

Hugs- I'm sorry that the love you have for T is so painful. You are healing. It takes *time* to grow. You are doing such great work. I'm inspired by you, by your humility authenticity- and your obvious growth in love.

Hugs,

BB

((((BB)))))


No need to apologize for waxing all intellectual. I found it all very interesting and didn't know all about the different kinds of love. I'm going to go look them up right now. I'm probably at the eros stage also, from what you describe. So you are not alone there, BB.

xoxo

Liese