I was reading an old thread about whether our therapists "love" us and that made me think about what love means to me. My T has never said she loves me, although she did sign a card "Love, T" once--the card was a thank-you card for the poem I wrote for her in honor of her son's birth. I have pulled that card out many times to look at that word. Once I wrote to her, "I love you, and I know you love me, too, even if you can't say it." I probably would not have been that brave, except that I was away caring for my mother and knew she would take everything in that email as having been impacted by the intensity of my then-current experience. Which it was--but I do love her, nonetheless.

But what is love?

I read a while back that dogs cannot love because they process the world differently from us. I disagree. I thought about what love means, and this is what I decided it means for me:

1. A happy feeling about being with the beloved
2. A willingness to extend oneself for him or her
3. A sense of specialness about the relationship

By this definition, I think love occurs in therapy far more frequently than is ever spoken. I even had a supervisor tell me once that you have to love your clients, nonpossessively and unselfishly. A professor told us, though, that you have to be very careful about what words are used to convey caring--clients may have been told they were loved coercively in the past, or the statement may seem to hold out the promise of more than the therapist can deliver.

Still, I can't help but hope that someday I'll hear my T say those words. It feels like there is an empty place that only those words, in her voice, will fill.

Sigh.

What do you guys think?