I'd wanted to comment immediately upon reading this post (and Dan's flippant advice), but decided to wait to see what others would write. I believe this has been alluded to indirectly, but we have only the LW's words telling us OMG just how well-matched she and the therapist are. Because-because-because they find the same things funny, their political ideologies match and (oh, SO important /sarcasm) they're both HOT.

Sigh. Seriously??? The LW sounds like that breathless, over-exclamation-marked, young LW a while ago. Does the LW have any idea whether the therapist is even available? He belongs to the LW only for the length of their session. After that, he belongs to the next patient, etc. And, at the end of the day, he belongs to those he's closest to in his private life.

The LW has also decided - as the payer - to behave as if she's in the driver's seat where the length of therapy is concerned. After all, the sooner she "fires" him, the sooner she can start dating him. So she's focused more on brushing away the debris of her troubled past as quickly as possible, whether that's in her psyche's advantage or not.

I echo what others have said, to bring up the crush during a session. And then to look for companionship in real life outside of the therapeutic fishbowl environment.

@101: "I can't believe I found someone who like Bernie and thinks Trump stinks!!!! What are the odds! We're soulmates!"

@70
"You seem awfully invested in finding a problem where there isn't one in this particular case. It's also getting tedious having you tell me that something which I know to be true isn't when you have no knowledge of these people or their situation.

I'm sorry that when you asked your therapist out, he turned you down, but there's no need to take it out on this couple."

I am not invested. You wrote something that breaks a couple ethics guidelines for a professional counselor in your @1 piece. I am critical because it would be so outrageous if this scenario happened. It is that serious of a violation.

"Ask my therapist out"?!?!?!? yeah, yeah it must be transference and projection on my part. I don't ask people out on a date that may get them to lose their financial livelihood..

Your @1 story is bullshit. Plain and Simple. Go ahead and make up other fantasies..

@ferret: See, you can be outraged and disgusted and upset by that story; you can point out all the violations. If you were or are on a licensing board, you can be upset that someone got away with this. As a counselor or therapist yourself, you can want to distance yourself from such behavior and to assure people that #notalltherapists. You be horrified and scandalized and critical.
But when you keep insisting it isn't true because you don't want to be true, that's where i get irritated. Yes, it's a serious violation; yes, it happened. People commit and get away with violations of rules, ethics, laws, social mores all the time. Saying that something didn't happen because it shouldn't have happened, is pretty dang ostrich-with-head-in-sandlike.

Or perhaps you're angry at me for making it sound, back @1, that this is a real and likely possibility for the lw. If that's the case, rest assured, I don't think this is a typical outcome of what is probably a common feeling. But it has happened before.

The "you're just jealous" rebuttal doesn't seem to be an effective comeback to the real concerns of abuse that come from a severe power imbalance where the stable party is supposed to be a steward of and an evangelist for the party? It's totally natural for feelings to develop between someone tasked to care for another, but unethical to decide that it means anything further.

"But it has happened before."

People also date their sponsors in 12 step programs, as do some intentionally seek to prey upon those that look up to them. The existence of abuses of trust is entirely predictable and irrelevant.

@undead: I don't fundamentally disagree with anything you or ferret are saying regarding the wrongness (I do think it's up the the therapist, rather than the client, to know and observe the rules regarding romantic/sexual relationships even after therapy has ended. Until she read these comments, if she did, why should the lw assume that she'd still be out-of-bounds to the former therapist).
I'm just sick of ferret telling me that I made something up that I didn't make up. She can hate the people involved as much as she wants. If when she says the story is "bullshit," she means "not okay," fine, but if by "bullshit," she's calling me a liar, I take issue with that.
FOR FUCK'S SAKE, THAT'S ALL I'M SAYING.

I agree that it's not a particularly fruitful approach to take.

I'm fascinated that according to ferret, the therapist I know is unethical and professionally compromised, but the therapist Iwasnocutename knows is fictional.

ferret, how do you tell the difference?

I believe the perceived disparity is that the idea of someone ethically pursuing their patients is the fiction, independent of outcome. I accept that there are exceptions where it works out well (however that obviously doesn't change my personal opinion of the practice.)

Apologies for beating this dead horse further, though.

undeadaynrand @110,

Iwasnocutename never said the therapist she knows behaved ethically or within the bounds for her professional order. She just said she existed.

ferret denies that the therapist Iwasnocutename knows exists. Though apparently the therapist I know, though even more egregiously unethical than the one Iwasnocutename knows, does exist -- though on black ice.

@101
I should say it's entirely fine for the patient to be "in the driver's seat where the length of therapy is concerned." After all, if she's not motivated anymore, there's no point in continuing the therapy anyway. The therapist is only there to provide an objective ear, support and, where needed, certain tools - but the final decision to go on with the therapy is hers and hers only.

@112: This is definitely a situation where it's not what one says but how one says it. Casting doubt on the exact narrative a person may retell (uncritically, as coming from good friends) without calling the reteller a liar. I obviously understand the distaste, but it's not something I want to get all shouty about. Sometimes you just have to decouple and if not accept the behavior, accept that someone is more forgiving about that than you are.

@113: Patients do what they're going to do, but a little side eye is proper when they "don't need" the therapy because it interferes with enabling their worse habits (codependency?) that got them into therapy to begin with. Granted, the LW didn't go into detail there expectedly, but a person can guess based on their "great" ideas how they're not thinking in their own interest.

Re nocute's story, I know a friend of a friend who got involved with his much older teacher in high school, and so far as I know they were at least outwardly happy and even raised a child together. I would definitely not bring this story up as proof that student-teacher relationships are a-okay - I don't think they are and I cringe a little bit whenever I think about this couple. But it would also be totally weird if someone were to doubt the very truthfullness of my story. It happened, no one complained and the teacher was not prosecuted. Shit like that happens.

@109 There are some differences of the scenario that you brought compare to @1 Iwasnocutename. The scenario you brought up had some time past before there was a dating scenario. It also depends on the state, the discipline the therapist/counselor are licensed and hopefully, board certification.

Therapists are human, they may find a patient attractive, they get lonely, they want companionship as we all do. However, they know the rules about mixing serious friendships, financial dealings, romance with a patient. The therapists are pretty much acting out one of the Greek Myths like Atalanta and her race with Melanion. The therapists is risking much getting involved with a client, no matter the rewards..

I am not a discipline review board, I do know that professional societies like the APA or the ABPN will stripped a therapist in those disciplines of their board certification for a scenario by Iwasnocutename in her @1 post. I can't believe a MFA therapist would ask a patient out on a date or stop counseling in order to date someone, they still risked their license 30 years later, much it was found out the MFA therapist stole money from a client 30 years previous, time don't make it less egregious.

I know I am being very mean, vulgar, with blinders on this issue and to Iwasnocutename because it is that outrageous of a scenario.It is sort of like stating the therapist has been getting away from murder for 25-30 years with no problem.

Your friend seemed to have gone from serious violation in the @1 scenario to he or she are standing on black ice. Your friend's colleague have a legal and ethical duty to report this, besides your friend could be violating his profession's ethical code for not reporting it, (i.e. An honor system to report self violations). I am guessing your friend's dating slipped under the radar, because it was away from his or her colleagues, it was short term. Time is the big difference between the two stories.. Basically, leave the therapist alone, and find other people to date.

I could go into a very lengthy reason and narrative as to why you need to step away from this inevitable hot lava, CYGMSA. But I’ll try to keep this short’ish. I have survived being the collateral damage in a relationship such as this. My dad started going to a grief counselor shortly after my mom passed when I was a kid, and within a short time they were married.

What the therapists have said in this thread about power dynamics being skewed could not be truer. Not sure if you have children, but our dad’s decision massively impacted his children — immeasurably. She had control over him (he in turn relinquished his control) in tremendous ways that bled over to our boundaries as well.

If CYGMSA takes nothing else away from these comments, especially from these ethically oriented mental health professionals, I hope she leaves with this imbalance warning pinned in the forefront of her mind, because this is super important to understand — no matter how charming, sensitive, witty, erudite, and smokin’ hot it comes packaged — that the scale is always tipped.

I understand that my story is different because a recent widower might be more susceptible to more intense transference than someone who’s just doing a bit of personal mental health hygiene, but both scenarios are susceptible to unsafe terms for the client, or previous client, and that’s important to understand. Best of luck CYGMSA, and take good care of your self.

ferret @117,

Not a state. A province.

I have no idea what the timeline was. It went down before I knew them. For all I know the husband dumped his wife for the therapist during therapy. Or as you surmised, they might have run into one another years later at a party. I don't know either way, though I suspect it leaned toward the more unethical.

@119 I don't know Canadian Federal and Provincial law on counseling licenses. I don't know specifics on Canadian Medical Boards, Canadian Boards for Psychology and Family Counseling..

However I can speculate with some assurance they have pretty much the same standard ethical guidelines for both Provincial licenses and Board Certification with pretty much all OECD countries. Much like with Attorneys, there are very obvious guidelines with professional and client boundaries. Don't have a Business relationship with a client, Don't rip off a client, Don't get romantically involved with present or past clients.

Much like High School Teacher and Students have romantic relationships, but in the end it cost the Teacher their license,(besides the risk of prison) no matter if the Teacher and Student get married and lived happily ever after, the teacher is no longer a teacher. . A family marriage counselor couldn't date a former patient right away without causing a huge uproar with their licensing and their discipline ethics/enforcement board.. There is a strong chance a colleague of the therapist will report therapist sleeping with a current or former patient, if the therapist in question refuses do so..

My point is that there is a difference between Therapists and patients violating the ethical standards for therapists, by having a romantic relationship which happens. To the unrealistic therapists continue to see patients without losing their license on violating the basic tenets of therapist/client relationships.. Also the point of years of training for a therapists is to keep some professional distance with patients, and find other paths to feed their need for companionship..

Tangentially, I ran into a patient at hot yoga a couple weeks ago. He had flirted at me, but never asked me out. He's a nice enough guy, but I would never. Being in that room, elbow-to-elbow, wearing essentially our underpants, felt like the longest ninety minutes of my life. Not in a good way. Have mercy.

Non tenured professors get fired from blurting out romantic attraction to a student, no matter if the feelings are mutual or not.

As others have stated, sanctions only occur if a report is filed. My father was a non-tenured professor and my mother was a grad student in his course when they met. They've been married over 30 years, and have 4 adult children. I am the oldest.

He got tenure. No disciplinary hearings have been held.

The "success stories" from ncn @1 and xg17 @123 are all from 30 years ago. It looks like laws and regulations concerning these "unequal" relationships have become a lot more strict in the meantime.

@124: The laws and regulations may have gotten more strict, but unless authorities find out that rules have been broken, people still get away with a lot.

That's the other side of the coin: today third parties are probably more inclined to alert authorities. See ferret above about colleagues reporting.

Jesus. I was happy I had finally found a therapist I basically felt comfortable talking to, and now you're telling me the therapeutic relationship is supposed to be so good that I think I'm falling in love?

Ah, the old Statue of Limitations -- the bookend to the Statue of Liberty.

One of my favorites.