Epilogue.

Time to let go to a year's worth of work. 

I began this blog to help me make sense of what had happened to me - and in October 2023 I decided to take this a whole step further - I set my intention to explore the role of Eros in therapy. 

There are many reasons why clients complain about therapists, but the complaint that terrifies therapists more than any other is sexual misconduct. When there is any intimation that Eros is the third presence in the session, the sensations begin to close down rational thought and both people may feel an overwhelming need to brush feelings and energies 'under the carpet'. This is a very powerful feeling for both clients and therapists. And a therapist who starts, merrily brushing away, will probably rest easy, believing that no harm has been done. I don't know if that is how Kit feels. I think he did the best he could do, but brushing things under the carpet was his response. And this turned out to be as harmful as the behaviors more usually associated with Eros in therapy. [+] [+]

So, I want to make this clear -  Eros isn't sexual misconduct, feelings and thoughts are not sexual misconduct. Nor does Eros inevitably lead to sexual misconduct. 

Sexual misconduct is behavior, it is not a thought, not feelings, not hopes, fears and dreams.

But once I'd made Kit aware of my feelings for him, he treated the presence of Eros as a real problem. We couldn't talk about it. He seemed to believe that I was being transgressive, rather than realizing that no one would wish to fall in love with their therapist! His response was simply to tell me that it was impossible, and that I should know better!

I didn't dare talk about it more than twice! I couldn't face being lectured at, being asked why did I think that about him! And being told that obviously I didn't know anything about contracting and boundaries. The implication was that I should not have told him.  I disagree 100%. This was all about his problem and nothing about me.

So why would a therapist react that way? I see it as a problem with our training. We therapists love to tell everyone about the need for strong boundaries.  Our peers are happy to advise us on avoiding, of how to get rid of, and this is always combined with keeping ourselves safe. 

Naïve moralizing is the phrase that comes into my mind. 

And Eros is transgressive! So, in the light of my 'education' and Kit's response it wasn't easy to tell him. I felt ashamed, confused and wrong. And he certainly did nothing to change my mind about that. Underneath those feelings I just loved him, aand it was too easy for him to beleive that my feelings must be a delusion. The 'therapy term erotic transference implies that I didn't know anything about Kit, and that my feelings were only about me, that it was all my projection. I'm not sure if this is true, he told me a lot more about himself than I ever told him about me. 

When I'd found the courage to tell Kit, he reacted as if reinforcing the boundaries was the best approach. He made it clear that I was 'transgressive'! Or rather how could I ever think such a thing of him... And then, as the final session ended I had no reason to believe that he would ever think of, or remember me, except as tangential and contrary.. and glad to never see me again actually.

The effect on me was catastrophic.

When I left his room the final time I was suicidal...I had the plan, I had the means. I'd also made promises, and I have children. But yes, I was suicidal. Practically hallucinating as I left the room, in grief and despair. [+].

Once a client has fallen in love with you, what is the best way to work with this? To find that answer I start by writing this blog.

I am aware also that Kit's choice to not talk about his actual feelings towards me, means that nothing about my feelings for him have changed. Nothing about my feelings for Kit could be understood or transformed. Instead I learnt a lot about him, and why he felt as he did about the situation. 

But my identity was shattered and death is often on the other side of that.  

I've taken back his word- transgression, I take it and wear it with pride. 

I publish this blog in opposition to fear, and as a protest. It feels like talking about it will hurt him. It feels like I should forget and ignore my feelings, my insights, my experience. This sense of thin ice, the feeling that being open will make things worse, is so hard to overcome. I conquered it the first time through honesty, telling him how I felt. But then for him to make it unspeakable? 

And there have been many times when I could have deleted, metaphorically ploughed all that grew from my feelings and experiences under the dark earth of forgetfulness and self doubt. 

But I've experienced that kind of shut-down before - Never again.

Instead I have decided to harvest,

thresh and cook. 

Because -

Love is precious.

And.

Life is short.

Truth matters.

1st February 2021 from my written journal: 

I was describing to Kit the moment when I first met the cold disdain my husband specialized in. And this is a painful memory because at that moment in time I had trusted that love would solve all problems, and that love would allow each of us to really be who we really are. 

When it happened we were in a hotel room. 

We were hiding. 

He had just told his previous partner that it was all over. His family were in uproar. He couldn't face her bewilderment, pain and confusion. 

He'd been lying to her for how long? 

But I'd thought that their relationship was over! She lived in another city, he never talked about her. I was busy, I had other things to do at the weekends, I only saw him during the week. 

As I told this to Kit, I was feeling how numb, blindsided I'd let myself be. The man I was going to marry was a liar - who wishes to acknowledge or confront that! A thousand reasons not to see the lie were beginning to dissolve as I spoke to Kit...

As I spoke about this I was back in the memory - back in the hotel room. We were watching Total Recall - and what I did, it wasn't even a sexual thing...the man I was to marry turned away from me in anger. My shock at his response was absolute. The feeling he gave out was a cold, implacable, unspeakable rage. Nothing I could say could made it change. No forgiveness. There was no way to undo it, to make it right. 

As I told this to Kit, the feeling of that evening was seeping in to my present reality like cold, dirty water. I felt bereft, I felt so, so wrong, I was ashamed of myself...and as if no one could forgive me. I was feeling as my husband had made me feel...

As I described this I needed to be with a 'trusted companion'. Someone on my side. I was beginning to see the pattern, to see my place in this event and how it would repeat over and over for twenty-five years as I tried different ways to avoid or talk to, or to appease my husband's cold rage..

Talking to Kit I closed my eyes to focus on the sensation, to recognize, to know. And then I looked up!

After the session I wrote in my journal:

I looked up, Kit's head was to one side, he said "The way you raised your one eyebrow as you described that, I thought..."and a smile widened across his face "minx.". When he called me a minx, his smile, his tone of voice hit me like a bolt of lightning. Waves of shock and pleasure took me momentarily into flame-filled ecstasy. ."

The body responds faster than the mind. Psychologically the power of this can be catastrophic. We are taught that only love or desire can make us respond. 

Eros has a subterranean, chthonic aspect, disconnected from love called subspace, characterized by a loss of personal boundaries, the loss of self. 

Subspace can be a pure bliss of unity, or a dismembering void. I believe it to be a survival protocol, hard wired into our autonomic nervous system. 

 minx in British English

(mɪŋks ) noun. a bold, flirtatious, or scheming woman. Collins English Dictionary.

I imagine that as Kit listened he thought that he was seeing my true intention in just that split second before my husband turned so cold; he probably thought that he was reflecting the real, playful me just before the first clue that the man I was going to marry would shut me out instantly when ever I moved or breathed in the (unpredictable) wrong way. 

Kit probably expected that his 'positive reframing' (?) would help me recast myself as flirtatious in that memory. Instead I experienced shock, misalignment, mis-attunement. He was smiling at me, saying in effect  'you are bold and flirtatious' in response to me in the present. But for me it was as if he'd been there, and we are now here..and my body responded to him now. I felt that he would have laughed and enjoyed what I did. I would have been safe with him. That need to feel safe was so overwhelming. I wanted this man! I wanted the trusted companion who dared go to this place with me, the one who would laugh, call me a minx and not turn away, not be so cruel and empty...

Minx though - synchronicity! I have twenty years and more of Quake 3. /headmodel <mynx>. 

Here ends Part One.

All existing posts about our sessions will now be published.