I’ve been finding my mind turning on my therapist for the last few weeks.

We’d gone through a formal “Termination” session, but while it had started with a sincerity about this session being the last, there’d been an anti-climactic disclosure about something we had in common (anti-climactic because I knew it without asking that the source of her knowledge of my problems was a shared source), followed by an odd ending with an over-emphatic “I will miss you but I’m sure we’ll see each other again.” said in the doorway.

There was no hug or handshake. Yet it seemed more intimate than either could be because it struck at my secret hope that I mattered to her and that I would see her again, It struck at the wish that my relationship with her was not dependent on a $140 for 50 minutes of conversation.

It was not helped by the fact that I’d given her a selection of writing I’d done that, while publicly available, was deeply personal. I had not talked to her about its origin or nature. In particular, that it was not written for her, yet it could not have been written without her. It was a sign to me of the success of our weekly and bi-weekly sessions over the last 3 years.

Though at the time I was only vaguely aware of this river moving within, leaving the room, it simply felt odd and wrong.

Then, in the following weeks, she’d appear to me mentally in the oddest ways out of the blue. I’d show up at this place or that wondering if this would be where I’d see her. I’d meditate or listen to something and think, this is something she’d like, I wonder if she’d approve.

Most of all, I wondered what she thought of what I’d written — whether she’d understand what it was, or if was too much. I regretted either way that I’d not set out my framework for it, as if that could give me some control.

I began to think I should find another therapist soon just to rid myself of the hold I’d developed around E.

Then the water main broke and H and I were thrown into chaos. The world of moving became even more chaotic and after a few weeks, I realized I needed help to work out what was happening to me. I was overwhelmed.

I turned to the couples counselor.

And I turned to E. I wrote her a note and asked for help. Shortly afterwords, she called me back and we set up a phone appointment.

Almost immediately the grasping thoughts began to subside. And our phone appointment was exactly what I needed it to be: a session sharply focused on direct skills to make handling my own anxiety better, but also trust that H would take care of hers

Still, I wondered: Why was that last session so odd to me? Why did I look for E in places where she would not be? Why had I not said to her: I’m glad I’ll be missed, and I’ll miss you. But really, I’m not likely ever going to see you again.

Who was she really to me that I did not do this?

And I realized tonight, as the plane descended toward the moonlit Santa Barbara coast — I realized after a weekend spent being with my wife and trying not to fix everything but wanting her to make me feel special — I realized that I had turned E into everything that I wanted a woman to give me.

She was the mother who had 3 others to care for and that I always wanted to be seen by.

She was every girl I’d broken it off with when I found I could not lose myself in them because they did not make me feel special enough.

She was, most strikingly of all, the woman who’d made my 7 year-old self feel special in the darkness of a room where nakedness smelled like pencil shavings and I was embarrassed about the erection I had from the touch of her breasts.

(“Someone’s gotta teach you,” she said. And I did not know better. )

How subtle and terrible and powerful that such a need to please to be seen, to be made real and whole only through the approval and happiness and pleasure of another, could be planted so long ago that it wound itself invisibly into everything, warping the way I saw and felt and experienced relationships with every woman I wanted intimacy from.

And just as it propelled me toward every relationship at a certain angle, it repelled many who sensed it under whatever charms I may have offered.

And they rejected me.

Which in turn only deepened my loneliness and strengthen my desire to find someone who I could be special for.