Posted by Suedehead on November 6, 2008, at 20:12:21
I see my T in a large office building, one floor of which houses a bunch of therapists in private practice. I have to take the elevator up there, as the staircase is closed off except in cases of emergency. Every time, I worry that he'll get in the elevator with me. I don't know why, exactly, but it makes me very nervous. Would we acknowledge each other? Would we talk? I have no idea what he is like outside of his office. More to the point, I have no idea what *we* are like outside of his office, and I vacillate between desperately wanting to find out and being absolutely terrified of it.
Anyway, it happened today, for the first time. I got into the elevator with several other people, and just as the door was about to close, he got in. We looked at each other, smiled, and nodded hi. He stood next to me, but we didn't talk any more. When we got to his floor, I got off first. He made a joke about my being as 'directionally confused' as he is, because I took a second to figure out which way to turn to get to his office (there are elevators on both sides of the lobby, so sometimes I need to go left, and sometimes right). He said something about having a terrible sense for that sort of thing, and I said that I do, too. Then he went into his office and told me that he'd see me in a minute.
We spent the session talking about a trip I'm taking this weekend. Our meeting in the elevator didn't come up until the last ten minutes, at which point he said, "We saw each other in the elevator. What do you think about that?" I said, "Yeah, it was weird," and he asked if I'd been thinking about it for the whole session. I said no. He said that he hadn't either, but that it had suddenly occurred to him. He said, "We're quite the dissociative couple, aren't we?" and I agreed. Seeing him in the elevator was definitely significant, but I'd blocked it out entirely once the session started, and so had he.
Anyway, we didn't have a lot of time to talk about it, really. He said that he hadn't wanted to say much to me out of respect for my privacy--the elevator had been pretty full. I understood (and sort of appreciated) that, but asked him what it would have been like had we been the only people on it. He said that he imagined that we'd have looked at each other, laughed, said, "This is weird!" and maybe made small talk for a minute or something. Then I pushed it further, and asked what it would have been like had the elevator broken, trapping us alone together for some amount of time. He said, "I don't even want to think about that!" and laughed, and then, a second later, said, "Wait, are you serious? You're being serious, aren't you?" I said that I was. He said, "At first, I thought that you were flirting, but then I realized that it was a serious question." I said, "It wasn't a come on. I am sincerely wondering how we would talk to each other, and what we'd talk about." He said that these were good questions, and that he didn't know the answers to them. He said that presumably we would talk about lots of things, and that it wouldn't be therapy, but rather some kind of social encounter. "We'd talk about the election--that sort of thing," he said. "We would?" I asked. We'd already run over by five minutes at this point, so we had to stop there, but we agreed that we should talk more about it on Monday.
It's funny, because now, I realize that my question about being stuck on a broken elevator with him *was* seductive. It was a serious question, too, of course, but even *as* a serious question, it was flirtatious.
Also, the thought of being able to talk about the election with him is just about the most exciting one I've had in ages. Part of me really wants nothing more than to be able to know him in that way--as a friend, I guess. In so many ways I'm grateful for the boundaries that exist in our relationship; he is a great therapist, and I need him to continue to play that role in my life. But it is nearly impossible for me not to want more, at least sometimes. And the better I get to know him, the more I'm struck by the unique rapport we have with each other, and the more I yearn for some way to incorporate him into my life in some more permanent and substantial way.
I'm not really sure what the point of this post is. I guess it's just an update, or a record of what's going on with me. Sometimes I talk to my boyfriend about therapy, but for the most part there's no one in my real life who understands all this stuff, so it's helpful for me to write about it here.
poster:Suedehead
thread:861205
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20081104/msgs/861205.html