What Erotic Transference Taught Me

As seen in Therapy Today.

It began subtly. A faint hum in the background of my life. I dismissed it at first: a flicker of unease, a charge after an intense session with a client, or, more curiously, with my therapist. But soon it became impossible to ignore. I started to wonder what this hum meant. It followed me out of sessions and into my evenings. At first it felt benign, maybe even irrelevant. But over time, it gathered weight. There was something there, asking to be understood.

To put it bluntly, I felt exhilaration, joy, fear, and something more primal. A physiological thrill that made my pulse quicken. It felt achingly familiar. Like the early thrill of falling for someone, that electric spark that sets your whole being alight. But there was no one there.

Looking back, I wonder if it wasn’t therapy itself that primed me for this, or rather the contrast it offered to the rest of my relational world. In the absence of physical and sexual intimacy outside it, therapy became a rare space of focused emotional attunement. My closest bond had shifted shape. I was no longer the giver. I was being witnessed, held in mind, received—without needing to perform, fix, or provide. That felt deeply unfamiliar. And in that unfamiliarity, a current began to build: not just of longing for connection, but for something embodied, something charged and visceral.

I hadn’t been on a date in months. I wasn’t looking for love. So why this?

The answer that inevitably surfaced was that it must be my therapist.

Fuck.

I felt both alarmed and repelled. I know transference well; the idea that we project unresolved feelings and needs from the past onto someone in the present. Erotic transference is a more specific form. The projected feelings take on a romantic or sexual charge. It carries the added weight of desire, power, and unmet needs for intimacy. This distinction matters. All therapists encounter transference, but erotic transference introduces deeper ethical and emotional complexity.

And yet, this didn’t feel like projection. It felt real. Vivid. Still, part of me wondered; isn’t that the point? That transference feels real because it touches something unresolved within us?

Even so, it felt pathetic. Destructive. I shouldn’t feel this way about my therapist. It would be asking him to reciprocate something unethical. Something delusional. He’s half a world away. We meet via video call. It was ridiculous to project this onto him. He’d never, not once, even hinted that anything like this had crossed his mind.

My emotions spiralled into shame and self-loathing. Of course, I thought bitterly. Find the most unavailable man to fall for. All the work I’ve done on self-worth and esteem? Pointless. I was just repeating the same old pattern.

The shame hit like a wave and dragged me under. But as I flailed, another voice emerged.

Why shame? What made these feelings feel so wrong, so unbearable?

It wasn’t the first time shame had shown up like this. It had a familiar shape. A familiar story. But this time, I didn’t want to run. I wanted to understand.

Even as the shame swelled, a quieter voice surfaced. The part of me that had started to internalise the unconditional regard I’d received in therapy. It reminded me: your feelings are valid. It pulled me, reluctantly, toward understanding rather than rejection.

I paused and drew in a shaky breath. The words didn’t erase the discomfort, but they gave me a foothold. I tried to name the story I was telling myself. Was I broken? Dangerous? Determined to ruin the relationship? As I questioned the story, the shame loosened just enough for me to sit with it. Your feelings are valid, I told myself. Stop acting as if you’ve come on to him. All you’re doing, all you need to do, is recognise your feelings. I knew then: I had to bring this to therapy.

Two voices argued. One said that bringing this up meant asking for something unethical, a violation of boundaries. The calmer voice pointed out that naming it was about seeking understanding, not reciprocation. That was what I wanted, wasn’t it? To understand. Not to run. Telling him felt both necessary and impossible. Our relationship had been a constant for years. He’d seen me at my most vulnerable. I trusted him more than anyone. But that trust made this harder. What if I was wrong? What if this was the one thing that broke our shared understanding? What if it shattered the sense that I was safe?

Looking back, I wonder if I’d been preparing for this all along. Maybe the emergence of erotic transference wasn’t just a complication, but a signal. A sign I was ready to confront something deeper. Perhaps the erotic wasn’t a distraction or distortion, but a gateway. A way my psyche was pushing me toward the next layer of work. In this light, the intensity of these feelings might not have been about my therapist at all, but rather about my own readiness to step into the emotional and existential work I had, until now, hesitated to face.

I chose to trust that I was safe and take the plunge, but the execution was excruciating. It took me three days to send him the hardest message of my therapeutic journey. I agonised over every word, deleting and rewriting the message so many times that my screen felt like a battlefield of my fears. What if this ruins everything? What if he reads it and thinks I’m unhinged? What if I lose him entirely?

But beneath the panic was something quieter, firmer. A voice I’d started to trust. He’s not going to reject you. He’s not going to leave. Write the message.

In it, I confessed to feeling an intense, disorienting erotic transference toward him. The feelings didn’t fit neatly into any one category. They were messy, layered, shifting. There was attraction, yes, but also fear, admiration, and something else that felt harder to name. Was it gratitude? Reverence? I couldn’t quite grasp it, but I knew it was important. Emotions, I’m realising, aren’t as simple as we want them to be. They’re tangled threads, and teasing them apart is the work of a lifetime. My words expressed the raw truth and terror I was experiencing. I was opening a door I couldn’t close, revealing a part of myself I feared would destroy everything we’d built over years of therapy. Was I ruining the relationship? Was I pushing him away and self-destructing?

The act of putting my feelings into words was, in itself, a release. Even before he responded to my message, I noticed a subtle shift. The weight of keeping this secret began to lift. But also, the emotional charge began to dissipate. It struck me how much shame thrives in secrecy, feeding off the darkness of unspoken truths. Naming the feelings dragged them into the light, making them less shadowy, less consuming. The erotic charge lost some of its intensity, as if the act of writing it had unravelled the knot of secrecy and shame entwined with desire. I wasn’t entirely at peace, but I felt a glimmer of relief. This was no longer something I had to fight alone.

Looking back, I can see how much courage it took to write that message. At the time, it felt like the most terrifying thing I could do. But now I see it as a turning point. A moment when I chose vulnerability over avoidance.

Perhaps there was something else unfolding here. Something that spoke to a deeper truth about how female desire is shaped by the roles we are expected to play. Esther Perel suggests that female erotic desire often arises from a kind of healthy narcissism, the ability to focus on oneself as a pathway to pleasure. In a culture that still mistrusts female autonomy, the idea of desiring for oneself, not for validation or connection, can feel both radical and transgressive. Women are frequently socialised into caregiving roles, expected to prioritise the needs of others before their own. In this light, erotic transference may not be just about attraction, but also about the rare experience of being fully seen, attuned to, and held in mind without expectation. If desire requires engaging in self-focus, then therapy may inadvertently create the ideal conditions for it to emerge. These conditions alone may not be sufficient; the presence of erotic transference is also shaped by what the client may lack outside of therapy. Loneliness, particularly the absence of physical and sexual intimacy, arguably primes us to view this emotionally intimate relationship through an erotic lens. Erotic transference, then, isn’t just about the therapist’s role. It’s also about the client’s unmet longing for touch, connection, and embodied intimacy. In this space, I was not the one providing care. I was the one being attended to. That shift, unnerving and exhilarating, made me question how much of female desire is shaped by relational structure rather than purely internal experience.

That choice to lean into vulnerability, though painful, marked the beginning of a profound shift in how I understood myself.

Now, I sit in front of my laptop, mid-video session, barely holding myself together. The weight of the previous days lingers. My mind races with everything I’ve yet to say. Therapy is like that. A space where the unspoken gathers, waiting for the right moment to emerge. But finding the courage to speak isn’t easy. It requires trust, not just in one’s therapist, but in oneself. And in that moment, I wasn’t sure I trusted either.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, my voice trembling. “I’m feeling so activated right now. This is... unbearable.”

His head tilted slightly as he watched me, his gaze steady but searching. He took a breath, nodding slowly. I could see him weighing his words. Oh God, he doesn’t know what to say. He’s trying to figure out how to let me down gently. He’s going to tell me I’ve crossed a line, isn’t he?

“I understand,” he finally said, his voice like an anchor pulling me back to the present. He watched as I took deep, steadying breaths, his nod encouraging me to find my equilibrium. He didn’t flinch. He met my confession with patience, gentleness, and something more. A warmth that reminded me I was safe.

“I don’t think this is about me,” he said softly. His voice was gentle, his gaze steady, not dismissive, but thoughtful, like he was holding something delicate. He shifted slightly in his chair, exhaling quietly. His brow furrowed as if carefully considering how to continue. “I think this is about your feelings for yourself,” he added, even more gently.

I didn’t know. I felt too overwhelmed. My fear distorted his words. Instead of hearing, this is about your feelings for yourself, I latched onto, this isn’t about me. My mind twisted his intent into a story of rejection. It was as though he were disowning the very feelings I had struggled to name. Invalidating them, and by extension, me. Of course, that wasn’t his intent. But in that moment, my fear of being too much drowned out his reassurance. His words offered safety. My fear created quicksand instead.

His response played on my mind for days, looping through the quiet hours. The shame I’d worked so hard to unravel returned in waves, whispering that I’d crossed a line. That I’d ruined the relationship. That I’d exposed too much. That I was broken and disgusting. I even found myself questioning his warmth, his patience. Was it genuine? Was it enough? Or had I asked too much of him?

It took time to untangle those thoughts. To consciously unravel the story of rejection I’d created. It meant sitting with the vulnerability that had triggered it, acknowledging the parts of me that still expected to be pushed away when I revealed my innermost self. I replayed the session in my mind and reminded myself of the strength of the relationship. His tone had been gentle. His words deliberate. His presence unwavering. He hadn’t disowned my feelings. He’d reframed them. He’d redirected me to a place I was afraid to look: myself.

Slowly, I began to hear his words as they were meant to be heard. This isn’t about me wasn’t a dismissal. It was an invitation. An invitation to explore the depth of my feelings without fear. To see them not as a burden, but as a reflection of my capacity for love, connection, and growth.

Could that be true? Could this overwhelming energy be less about him, and more about something awakening in me? As I sat with his words in the days that followed, I realised this wasn’t just about reframing the feelings, it was about reclaiming them. What I had named as love for him began to reveal itself as something more intimate and transformative: a reflection of the love and worth I was beginning to find in myself. And that, more than anything, felt like the most profound truth of all.

This experience raised a question for me, as a client and as a therapist. How can we engage with erotic transference in ways that honour its complexity, rather than suppressing it out of fear or discomfort? What does it mean to create a space where these dynamics are acknowledged, without collapsing boundaries or reinforcing harmful power dynamics? My experience speaks to a broader need for therapeutic spaces that allow honest engagement with desire, attachment, and transference. Erotic or otherwise, transference isn’t something to fear. It’s a gateway. It reveals the depth of our capacity to connect, to desire, to feel alive. In therapy, it becomes a mirror, not just for what we long for, but for what we’re capable of giving ourselves.

Erotic transference is something many therapists encounter, yet few discuss openly. Recent research explores how clinicians identify and conceptualise erotic transference in practice, shedding light on the complexities of managing it while maintaining ethical and emotional containment (Lans et al., 2024). In my own experience, I saw how these discussions played out in reality. The struggle between boundaries and authenticity. The tension between desire and self-exploration. My experience mirrored many of these findings, highlighting the deeply personal and relational nature of erotic transference.

Similarly, feminist critiques of sexual desire dysfunction challenge the medicalisation of female desire and emphasise the relational, contextual, and sociopolitical forces shaping women’s experiences of longing and arousal (Thomas & Gurevich, 2021). Krasnow and Maglio (2021) expand this by identifying a broad spectrum of influences on female sexual desire, from personal and relational to sociocultural and systemic. This critique isn’t just academic, it reflects something I felt in my body. The longing didn’t come from nowhere. It was shaped, layered, primed. These dynamics arguably shape erotic transference in ways that go beyond individual psychology.

Therapy offers a unique relational structure. One where the client is deeply attuned to and emotionally contained, without being required to offer care in return. This contrasts with the social conditioning that positions women as caregivers. In that contrast, desire can surface in unexpected ways. Mann (2021) describes therapy as a symbolic form of sexual intercourse, a space of deep attunement and intimacy. When the therapist holds the client in mind without needing anything back, does this create the ideal conditions for erotic transference? Could this seemingly "selfish" space allow those, especially women socialised into self-sacrificing roles, to finally connect with their erotic self?

What I went through wasn’t just about my therapist. Or even just about me. It pointed toward a deeper truth embedded in the structure of therapy. It raised critical questions about desire, about gendered expectations, and how they shape the ways we connect. I wonder how broadly this applies.

These reflections remind me that, while deeply personal, this experience may also be profoundly human. It reveals something vital at the intersection of longing, relational dynamics, and the very structure of therapy. Therapy, by its nature, creates a space where desire, attachment, and self-exploration intersect. It reflects how we relate to others, and to ourselves. Rather than offer conclusions, I offer these as invitations for reflection: How do we, as therapists and as humans, hold space for desire, attunement, and the tensions that arise in their convergence?