Re:Ethical Issue/Dual Relationship

Thank you for your supportive and candid response to my original post. Posting ananymously is pretty wimpy, but a good step in the right direction. I actually feel better for having written it all down. Thanks for the reality check about how horrible this was. My own superego has been working overtime manufacturing shame and blame. I'd like to stop beating myself up.

This continues to be a learning experience for me. I agree that an admission that I did not hold the appropriate frame would help clarify the situation. It's not like she doesn't know I screwed up. Part of me wants to ask her if she's contemplating legal action. Part of me feels I shouldn't go there with her. I find myself thinking of ways to placate her. I'm beginning to see I need to get myself some therapy around this!

You are right in noting that if I pull back now, she may feel more injured by the rejection/abandonment than by the boundary violation. My anxiety is that unresolved negative transference feeling may prompt her to act vengefully. I will become, for her, her abandoning and neglectful parents. I can only hope that her rational and functioning adult self will prevail. If not, that's why I pay those insurance premiums.

Again, thanks for taking the time to respond.

Replies:

Re:Ethical Issue/Dual Relationship, by T2H, 08/21/02 Re:Ethical Issue/Dual Relationship, by paradox, 08/22/02 for paradox and myself, by neeru, 10/16/02

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