If you were hoping for more of Morgan (Justine Lupe) and Sasha’s (Timothy Simons) will-they-won’t-they flirtation in season two of Nobody Wants This, you’re set to be sorely disappointed—though not for long. Morgan may have drawn a line under one messy almost-romance, but by episode three, she’s already right back into love life chaos.
It plays out like this: Joanne (Kristen Bell) throws a celebration for their mom’s birthday, to which Morgan brings a date—or, as he introduces himself, her boyfriend.
“This is Dr. Andy,” Morgan tells her bewildered family. Yes, Dr. Andy is her therapist. Or, okay, her former therapist. “We had our close-out session last week,” she later tells Noah (Adam Brody). “Really intense. He cried.”
As you might have guessed, things don’t exactly go smoothly for Morgan and Andy. But it got us wondering: can a romantic relationship between a therapist and their client ever work out?
You may have found yourself ruminating over the same question a couple of months ago when TikToker Kendra Hilty was in the midst of posting a bizarre multiple-part story detailing the time she fell in love with her psychiatrist (spoiler: that also didn’t go well). Unlike Morgan, Kendra never dated her therapist, but she did likely experience what’s known as transference.
“Transference describes how a client unconsciously redirects feelings from earlier relationships towards the therapist, including affection, admiration, anger, or erotic desire,” says Jordan Dixon, a London-based psychosexual and relationship therapist at Thrive Alive Therapy. There’s also something called ‘countertransference,’ which Dixon explains is “the therapist’s emotional responses to those projections.”
As Dixon’s work often involves explicit conversations about sex, arousal, desire, and the emotional dynamics of intimacy, she says she “routinely encounters material about attraction and erotic transference, which naturally brings an added layer of complexity and ethical responsibility beyond standard psychotherapy.” After this happened for the first time, Dixon decided to undertake further training, as well as immerse herself in research and reading, to learn more about transference and how to manage it.
So, as Nobody Wants This season two lands on Netflix, we asked Dixon about why romantic or erotic transference happens, how therapists deal with it, what happens in therapy sessions once these feelings have been expressed, and the ethics of therapist-client romantic relationships.
Why Do People Fall in Love With Their Therapists?
Dixon says a client developing romantic or sexual feelings in therapy is more common than most of us may think—in fact, it’s actually “normal and expected.” These situations “are not scandals waiting to happen,” she explains. “They are human phenomena that, when held ethically, can deepen our understanding of how we love and long to be seen.”
Why exactly does it happen, then? “Therapy invites deep empathy and focused attention and for some clients, it can be the first experience of being truly seen and understood,” says Dixon. “That can naturally evoke desire, idealization, or longing. I learnt from Sally Openshaw [a sexual and relationship psychotherapist who runs training on transference] that erotic feelings in therapy can often symbolize unmet attachment needs or desires for recognition rather than literal sexual attraction. They provide insight into how clients experience intimacy and vulnerability.”
It’s easy to see how people might develop fond or even romantic feelings for a person they see every week or so and bear their soul to. The relationship between therapists and clients is, when you think about it, very bizarre—you’re comfortable enough with them to tell them your deepest, darkest secrets, and yet you know nothing about them (which is, of course, the point). This can even be helpful for your therapy. “When handled with care, erotic material can reveal how people experience longing, connection, and boundaries,” Dixon continues.
How Do Therapists Deal With These Feelings?
Rule number one for therapists is essentially: Do not, under any circumstances, ever act on any kind of sexual or romantic feelings expressed by a client.
Beyond that, therapists are thoroughly trained on how to handle transference. When Dixon first encountered it in a therapy session, she followed the advice she now gives to others: “Don’t panic and don’t suppress it. Acknowledge it internally, bring it to your supervisor, and explore what it reveals about the client’s experience.”
“The framework I have learned emphasizes courage, self-awareness, and supervision as essential safeguards,” she adds. “It takes courage for therapists to bring these issues to supervision and courage for supervisors to meet them with clinical curiosity. When handled well, this reflection protects both therapist and client.”
When a client expresses these kinds of feelings, Dixon says it’s important to “hold that disclosure with respect and curiosity, not judgment or avoidance.” She explains that these feelings don’t automatically disrupt the work happening in therapy, but are instead a form of “relational data.” “A skilled therapist will explore what the feelings represent symbolically, rather than rejecting or personalizing them. The focus becomes: What does this longing tell us about how you love, trust, or seek connection?”
What Happens Afterwards?
Once a client discloses romantic feelings for a therapist, do sessions have to stop? Do these kinds of feelings usually go away? What happens if they don’t?
“In most cases, therapy can and should continue, provided it is managed ethically,” says Dixon, adding that the intensity of feelings often naturally subsides as they’re explored. “However, the goal isn’t necessarily to ‘get rid of’ the feelings; the task is to understand their meaning. They may evolve from infatuation into appreciation, or from longing into self-understanding.”
Even if the feelings don’t go away, Dixon explains that therapists can continue to work with clients, as long as it’s “within ethical limits and with supervision.” The aim is for the therapist to understand what the feelings mean—e.g. “the persistence of desire may point to unresolved attachment themes or to unmet needs for affirmation or intimacy”—and help the client examine that.
If either person feels like they can’t contain or manage the feelings, Dixon says the therapist may refer the client elsewhere. “The ethical responsibility is on the therapist, not the client. Romantic or erotic feelings in therapy don’t make the work unsafe; acting them out does.”
Is It Ever Okay for a Therapist to Date Their Client?
Simply: no. It’s never ethical for a therapist to date their client before, during, or even after they’ve stopped working together, “due to the enduring power imbalance and emotional vulnerability that can persist long after therapy ends,” says Dixon.
In Nobody Wants This, we witness the fallout of Morgan and Dr. Andy’s doomed relationship (which, as Joanne points out, is actually “breaking the law”). He knows all of her “trauma and baggage,” which he insidiously weaponizes against her in arguments, once telling her that her “inner child” is afraid of being in love. Now, this is obviously fiction, and isn’t necessarily a reflection of how a real-world relationship between a client and their former therapist would play out—but the idea of starting a romance with someone who already knows an abundance of very personal things about you and your life is, well, icky. It would also set the relationship off on totally uneven footing.
“The ethical task is to process the fantasy, not act upon it,” says Dixon. “The therapeutic frame is what makes exploration safe.”
What Are the Consequences of a Therapist-Client Relationship?
If you think the idea of dating your therapist might be a taboo-breaking, sexy little laugh, I beg you to think again. For the therapist, this is “one of the most serious breaches of professional ethics in therapy,” says Dixon, with severe professional consequences including “disciplinary action, loss of registration, and potentially being permanently struck off professional registers and even prosecuted.” Meanwhile, the effects for the client can be profound.
“Boundary violations erode trust and can re-traumatize those with histories of neglect or abuse,” Dixon explains. “The confusion and shame that follow often require long-term therapeutic support. These are not ‘affairs,’ they are abuses of professional power. The ethical message is clear: The same power that heals can, if misused, cause deep harm. Supervision, integrity, and containment are non-negotiable in preserving the trust that makes therapy transformative.”
