I am not immune to the chaos.

He nodded and left. But that night, I couldn't sleep. I had imagined what his hands would feel like. I had rehearsed a scenario where I ran into him at a coffee shop, "off the clock." I didn't act on it. I transferred him to a male colleague the next week. But the fact that I had to fight the urge? That scared me.

A therapy room is an artificial womb. The lights are low. The chairs are soft. People cry, laugh, and reveal their softest underbellies. For fifty minutes, I am the most listened-to person in their lives. I am the wise aunt, the firm father, the forgiving lover all rolled into one.

And that, dear client, is the only marriage advice that has ever saved anyone.

For marriage counselors specifically, the rate of emotional boundary crossings is higher, because our entire job is to talk about intimacy. We sit in the splash zone of other people's passion and pain.