Unintended Consequences

Posted on Sat Apr 25th, 2026 @ 12:35am by Lieutenant Commander Tate Sullivan Ph.D.

954 words; about a 5 minute read

Tate had been reviewing the next day’s counseling schedule when she saw Josh’s name and felt her attention catch for just a second longer than it should have. Not dread, exactly. Not even anxiety in the usual sense. Just a familiar, unwelcome tightening somewhere in her chest. His appointment was routine on paper, another follow-up session in a long series of grief counseling meetings that had once unfolded with a painful but reliable honesty. There had been a rhythm to their work before that day, a trust she had believed was steady, and seeing his name now forced her to confront the fact that she still could not say with certainty whether that trust had survived what happened.

She had tried, more than once, to evaluate the matter with clinical distance. She told herself that discomfort alone did not mean the therapeutic relationship was broken. Surprise, embarrassment, even a misstep in session could be addressed if both counselor and client were willing to address it openly. She believed that. She had advised others of the same. Yet when it came to Josh, her objectivity felt less secure than she would have liked. Not because her ethical footing had changed, but because the memory of his expression still had the power to unsettle her.

What made it linger, perhaps, was how utterly unprepared she had been. Even now, with time between the event and the present moment, she could still remember the disbelief that followed the realization. She had spent so much time helping him untangle feelings he said he had developed for someone. She had listened as he questioned whether he was ready, whether wanting connection again somehow betrayed Anna’s memory, whether he was capable of approaching this woman with honesty instead of desperation. At no point had she understood he had meant her. The memory still left her feeling wrong-footed.

With that thought still pressing at her, Tate finally sat down at her desk, drew a slow breath, and activated her personal log. For a moment she only looked at the recorder, collecting herself before speaking. Then, with the image of that session still sharper than she wanted it to be, she began.

“I am recording this because I do not want that session to become simplified in memory, reduced to a neat ethical problem with a neat ethical answer. It was more human than that, and therefore messier.

After all this time counseling Josh through the grief that followed Anna’s death, he asked me out.

Even now, saying the words plainly, I can hardly believe them. I had been so certain when he spoke about developing feelings for someone, he meant a woman elsewhere on the ship, or perhaps someone he had only recently come to know. He had asked thoughtful questions—about readiness, guilt, timing, vulnerability, and how to approach her without making his grief her burden. I thought I was helping him prepare for a difficult but healthy step forward. I did not understand I was the person he was trying to approach.

I was completely caught off guard. That is the truth of it, and I know my first response reflected that surprise more than I would have liked. I explained immediately I was not comfortable ending our therapeutic relationship then and there simply so I could go out with him. Ethically, I could not do that. I still believe that absolutely. But believing I was right does not mean I think I was as articulate as I should have been in those first few moments.

That is the part I continue to revisit. There was a flash of hurt and anger in his face when I answered him, something cold, quick, and unmistakable. I still cannot say with certainty whether it came from my wording, or from disappointment and embarrassment, or from the sheer vulnerability of having asked and been refused. Most likely it was some combination of all three. I wish I had found better language immediately—language that made the boundary clear without sounding abrupt, language that acknowledged his courage without giving any false hope, language that protected him as a client while also honoring the humanity of the moment.

As the session went on, I think I found firmer footing. I tried to explain more carefully why pursuing anything personal with him would be a disservice to him. I know things about him because he told them to me in therapy, under conditions meant to keep him safe. I know where he is uncertain, where he is lonely, where he is still grieving, what fears he carries about being left, and what hopes he hardly knows how to say aloud. To use that knowledge to further a personal relationship would not be fair to him. It would mean turning the trust of therapy into something else, and whatever feelings he had, he deserved better than that.

By the end of the session, I believed he understood. He seemed calmer. He seemed to grasp that my refusal was not a rejection of his worth, nor a dismissal of what it cost him to ask. That is what gives me hope now. I do have hope, but I am not certain. I still do not know whether the therapeutic relationship was fully salvaged in that room, or whether we merely steadied it enough to avoid immediate collapse.

What remains hardest to sit with is not the ethical decision itself. That part is clear. It is the memory of witnessing that first flash of coldness and hurt, understandable as it was, and knowing that for at least one painful moment, I had become part of the distress I was supposed to help him navigate.”

 

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