Man Learns The Couples Therapist He'd Been Seeing With His Girlfriend For Months Was Actually Her Friend
Not only was what this woman and her friend did a major red flag, but it's also probably illegal.
Lomb | Shutterstock Couples therapy can be a relationship life-saver when it feels like things are on the rocks. One man wasn’t a huge believer in therapy, but he still decided to go when his girlfriend suggested it. Little did he know the whole thing was a ruse and the would-be therapist was actually just one of her friends.
“My … girlfriend Emma … and I have been together for six years,” he said in his post. “For most of that time, we’ve been happy — like, really happy … But over the past year, things started to feel … different. Small arguments here and there, more miscommunication and just this weird sense that we weren’t as in sync as we used to be.”
To address their relationship issues, the man's girlfriend suggested that they try couples therapy.
“Now, I’ve always been a bit skeptical about therapy unless things are really bad, but I agreed because I figured it couldn’t hurt,” he explained. “She said she found a great therapist through a friend, and we should give it a try. I wasn’t familiar with this ‘Lily,’ but Emma was excited about it, so we booked our first session.”
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Things seemed to go well at first, but he noticed some red flags. “Every time we talked about any issue, it seemed like Lily was always subtly siding with Emma,” he continued.
Slowly, the man began to feel like he was being gaslit. He said that Lily was talking Emma into believing that he was the issue in the relationship, and eventually, he started to wonder the same thing. It all came to a head when Lily suggested that they “consider a ‘break’ so I could work on myself more,” and Emma agreed. “After that session, I couldn’t hold it in anymore,” he admitted. “I blew up at Emma when we got home. I told her I didn’t trust Lily’s judgment, that it felt like she was just feeding Emma reasons to blame me for everything wrong in the relationship.”
Just when the man was starting to wonder if he was the problem, he learned an unfortunate truth.
“Last week, we went to a mutual friend’s party,” he recalled. “While there, I overheard Emma and her friend Sarah talking in the corner, giggling about something. I caught just a bit of their conversation: ‘I can’t believe you pulled it off for this long! Poor guy still thinks she’s an actual therapist!’”
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The man said he confronted Emma and Sarah, and while they tried to dance around the truth, it eventually came out. “Turns out ‘Lily’ isn’t a licensed therapist at all,” he said. “She’s one of Emma’s close friends from college, who thought it’d be ‘fun’ to help Emma ‘fix’ me by posing as a therapist … They figured that with Lily playing the part, they could guide me into becoming a ‘better boyfriend’ without me knowing.”
He confessed that he felt “betrayed” and “manipulated” by this revelation. He confronted Emma, which upset her, and now her friends are accusing him of overreacting.
As many Redditors pointed out in the comments, what the girlfriend's friend did was illegal.
Many states have statutes that protect against this kind of impersonation. For example, law firm Hussein and Webber stated that it is a felony to offer healthcare services in Florida without a license from the Department of Health.
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While all of the details here aren’t known, it sounds like Lily was not a licensed therapist and was instead posing as a healthcare professional. For that reason, this man could take legal action against her, and possibly against his girlfriend. Considering what they put him through, it would not be unreasonable to do so. At the very least, let's hope he broke up with his untrustworthy girlfriend.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
