[65F] with my partner [54M] for 6 years. During just over 2 weeks of inpatient treatment, he and his therapist developed an extremely close relationship, he sent her over $6,500, and he later got a separate phone. I don't know if this was exploitation, an emotional affair, both, or something else.
I've been with my partner for six years. We met during the heart of COVID, shortly after my husband died. He was incredibly loving, nurturing and supportive to me, and we became very close. I've stood beside him through addiction and recovery, serious mental health struggles and legal problems. Despite everything we've been through, until recently I considered him extremely solid relationship-wise.
I know some people may read his history and immediately wonder why I am still with him. The difficult parts are not the entirety of who he is. He can be extremely loving, nurturing and protective. We have six years of history, I'm still very attracted to him, and until this happened I trusted his commitment to me.
For context, he did not enter this recent treatment program because he had returned to active addiction. He had been sober for about eight months.
After a work-related injury, while coming off prescription opioids, he drank alcohol and took muscle relaxants and ended up in a serious medical crisis. I called 911 because I believed he needed emergency medical help.
He was so impaired that he could barely stand and was holding onto the wall. He was telling the responders to get out of his house. Within seconds, he briefly held onto the shirt of an EMS responder. A police officer saw that, came over toward him, and when she went to touch him he pushed her away and said, "Don't touch me." She immediately said he was under arrest.
The entire thing happened so quickly that I was standing there and didn't even see the physical contact myself. I learned the specifics afterward. An officer specifically explained to me that even touching an officer with the point of a finger can be considered an assault.
This wasn't someone trying to beat up police or EMS. He could barely stand and was ultimately diagnosed as overdosing. Despite his condition and significant injuries from the work accident, he was later tased when he couldn't get his second arm behind his back while bent over a couch.
He then spent two days in the ICU, and Poison Control was involved in his care.
I strongly believe someone in that condition should have been treated first as a person experiencing a medical and mental health crisis rather than primarily as a criminal. That's a separate legal issue, but the resulting charges are what led to his treatment being court ordered. He was not entering treatment because he had returned to active drug use.
He entered an inpatient mental health/addiction facility and was there for only a little over TWO WEEKS total.
This woman was his therapist from the beginning.
From what he has told me, they spent a tremendous amount of time together during the day. I also manage our phone plan. Because of his addiction history and past contact with drug dealers, I have periodically checked the phone records over the years to make sure he wasn't reconnecting with people associated with drugs. I cannot read the content of texts through the plan, but I can see how frequently calls and texts are exchanged.
That is how I discovered the extraordinary amount of communication between him and this therapist.
It was clearly mutual. She was calling and texting him extensively too. They apparently spent a great deal of time together during the day, and when they weren't physically together there were frequent calls and texts going back and forth.
Meanwhile, I was sometimes only speaking with him for a few minutes two or three times a week.
The facility itself was apparently extremely chaotic, hostile and unprofessional, both for patients and employees. I have already reported serious concerns about the facility to the insurance company, and there may eventually be legal action involving his treatment there. That's an entirely separate issue.
His therapist ultimately quit because of the hostile environment there.
One thing that stands out is that other employees apparently noticed how much time the two of them were spending together. He described occasions when another therapist would come into the room, yell at both of them about the amount of time they were spending together, slam the door and leave.
His therapist also began confiding extensively in him about her personal life.
My partner grew up in a very dysfunctional home. His mother struggled with addiction, and one of her partners, who was also an addict, physically abused him. He knows firsthand what it is like to be a child growing up around addiction, instability and abuse.
His therapist knew all of this because she was treating him.
She then told him that her own significant other was addicted to fentanyl and that she wanted to leave. She introduced my partner to her daughter. According to him, she told him she wanted to use cash so her significant other wouldn't know where she was going, and she asked my partner to help her financially.
My partner says he sees himself in her daughter. He feels extremely protective of this child because he knows what it is like to grow up in that environment.
He recently explained it to me by saying that if I were ever in her situation, he would hope somebody would help me.
I understand why his childhood could create a powerful rescue instinct.
What I have a much harder time understanding is the therapist's role in this.
She knew his childhood trauma. She knew his addiction history. She knew his mental health struggles. She knew that he was an inpatient because he himself needed help.
She also knew something else that I think is very relevant.
He recently received a lump-sum settlement related to his injuries. Despite me telling him not to discuss his finances with people, he told people at the facility about the settlement, including his therapist.
The settlement might sound like a lot of money to someone who has very little, but this isn't disposable money. It is supposed to help support him long-term, potentially for the rest of his life if his injuries prevent him from returning to work.
He knows managing money hasn't always been his strongest area. Originally he was going to let me help manage the settlement for that reason, but ultimately decided that he could handle it himself.
So his therapist knew that a vulnerable inpatient under her care had recently received access to a finite amount of settlement money intended to protect his future.
Then she asked him for financial help.
While he was STILL an inpatient and STILL her patient, he sent her approximately $4,000.
It was sent $1,000 at a time only because his Zelle limit was $1,000 per day. These weren't four unrelated small loans spread across months. Within roughly two weeks of meeting his therapist, he was transferring thousands of dollars to her.
She quit the facility only a couple of days before he left. Within days of her quitting, he wanted to leave too. There were also many serious problems with the facility, so I'm not saying he left solely because she was gone.
But whatever relationship had developed between them did not end when she quit.
It did not end when he left either.
The calls and texts continued, and so did the financial requests.
He has now sent her more than $6,500 altogether.
Most recently, she asked him for another $500 because she needed to get her electricity turned back on.
They have known each other for LESS THAN A MONTH total.
He absolutely cares about her. He worries about her, her daughter and what is going to happen to them, and he feels compelled to help.
He insists there was never a sexual or romantic relationship. I genuinely don't know that there was, and I don't want to claim something I cannot prove.
But I have a very difficult time reconciling his statement that she "means nothing" to him with his actions.
In less than a month, this woman and her child have become important enough to him that he has spent enormous amounts of time communicating with her, become deeply involved in her personal problems, and given her thousands of dollars from money intended to protect his own future.
Then there is the secrecy.
For years we mutually used Life360 as a family location-sharing app. It wasn't something I secretly installed on his phone.
Historically, when he was actively using and didn't want me to know where he was going, that was when he would shut Life360 off. When he wasn't doing something he wanted to hide, he generally didn't care that I knew where he was.
More recently, he started shutting his location off again.
Then I discovered that he had bought an entirely separate phone.
This wasn't replacing his regular phone. It was a second phone I didn't know about that allowed him to communicate with people without those calls and texts appearing on the phone plan I manage.
What makes that particularly difficult for me to ignore is that he never even went that far to hide communication with drug dealers.
But during this situation involving his former therapist, he bought a separate phone.
I found it.
He tells me he is tired of being tracked and wants to be able to do whatever he wants without having to answer to me.
I understand that adults deserve independence and privacy. But after six years together, and especially after everything that has happened, privacy and secrecy do not feel like the same thing to me.
There is another piece that concerns me.
When he came out of the first facility, he was extremely different toward me.
He was cold and distant, almost to the point that he didn't want me touching him. He was also deeply depressed. Despite having been sober for about eight months, he was talking about wanting to end his life with a shot of fentanyl.
This was someone who had just come out of a place that was supposed to be helping his mental health and recovery.
He is now living at a different treatment/recovery facility. This one gives him more freedom, so I'm able to see him, but he is still residing there because he needs continued help.
More recently, he has become much more loving and affectionate toward me again. He's hugging me, spending time with me and behaving much more like the man I've known for six years.
That's part of what makes this so difficult.
He attends recovery meetings and house meetings, which I absolutely support. But sometimes he'll rush out to a meeting and then I won't hear from him again for the rest of the night.
Because the situation with his former therapist has never been fully explained, because he has shut off his location, and because there is now a separate phone, my mind goes places it never used to go.
I find myself wondering whether he is actually at a meeting or whether he is seeing her.
I don't know that he is. I don't want to accuse him of something without evidence.
But I also don't want to spend my life wondering.
There is one more part of this story because I'm sure people are going to ask why I haven't simply reported the therapist.
At first, I didn't even know her first or last name. I only knew that my partner kept talking about how much he liked his therapist.
I learned her full name because it appeared on the Zelle email receipts along with her phone number.
Her name is not common. I searched it and found a therapist with that exact name working at another mental health and addiction treatment facility. That is how I figured out it was her.
At that point, I did NOT call that facility accusing her of anything.
I called firmly because I wanted to know whether my partner was somehow receiving treatment from her at this other facility and whether there could possibly be a legitimate explanation for these payments.
By then, approximately $5,000 had been sent to her within about 10 days. Importantly, approximately $4,000 of that had been sent directly to her while he was STILL her patient at the original inpatient facility.
The new facility told me that my partner was not one of their patients and that they had nothing to do with him. They said that if I had an issue involving money sent to this woman, I would have to deal with her directly. They did not confirm or deny anything else to me.
What happened next came from my partner.
He told me that his former therapist called him frantic and crying. According to him, her boss had learned about the allegations and told her that if she had taken money from one of her patients, this was extremely serious, could potentially be considered fraud, could cost her professional license, and could even result in criminal consequences.
My partner became frantic about what might happen to her and pushed me to call the facility back and essentially put the fire out by saying there had been a misunderstanding.
So I did.
One of the reasons he gave me was that if she lost her job, he would never get his money back.
But quite honestly, from my perspective, he seemed far more concerned about protecting her and her daughter than he was about my feelings or about what all of this secrecy was doing to our six-year relationship.
He had sent thousands of dollars to this woman in secret, including approximately $4,000 while she was still his therapist. I do not believe he ever expected me to find out.
My family feels very strongly that I should not pursue her professionally or personally at this point, and their concern goes beyond simply thinking she behaved unethically.
They are genuinely worried about my safety if she were to lose her job, her license or face legal consequences and came to view me as the person responsible.
They do not know her personally, and I have no evidence that she would ever physically harm me or have anyone else harm me. I want to be very clear about that.
But my family has watched this entire situation unfold. They know about the secrecy, the money, the therapist/patient boundary issues, my partner's protectiveness toward her, and how quickly this relationship developed. Based on everything they know, they don't trust the situation or know how she might react if she believed I had destroyed her career or caused serious consequences for her.
Their fear is that I could become the problem in what they view as a potentially volatile triangle. They worry that if she came to blame me for losing her livelihood or license, she could retaliate against me directly or involve someone else.
Maybe that sounds dramatic. I honestly don't know.
But their concern is serious enough that they have repeatedly told me not to make myself the target and to stay out of whatever consequences may eventually come from her choices.
And there are moments when I agree with them.
Sometimes I think the healthiest and safest thing for me may simply be to walk away from this entire situation and let the two of them deal with whatever relationship they have created.
I don't want to monitor another adult. I don't want to inspect his phone, track his location or wonder every night where he really is.
At the same time, I don't think rebuilding trust means pretending none of this happened.
I still love him. I'm still very attracted to him. We've been through an enormous amount together over six years, and until this happened I felt secure about his commitment to me.
Now I genuinely don't know what I'm looking at.
Was this an emotional affair?
Was this a vulnerable inpatient being financially and emotionally exploited by a therapist who knew his childhood history, knew about his settlement, and knew exactly how strongly he would identify with a child growing up around addiction?
Could both things be true at the same time?
Or am I missing another explanation entirely?
I'm not asking Reddit to decide that they definitely had a sexual affair. I genuinely don't know that.
What I really want to know is this:
If you were in my position, what would you need from your partner before you could even begin rebuilding trust?
Would you require complete transparency about this woman and an end to the financial and personal relationship?
For anyone familiar with mental health treatment, addiction treatment or therapist/patient ethics, what do you make of a therapist who knew an inpatient's history of childhood addiction and abuse, knew about his injury settlement, confided that her own daughter was living around a fentanyl-addicted partner, asked that patient for thousands of dollars, accepted approximately $4,000 while he was still her patient, and continued asking him for money after she quit?
And if you were me, would you report her, stay completely out of it, or simply walk away from the relationship and let the two of them deal with the consequences of whatever this is?
TL;DR: My partner of six years was court ordered into inpatient treatment after a medical crisis that resulted in criminal charges, despite having been sober for about eight months. He spent just over two weeks at a deeply troubled facility. His female therapist knew his history of growing up with an addicted mother and being abused by one of her addicted partners. She also knew he had received a finite injury settlement intended to support his future. She confided that her significant other was addicted to fentanyl, introduced him to her daughter and asked him for money so she could leave. He says he sees himself in her daughter. They spent extensive time together and called and texted frequently when apart. While he was still her inpatient, he sent her about $4,000, $1,000 per day because of his Zelle limit. She quit a couple of days before he left, but their relationship continued. He has now sent her more than $6,500, and she continues asking him for money, most recently $500 for electricity. He also started shutting off Life360 and I discovered he had purchased an entirely separate phone, something he never even did to hide communication with drug dealers. When I inadvertently brought the money situation to the attention of the facility where she apparently now works, my partner told me she called him frantic and crying because her boss said accepting money from a patient could threaten her license and potentially have legal consequences. He pushed me to call back and say there had been a misunderstanding, and I did. My family is now telling me not to pursue her because they are concerned about possible retaliation if she sees me as the person who destroys her career. He says his relationship with her was never romantic. They have known each other less than a month. I don't know whether this was exploitation, an emotional affair, both, or something else, and I don't know whether rebuilding this relationship is even possible without complete transparency and real boundaries.