I don’t think most of us ever decide that we’re going to become the therapist in our closest relationships.

It usually grows out of things that are, on the surface at least, quite admirable. Being able to listen. Being able to stay present when emotions run high. Being someone who can make sense of complexity without immediately panicking or shutting down. If you’re the kind of person who notices patterns, who can hold more than one truth at a time, who learned early on how to regulate yourself, it can start to feel almost inevitable that you’ll end up in this role.

So you listen. You reflect. You help people find words for what they’re feeling when they can’t quite get there themselves. You soften your language so it doesn’t land as criticism. You explain your needs carefully, gently, so the other person doesn’t feel overwhelmed, ashamed, or rejected. None of this begins as a problem. Much of it looks like care. A lot of it is care.

The shift happens when this becomes the main way the relationship functions.

At some point, you’re no longer simply in relationship with someone you love. You’re helping them process themselves through you. Their emotions, their confusion, their distress, their self-doubt all arrive in your space, and you become the place where those things are contained, regulated, and made bearable.

This is often talked about in the context of romantic relationships, and it certainly shows up there. One partner ends up doing most of the emotional labour, keeping conversations from spiralling, holding the shape of the relationship, carrying responsibility for repair. Over time, intimacy can start to feel loaded, because connection comes with an unspoken requirement to manage, soothe, and stabilise.

But this pattern doesn’t only live in couples.

For many people, it has much deeper roots, particularly in family relationships. You become the one who understands your parent, who cares and can explain behaviours. The one who absorbs their feelings and carries the emotional history. And because it’s family, because it’s longstanding, because love and loyalty are tangled up in it, stepping out of that role can feel almost unthinkable. When you do try, it can be received not as a boundary, but as rejection.

If you’re someone with a strong fawning response, this dynamic can feel especially familiar. Fawning teaches us to stay safe by prioritising other people’s needs, by adapting ourselves, by making sure the emotional weather stays manageable. Becoming the “therapist” in close relationships is often just fawning in a more sophisticated form. Instead of disappearing outright, you stay present by managing, understanding, and holding everything together.

There’s another layer to this that’s rarely acknowledged, and it’s often where things start to become painful in a different way. When you do the emotional work for someone else, you don’t just help them regulate or feel understood. You also, often without meaning to, end up holding a mirror up to parts of them they’re not ready or willing to see. You end up naming patterns, reflecting back behaviours, inconsistencies or unprocessed pain. Even when this is done kindly and from care, it can land as exposure rather than support.

And that’s where resentment can creep in. Instead of feeling helped, the other person feels criticised, diminished, or controlled. Because being seen in that way asks for a level of responsibility they haven’t chosen…yet. It’s often much easier to feel irritated with the person holding the mirror than to face our fears and turn toward what the mirror is showing.

For the person who fawns, this can be deeply confusing. You’re offering understanding, and yet you’re met with defensiveness, withdrawal, or blame. You may find yourself trying even harder to soften, explain, or reassure, which only deepens the role you’re already stuck in. Over time, you become associated not just with care, but with discomfort, insight, and unwanted self-awareness. That’s a lonely place to be.

This is one of the reasons why being the therapist in a relationship is so corrosive, even when it starts from love. Not only do you carry more than your share of the emotional weight, you also end up positioned as the problem when that weight becomes unbearable for the other person.

At some point, something in you starts to push back. You might feel exhausted, numb, resentful, or oddly disconnected. You might notice yourself avoiding certain conversations or pulling away from intimacy, not because you don’t care, but because your system can’t keep holding this much anymore.

Stepping out of the therapist role isn’t about withholding care or refusing connection. It’s about recognising that you can’t do someone else’s internal work for them without losing yourself and alienating the other. Insight only helps when it’s invited. Responsibility can’t be carried on someone else’s behalf.

Healthy relationships, whether with partners, parents, or anyone else we love deeply, require each person to take responsibility for their own inner world. They require room for two full people, not one person and one container.

Letting go of this role can feel frightening, especially if it’s been central to how you’ve stayed connected or safe. But it’s often the only way to find out whether the relationship can hold something more balanced, more mutual, and more alive.

And if it can’t, that tells you something important too.

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