Certain relationships have a built-in expiration1 date -- or at least, they should. After all, the point of having a therapist, a teacher, a guru, a mentor2, is to grow - and that very evolution will eventually mean that the relationship comes to close. In the best cases, that intense bond we feel with someone who has helped us tremendously can morph and become something else -- something more equal -- perhaps even a friendship. For that to happen, though, we have to become willing to lose the dynamic of a relationship that has been, in effect, one-sided. We have been helped. Someone has done the helping3. And now perhaps we can discover just how far we've come.
