Not life-threatening or titillatingly GGG, but can your please remind me why I can't date my therapist when our professional relationship is concluded?

He makes me laugh, we have moments of odd synchronicity, crack the same jokes simultaneously. We're about the same age, share similar political views (Fuck Trump, love Bernie). We're about the same level of hotness, for a given value of hot in our mid 50s. My need for therapy was not severe, just needed a little help getting out of my own way—still carrying some resentments from my childhood. He is a straight arrow and is solidly not inappropriate in any way, and I know he would not cross the dating boundary while he's still working for me. (We joke that he's my employee, since I'm the one paying him for his services.)

We've been working together for about three months, and I feel like he's provided me with enough tools that this week could probably be our last session. So can I ask him out for coffee when we're done? Is there some sort of statue of limitations if the client wasn't too fucked up? I saw online somewhere the American Psychological Association tells its members to wait two years if you absolutely must date a former client, but I feel like we're both too old to wait two years.

Can You Give Me Some Advice?

You have my permission to ask your therapist out, CYGMSA.

Rules are made to be broken—and, hey, the rules say you can date your therapist. You just have to wait two years to do it. And whether or not your therapist wants to break this particular rule by dating you before the 24 months go by, well, that's up to him. And while there doesn't seem to be much wiggle room in Rule 10.08 ("...by creating an absolute prohibition against sexual involvements for two years post-termination and then placing the burden on the psychologist to demonstrate that the involvement is not exploitative...") the short duration of your time as his patient, the relatively small-scale issue you were working on with him (childhood resentments, not childhood sexual abuse), and the extremely short amount of time you have left on this planet all cry out for an exception.

Good luck.