COUNSELING THE SEDUCTIVE FEMALE
Can we offer help and yet remain safe?
Andre Bustanoby
January 1, 1988
She was a very attractive woman, by my estimate about thirty-five years old. (She turned out to be a well-preserved forty-five.) I introduced myself in the waiting room and told her I would be her counselor.
"I'm Colleen," she said. Then, lowering her head slightly, she looked me intently in the eye. It was one of those looks that needed no words. I got the message, even though I don't normally attract the instant attention of women.
Colleen then fluffed her hair, pulled her sweater tightly over her well-endowed figure, and looked back at me coquettishly as if to say, "Do you like what you see?" I knew at that moment that Colleen's sexuality and my reaction to it would be a primary dynamic in the counseling to follow.
If counseling were mere advice giving, her sexuality and what I thought about it would be immaterial. But the therapeutic art of counseling is far more than advice; it's a relationship between the counselor and counselee. It deals with deep emotions. It draws both parties into an intimate bond. Sometimes sexual feelings are discussed-and legitimately so, for sexuality is an important part of life, a gift of God to be under his control.
Admittedly, this kind of encounter is fraught with danger. While some naively say that truly Christian counselors should have no problem working with members of the opposite sex, experience shows that we do. Not only do we have problems handling the counselee's sexual arousal, but we may also have difficulty controlling our own sexual feelings.
As a pastor for twelve years and a counselor in clinical practice for the last fourteen, I also know that pastors in large churches may encounter someone like Colleen as often as once a month, especially if those pastors are attractive and ...
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