The OW in my situation claimed she was a trained therapist. (This was after she asked him out on a date and he told her was "married but having problems.")
She used this as a way to get him to take her out to lunch so she could discuss what services she could offer. Since she was being so "nice" she offered help him and be his life coach for free and then later they went out to dinner and her place. When the therapist angle got boring, she started talking about the other things she knows like reiki, etc and offered those services for free too. Apparently, this woman bounces from one hobby to the next and thinks that one or two classes in something makes her an expert. Plus, I think she believes that pimping out these supposed "services" makes her attractive and she uses them as a bait.
It wasn't until late DDay and over the course of the next few days that he really started to put things together (and I did some research) that we discovered that she isn't a licensed therapist.
About a month before she paid for an online course to be a life coach and they gave her a certificate which she showed my H. But being a life coach doesn't give make a person qualified do what she was offering - giving marital advice to a troubled, addictive personality. And unfortunately there are no laws in place that require someone to be licensed or have specific training to say they are a life coach.
I honestly don't believe that my husband understood at first that a life coach isn't a actual "therapist" and that he had been duped.
I believe that the OW had it built up in her mind that she wanted my H and saw his marriage as an obstacle to getting what she wanted. It seems she took her own sales pitch to heart. On her website she basically states that her goal is to help her clients achieve their dreams and encourages them to do what it takes to get them so you will be happy. Apparently, there is no need to actually pick goals that are healthy or constructive nor is there any concern over whom you may hurt in the process of pursuing these goals.
Her supposed therapy basically consisted her telling my H over and over again that he needed to leave his wife (and given the fact that she is a therapist it must be true!) and that she would help him by letting him stay with her. The rest of the time they basically acted as though they were on dates.
Of course, once she got him into her home, the manipulations only escalated to a whole other level. Basically, she knew what buttons to push and minimized what his actions would do to his family or she changed the subject. She did everything she could to project this image of her being a therapist that he could trust and that she knew better than he.
Every time he hedged on something she would say that oh, no they wouldn't cross this particular boundary so it was okay but then the things that she said wouldn't occur, did happen.
At one point he said that she even admitted that she knew he was vulnerable and she feared she was taking advantage.
There was also a point where she said something and she said that probably shouldn't have said it because it was based on her her own feelings and she wasn't being objective. (As if her motivations weren't already clear by that point!)
My H and I went through Danger Sign check list at the Therapy Exploitation site at:
http://www.therapyabuse.org/t2-unsafe-psychotherapy.htm
and checked off almost all of them and the few he didn't were basically because they didn't apply in his situation.
[This message edited by sable at 7:14 AM, September 8th (Sunday)]