My client [name withheld] asks: “What is happening is that my two male clients have an emotional crush on me. They are both married and have kids and very nice wives. I work on the wives as well. And I am sure at least one of them is aware of that. So it is really messing up my business. What can I do to guard against this?”

You can't help the feeling of others. This is the pitfall of gaining emotional closeness with people. And this is well known to happen that people in need, people who feel vulnerable and in need of nurturing and assistance, will open themselves up energetically to a caregiver and look to them much as they would to a love object, with expectations, and in receiving comfort and concern will develop warm feelings. And this can be misconstrued, and coupled with sexual feelings in an unhealthy way, in the sense that it is a misdirection and an unintended consequence rather than what their hormones might tell them. It is a common occurrence and is not sinister on its face. These men are simply healthy males who are conditioned to think of affection as being attractive sexually, and this is triggering some inner stirrings. It is not thought-out and logical to them either. They are simply the victim of their own chemistry. So the way to deal with this is to set clear boundaries and to rebuff any suggestive remarks or behavior. The very safest course would be to give these individuals up as clients, and this is what therapists do if they cannot point out the client's inappropriate behavior and see the client rein things in. It is often the case that therapists will refer clients of the opposite gender to someone of the same gender to avoid such symptoms in the transference of feelings and the projection of fantasies onto the caregiver. This is simply something you can come to grips with as a sign of maturity and inner stability. It does not reflect on you, or detract from you unless you let it be so, or give in to similar impulses yourself and that would be a clear breach of ethics, and a violation of moral constraints. You are not truly doing anything wrong, you are just a warm, engaging person, and some males will over-interpret this, or misinterpret it, as the case may be. Your responsibility is to set guidelines and be quite firm about what is appropriate, and what is not.