re: Has marriage counseling ever worked?

Going to marriage counseling was one of the best things I have ever done. It never felt biased toward either partner. A word of warning, there are some crappy ones out there; we went to 3 of them before we actually found someone who gave a shite.

The classic counseling scene from the movie Annie Hall - humorous. Effectively sums up the difference between men and women.

LINK

Your counselor will tell you to accept your spouse’s desire to test boundaries. You’ll be eating TV dinners on Saturday night while Jody is showing her a good time.

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We all have things to work on, even if we think everything is great.

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This is total bullsh!t.

Apparently nobody has ever seen Old School

I have known 3 couples to go through it. Two of the marriages ended in divorce and the other is still going. I think it depends on the couple and the counselor. My friend in one of the marriages that ended in divorce I honestly think they both checked out well before they went to see a marriage counselor and it was a Hail Mary. I think timing also has alot to do with it. The couple I know that stayed married were still willing to fight for their marriage and it helped them.

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Is it a waste of time? Is it slanted to make the man look like an a-hole?

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Wife and I went to some counseling sessions very early in our marriage. I think my wife had some very unrealistic expectations as to what marriage was going to be, and my job had me working 6-7 days a week, so I wasn’t handling things very well either. I got sent away on a remote job on very short notice. Like Friday I was told to be in Dallas on Monday short. This was horrible for us, we weren’t in a good place and me leaving for 7 months damn near broke us.

I was very apprehensive about it because I thought this would be exactly like the op statement, hate on Prez for being a man and such.

Wasn’t that way at all. Wife was very open and sharing, expecting the girls were going to gang up. Therapist wasn’t having it. Really challenged her on her behaviors and how she handled conflict.

And she was fair to me. I wasn’t blameless in our problems, I didn’t handle things particularly well at the time. So I got challenged as well.

I’ll say if you go to a therapist and they side with one spouse, you need to find a new therapist. Relationships are two way streets, and any good therapist should know this. Sometimes you just need a non-biased third party.

If you have trust, friendship, and want to be married to one another

Authentic

No need

I have little faith in counseling but especially if these foundations are not in place.

Final nail in the coffin

Yes! We went through a rough patch going on several years ago and saw a cool guy who was so good at cutting through the bullshite and getting to the root of the issues. I think we went maybe just 6-10 times before getting a good roadmap to things. Got to where we could deal with things because we knew what we and he would say already. Not to say things have been perfect since, ups and downs as we’re still just people working through things, but much better overall.