Does Marriage Counselling work?

[CanItEverWorkk]

Dh and I have been married for 15years. The last two have been gruelling with the children and our relationship has definitely suffered.

After many heart to hearts, we both have agreed to do marriage counselling. It's something both of us have independently brought up over time but we feel now is crunch time.

We just find we argue about the same old crap, we both try to sort it out. It works for a time and then we are back to square one. We aren't at hideous toxic levels yet but we have both discussed how we won't last if we let this go on for much longer. We both love each other but both appreciate how delicate that can be. We know a marriage takes work.

I'm feeling pretty heartbroken to be honest. Has anyone successfully had marriage counselling? I'm hoping that is doing it before we reach a complete break down will be a positive factor.
I don't want to lose him. He has been my rock for a long time.

Thanks

Sorry just realised I should've posted in relationships. Ah well

You can report and have it moved to relationships.

I don’t have any advice as never had any kind of counselling.

I’m a therapist and do a lot of relationship therapy.

I’ve seen it be remarkably effective for some couples - sometimes learning how to communicate better or breaking the back of a long-simmering resentment (for example) can be completely transformative. I’m often surprised by how poor the relationship communication skills are of couples who are very high functioning in every other area of life, so any improvement there can be really impactful.

If any of the participants can’t shelve their need to ‘win’, or aren’t prepared to give up any ground, then in my experience it’s very hard to make the work a success.

My husband and I had marriage counselling when going through IVF and weren't understanding eachothers feelings properly or communicating well and just both ending up hurt and lonely all the time with the odd blow out row in-between lots of withdrawing frome eachother. Like you we weren't near splitting up but we wanted to make sure we didn't get to that point and leave it too late so we went.

It saved our marriage as it taught us to really understand eachother and how to communicate effectively in a way that made us feel seen and understood. That was three years ago and we've never been happier than we are now. Now I don't even have to explain why I feel the way I do about something he just knows. He truly understands me and it's wonderful.

My view is that if you bother go in wanting it to work and really working hard on the homework it will be transformative. If either party isn't totally invested it's a waste of time.

We did, had 6 face to face sessions. It helped us communicate better and argue less.

I would definitely do it again but ours now only does over zoom which I don't like the idea of as much.

Oliver James wrote an article in the Guardian many years ago about the model of counselling used by Relate and others.

He pointed out that it didnt include any 'Diagnosis' which given that my ex then proceeded to wreck her divorce settlement and beat her subsequent partner in the street clearly rendered the 30 odd sessions we had with Relate a complete waste of time and money.

Had we had individual diagnostic interviews the outcome might have been different - ie divorce now dont waste your time and money