Cost of Relate...

[hangonasec]

Just a quickie as I'm trying to achieve a million things this eve....! DH and I have decided to try Relate, just gone on our local website and am gob smacked at the cost. I absolutely know they have to cover their costs and I do understand all that, I also feel that if it helps to save our marriage it is a small price to pay. However, to go weekly would cost us around £170 per month, we just don't have that kind of money spare! They say in exceptional circumstances they can give a discount but we're not exceptional, just feeling the cost like everybody these days.... Does anybody have any good news stories about using them? I bet I sound really tight fisted, should be a small price to pay!! Thank you! x

There have been threads on here where people find Relate very helpful and others where not. Relate do use a lot of trainees who are working for free and the quality of their work will be very influenced by how good/involved their supervisor is as well as by their own apptitude for the job.

As people have often written on here - therapy costs but divorce costs a whole lot more.

You have every right to ask a therapist what their experience and qualifications are and who supervises them.

I am seriously broke and when I asked my local Relate recently, they said the lowest they can drop their fees to was £20 per weekly session. When I actually attended Relate some years ago and my then partner was working, the counsellor said the lowest she could go to without speaking to her boss was (I think) £35 per weekly session. The latter was without any evidence of income, just us saying what we felt we could pay. I expect every branch is different, though. Just email and ask. Hope that helps a bit!

My husband and I went to Relate and saw a very good (and experiencd) counsellor. I would definitely say they were worth it in our case.

we paid £20 a session and i found it a total waste of time. first session she actually told dh that he must have been pushed into cheating, and that he couldn't be an Alcholuc as he doesn't drink first thing in the morning. she then read out what we had each put on the 'confidential' form, and said she wouldn't be abke to take us on as i have mental health problems. then she said she would ask her supervisor, and in the meantime recommended us a bizzare book tbat had 'wisdom' such as saying that sometimes a woman can enjoy sex.
next one was her aski.g more about my medication, and saying she would only take us on if i promused not to get upset. then a session each of individual questions, and one together where she gossiped with dh about his job. £80. down the drain.
the turning point for us came when i realised that there was notbing relate could do, and that it would be better to work at it ourselves. someone on here i think asked me what it would take for me to leave him and i realised i wasn't at that point. what i was hoping for was a personality change in dh and that just wasn't ever going to happen.

Thanks for your comments, dh agreed to the initial appointment so I booked it and paid. When I told him he went nuts! Said he thought it was free, thought it was a charity. Said he'd rather we spent that money going out for a meal once a fortnight, away from the kids and properly talking. Am very tempted!!! However, I doubt that will resolve our long term issues. My mum reminded me that my uncle was a relationships counsellor for relate and his personal life has been a tad bit dysfunctional to put it midly. I guess it really does depend who you get.... Thanks for the feedback, lots of food for thought x

Good lord, APie, sounds like your so-called counsellor couldn't have done any worse if she'd tried. I did a little introductory correspondence course on counselling recently, as well as having been in receipt of counselling services a few times myself, and yours sounds as if she did everything precisely the opposite way to what is recommended! I hope she didn't pass training, is all I can say. Or that she actually did some before being let loose on anyone else.

Hi Hangonasec, I just booked my first Relate session yesterday. Am going on Friday - and had to pay £45 too. I think this is means tested though.

Would be interested to hear how it goes for you.

Hi Northumberlandlass, hope you get on okay. I went and cancelled ours.... dh has just begun a course of anti-depressants so I thougth I would wait and see how that goes first. In the meantime, he has agreed to spend that money going out once a fortnight somewhere cheap - but on our own with no children!! This is something we rarely do but always enjoy it when we get round to it. Hope you get on okay with your appointment. I'm not ruling out going, I just think because of the money we both have to be100% on board and I don't think he's in the right frame of mind for it at the moment. Good luck with your session, hope it helps x