Relationship Counselling

[CallMeBetty]

Hi Ladies,
I'm a newbie to this site so be gentle with me!

DH and I are wondering if relationship counselling would help us and I was wondering if anyone could give some advice or share their experiences.

First of all I should say that we have been married for 18 months (together 5 yrs) and are very much in love but we have some issues and I worry that if they continue then we won't go the distance. DH is open to the idea but will be concerned about cost. Our issues are mainly that he is step dad to my 6 yr old who's father and his partner have caused us an awful lot of problems over the last 4 years since he decided he wanted regular contact, DH has been incredibly supportive but it's hard on him. We are really not good at communicating with one another or sharing finances, we have no real intimacy and no time together. We are looking at hiring a regular babysitter through an agency in the new year so that we can have 'dates' again which will help but I think we need to work through this stuff if we are ever going to make it work.

I've contacted relate and they have sent me a form through with their costs which are really expensive, I wondered if they were worth it or if there is another organisation we should go through? Is it only couples who are on the brink of divorce that go to counselling and I'm being a drama queen or is it sensible to pre-empt this before it gets worse?

thanks for any replies x

Eminently sensible! And I wish more were like you and didn't wait until things were so dire that it is nigh impossible to save the relationship.

You can ask for reduced fees commensurate with your income. If your local relate don't offer that, try womens orgs who offer fees on a sliding scale. Private therapists also often offer reduced fees - do your research (re look out local private therapists, what they do/offer) and approach them about fees. They won't be offended to be asked.

Thank you, nice to know that I'm not overreacting. Feel a bit of a fraud posting in here when I began reading what others are going/have gone through. I just don't want us to end up there.

Not a fraud!

Relate is kind of pricy but reputable (and you don't have to go every week. Also they do reduced fees if your household income is below a certain amount). I think you have to see counselling as an investment in your future. You don't want things to get worse and it sounds like there is the potential for that in your situation - you are being sensible to do something about it now.

Thank you. I honestly don't think that we would need months and months of therapy. We are both pretty well aware of what our problems are I think we just both lack the necessary communication skills and need to be a bit braver about talking to each other.

My DH and I went to Relate for a couple of months (married less than 2 years) because of a particular communication issue that kept coming up. We weren't on the brink of splitting up, but were arguing a lot.

I thought it was really useful, as we resolved the issue (but need to keep working at it - we do backslide sometimes) and it made us realise how good our relationship was.

Like bridging said, we saw it as an investment in our future.