Anyone been to relationship couselling - did it help? I need some hope!!!

[Deadsouls]

Has anyone been to relationship couselling with DH? And was it beneficial?

Mine and DH's relationship is at breaking point - well it has been for a while now but you know how some days/weeks things get better and you think 'phew..everythings really alright'...but all you've done is sweep the problems under the carpet? Well that's what our relationship is like...

It's got so bad now that I just don't know if I want to carry on. Our only hope is counselling I think. WE bicker all the time about stupid things and have massive arguments...I am so worried about the effect on our children especially our DS who is 4.5. It doesn't feel like a loving, mature, mutually respectful relationship which is what I would believe a relationship could be and should be. Part of me just thinks that we just aren't meant to be together and we just don't bring out the best in each other and that we should just split up.

It feels desperatly sad as I came myself from a broken home and I really had a dream of a family together and my own children growing up in a stable and secure home. But I just feel like I can't expose the children anymore to the arguments. However much the ideal is to not argue in front of them, the arguments do spill over to my shame. I also don't know if I want to be with DH anymore either. Since having our first child things deteriorated, and of course it is not, emphatically not, the children's fault (we have 2), somehow the stresses of having children in has made relations much worse.

We also don't sleep in the same room at the moment, which I don't mind that much as I don't feel any sexual feelings, but i don't really feel any feelings like that since the birth of my children, I seemt o have lost interest in sex altogether, which obviously he finds difficult.

When I think about splitting up though, it seems so huge not to mention impossible financially....and having to tell family....I don't know so confused....can we make it back from the brink? I just don;t know....can anyone help me with any identification or experience of their own that will give me hope that we could work things out? Sorry this turned out to be long

I didn't want to leave you unanswered ...

We went to couples counselling October- December .. My H was nicer to me during/after it but ommitted the fact that he was having the affair that I suspected him of having so it was really just a huge waste of time for the two of us plus the counsellor

I am now going by myself though so I am hoping that some good will come of that :)

If you both want to make it work and can be honest then I think it would be worthwhile x

I kind of guessed by your screen name! Sorry to hear you had a bad time, did you split up? Thanks for the encouragement though....maybe it is the best course rather than just splitting up.

Based on personal experience I have mixed feelings about relationship counselling. My DH and I had a few very unproductive sessions in the summer, but we weren't ready to deal with the things that we'd swept under the carpet. For him it made it worse and sent him into a downward spiral, for me it made me took a long hard look at myself and, working on the principle of 'you can only change yourself' I went in for individual counselling.

I have had about three months now and it really helped me get to grips with my side of where things went wrong between us. My DH and I basically get on very well, are very suited, but little things pushed us off course until the distance between us became so huge and it nearly broke us up.

DH is now finally in individual counselling also (with an affair and an almost separation in the meantime). I feel I've done the work I need to do, and now he's doing the stuff he needs to do. If at the end of it we think we'll benefit from relationship counselling we'll go, but it might not be necessary as we may now have the individual skills to deal with it.

So my advice would be... maybe each of you take some time in counselling on your own so you can get your heads straight... before taking it to a relationship counsellor.

Relationship counselling is not designed to save relationships, but to get issues out in the open in a safe environment, and see if these are resolvable or not. Sometimes they are, and sometimes they are not, and then the counselling can ease the split.

I came myself from a broken home and I really had a dream of a family together and my own children growing up in a stable and secure home.

Please don't let your experience make you hang on to a relationship that is inadequate, if that's something that is at play here.

my post may not be exactly what you are looking for because we never went to counselling BUT we were on the brink, over and over again. we constantly took each other for granted. there was no specific light bulb moment, i guess we just got fed up arguing all the time. without a doubt if you and your dp are not being intimate then there will be a gap between - perhaps a wide gulf. i hear you about the sex drive, youre probably shattered looking after your kids. but if at all possible kick start this area, even if its just holding hands. find a way to start being physical with each other, even at just a very basic level - simply as a starting point

Thanks all....I suppose a part of me wants to hear that everything will be alright but maybe we just won't be able to work it out. It doesn't feel like it at the moment, no idea how to go about seperating though...bloody hell the it just seems so huge

foreverandever - so what happened with you and DH in the end...did you split up?

We separated when I found evidence that the affair he denied having (and that he made me out to be a paranoid idiot for even suggesting) was a reality. I asked him to leave and we will be getting divorced.

I found it very helpful, actually, although we had to do a heap of extra talking afterwards, and still are.

In the first session he got very upset and admitted almost everything I had complained about to be true, although I had got nowhere on my own with him for years on these issues.

After the third session he admitted the big thing, the internet sex he had been having for 5 years, and which he had been denying (he tried hard to keep it out, though).

We went for 9 weeks.

I was stunned that a man who could scoff so much at any kind of therapy or counselling- my h- could respond so well to it and get so much from it. It did help that they guy was an older male relate counsellor, which my h said was way preferably for him to a younger person, or a woman. And it definitely made him feel less able to bullshit, in my view.

My brother and his Mrs have just been. She was not keen at all, but they both appear to have taken positive things from the first session. There are 3 more sessions - an individual one each, and then a final joint one again. As fiventhree says, I think it is harder for people to bullshit and bluster when there is a third party present.

My h just rolled over, and said, to my list of complaints, that he was a shit husband and not much better father!!

Didnt agree even one thing previously, there was always a reason and he was right about nearly everything.

Just couldnt believe it.

Oh, and then he said after 3 or 4 that it was the best money he had ever spent!

fiventhree ohh that sounds hopeful...feeling a little better, thanks for posts all. I think we have to at least try...

we are happier than ever now, i think both of us have grown up! i no longer think the worst of him, i wait to see why what where. and he really tries to make me happy, knows what i like, takes me out. of course we bicker a bit. but we resolve it quickly. so far so good. we have come out the other end. if you both want the relationship to work then anything can work

what about your dp?