Counselling after being cheated on

[belagh]

I have a question?

After H cheated we had couples counselling and to be honest I found it useless. After reading a lot of threads over the years lots of us have said the same!

Now these are the professionals but the counselling just seems to be lacking but I can't work out why?
We also went for counselling again 2 years after (after he'd been for a stack load of counselling for himself which he needed... breakdowns, depression, ptsd, anger) and it still didn't help address anything.

If so many people in very vulnerable situations feel the same why isn't it being addressed?

Would be interested to hear your experiences and views

I've had counselling for depression and found it ok. However, a good friend and her "d"p went for couples counselling after he cheated and she said it made things a thousand times worse. After discovering the affair she couldn't bring herself to have sex with him, especially when it emerged he was spending a lot of webcam porn sites and the like.
The gist of the counsellor's advice was "well you're not giving him any so what do you expect?"

Some things just can't be counselled away. You're talking about two individual human beings with their own emotions & personalities that don't necessarily respond to logic and reasoning. That's a lot of variables and I don't think it's particularly that counselling is 'lacking' if a couple end up still having the same problems that they started with.

Put it this way, when your eyes originally met across the metaphorical crowded room, did you need a counsellor to tell you how you felt? And if there hadn't been any attraction in the first place, would sessions with a counsellor have made that person more attractive?

People with a 'stack load' of personal problems and who go around cheating don't tend to make good partners. Simple as that.

Some people who have problems do implode but the couples counselling just seemed to never address anything

I would never go for couples counselling again. I would just dump.

I think I have had some good individual counselling over the years, though. Not always - but sometimes.

You are reliant on people wanting to change and to work hard on making the changes. If the person who cheated doesn't want to address their issues it won't work. You also need to do research about the therapist and their specialities.

I found counselling for myself after H's affair helped most. I was a mess. She gave me space to clear my head, polish my self-esteem a bit and basically emotionally gird my loins. We didn't have couples counselling until approx 6 months later and by then it did help. We barely touched on the affair - just the family and couple dynamic - and how to address the issues. It worked quite well. I wouldn't have seen much value in paying for the counsellor's time just for me to scream 'you bastard!' and for him to look sheepish.

However IMO H needs his own counselling - he has issues to do with his childhood and his father that never see the light of day just pop up occassionally like a shark's fin above the water.

TBH I am quite surprised that I found it helpful having always been a bit of a therapy-sceptic.

I agree with you. I'm extremely wary of the whole business- I researched training for a long time and decided against it as all the different schools seemed so different but definite that there's was the way.
Having said that CBT does seem to be effective for disordered thinking patterns
Were I ever looking for a counsellor I'd look for one who was very well supervised (ie she was well supported) and strong enough to hold boundaries without pushing the responsibility into me. I wouldn't want to be worrying about how she was going to respond emotionally to me.
IMO the dynamic is just too complicated in couples counselling for it to work.

I've been to couples counselling, although not for cheating. It was for abusive behaviour (yes, I know - useless but this was years and years ago and abusive H insisted we needed counselling when what I really needed was for him to just be gone). Counsellor of H's choosing, but when counsellor then told H that he was behaving in an abusive manner that needed to be addressed, H insisted counselling was worthless, then refused to go, and got much more abusive. He was using the counselling initially as another stick to beat me with - if I was more compliant, he wouldn't need to act the way he did)

Pretty useless, really. (both the counselling and ex H to be honest)

I went to counselling over a bad relationship and being involved with a lying cheat, and I really found that the counsellor didn't have the knowledge about affairs and didn't seem to be living in the real world! I've since been on forums discussing affairs and people have said their counsellor has talked them through stages of affairs and how people act, but the one I saw didn't even know what an emotional affair was. It was a waste of time for me really.