Relate - has anyone been, how did it help?

[shreddies]

I've just been looking at the Relate website wondering how you pick a counsellor to go and see. I really want to go as I think DP and I need to be really honest with each other about what we want and our way forward,(you may have seen my other thread on not loving DP anymore) but it is hard to do that in snatched conversations at home.

So, has anyone been? Do you have to wait a long time for appointments? What did it do for you?

Thanks

I did, with my exP. I can´t remember if it was specifically Relate but it was along those lines. From memory I just called up and booked an appt and we got assigned a counsellor. I think we went for a few months. My exP actually, to both of our surprise, found it really easy to talk to the counsellor and was very open whereas I, to both of our surprise, found it difficult and uncomfortable. We didn´t keep it up and we broke up several months later after 6.5yrs together.

I think it could have been a really helpful thing IF we had both been more open to the probing questions. For example the counsellor often wanted to talk about our parents and our upbringings and neither of us felt comfortable talking about that. We have happy and stable relationships with our parents and both felt like we had happy and stable childhoods and that we didn´t need to analyze that in order to figure out where we were going wrong. But in hindsight of course we were wrong and should have trusted the counsellor to lead us in the right direction.

I think it was pretty doomed TBH which is why the counselling didn´t work for us but I would not hesitate to talk to someone in the future if dh and I ever thought we needed it. I would go in with a completely different attitude though.

HTH

We found a local counsellor via an internet search.

We applied to go to Relate last November - still no appointment to this day

After chasing a couple of times in December, getting fobbed off that they were very busy over Christmas, and our situation getting out of control, we just chose a private relationship counsellor in the end after looking through some web sites and online recommendations.

It really did help in a lot of ways. She made us take the time to stop and talk. She asked the questions we were too scared to ask ourselves. She made us focus.

I'd say it's definitely worth a try as long as you're both open to it and willing to be honest with each other (it can hurt hearing some things out loud, so you both need to be prepared for that).