Any positive experiences of couples counselling please?

[BumboBaggins]

As the title suggests. Anyone had a positive experience / positive outcome of couples counselling? About to embark on it... Thank you x

Yup. We’re doing it now. It’s amazing but really really hard/exhausting. We did it years ago and it was shit.
I would say:

• both me and DP are (in our own different ways) committed to each other but also realistic that separation could be an outcome
• I tried hard to find a good counsellor that I thought we’d both like. It took a lot of time to find someone and we had to wait for them to have a time slot. I wanted someone very experienced as our issues are complex. The person we found is brilliant.
• it’s expensive, slow progress and emotionally draining (we’ve not had a single session where one or both of us isn’t in tears)
• I think it works partly because we are both open to the fact that our relationship is breaking down because of US not him or me. The counsellor simply doesn’t let us criticise or slag each other off and that helps.

Long post... it’s working for us I think for two reasons:

1. our counsellor is really good/experienced (he’s not a specialist couples counsellor)
2. we both still love each other and accept individual responsibility for the failings in our relationship.

Good luck.

My wife and I did counselling around year 7 of our marriage. Very helpful, difficult, stressful, embarrassing in a good way, but constructive. We have now been married for 25 years and still together.

Thank you both. Really hoping we can get something good out of it.

DP and I have tried a couple of different counsellors over the years, only one or two sessions each and none of them had a good outcome. We have both been for individual counselling too, him more than me, which is much more helpful I think in getting to the bottom of our own issues.

I’m currently seeing his most recent counsellor with a view to coming together once I’ve grown in confidence and assertiveness.

We both very much want things to work out but have some fundamental differences so it’s a case of working out what we can change in ourselves and what we can live with in each other.

Good luck.

Thanks Raging. Also doing individual counselling which I am finding very positive so far. We too want things to work. I’m hoping that’s a decent starting point at least.