Relationship counselling made things worse for us. He just saw it as being ‘ganged up on’ when the counsellor said anything that aligned with me. I struggled when the counsellor blamed me for not reporting DV from a former partner to police. It showed a shocking lack of understanding about DV and women’s physical vulnerability at the hands of an angry man.
Unless it’s a very well recommended counsellor who has a lot of experience in the field of your particular issue, it may do more harm than good IMHO.
What worked for us to bring it back from over the brink was making a conscious decision that we both wanted to make it work, him being more communicative and me being more flexible.
We have both learned a lot from The Gottman Institute studies into the 4 Horsemen predicting divorce (criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling). Where those things are present they can predict the likelihood of divorce with great accuracy.
It’s worth reading a lot of their stuff, there are lots of articles and blogs quoting their research or you can go straight to their site to see it all in one place.
I’d also suggest reading about love languages - some people think it’s bollocks, but we found it useful as a starting point for understanding each other’s needs and why we sometimes miss the mark when we think we’re doing ok. DP is still rubbish at communicating at times and it’s the thing we argue about most often.
But even that has been a revelation - the idea that the Gottmans put forth that every couple, when they marry/get together, is choosing a particular set of unsolvable problems. You will have the same argument for the rest of your life together! The idea is to try and do it better than last time, to learn how to make it up and repair quickly and effectively so that you don’t stew about it.