Couples therapy that worked?

[Littlejonnydory]

Hi,
Been married for almost 10 years and have 2 kids, DD6 & DS4. Feel like DH and I are very distant and not really connecting anymore. We bicker and argue about stuff but never seem to resolve much.
Does anyone have experience of couples counselling that worked? Or a couples therapy retreat? I want to work on our relationship. I think he could be persuaded to do therapy together.
Thank you

Have you seen the BBC iPlayer programme called Couples Therapy? It’s really good and a great insight into how relational dynamics can play out. It works for some and not for others, as you’ll see.

Yeah we’ve watched some episodes of Couples Therapy. I guess both people have to be open to listening & feeling challenged. I think he might be apprehensive that it might just turn into me bashing him. That’s not what I want to do, I’d like us to figure out how to communicate with each other & meet each others needs better.
I’m wondering whether anyone has any experience of doing couples therapy and it working?

I wasn't going to comment but you've not had much response, so thought I would. My wife and I went to Relate after her affair, and it wasn't much use: I expected us both to be challenged, but it never happened and seemed to descend into a cozy chat. I had a phone appointment with Relate just over a year ago that was good, but very short; then went on my own again late last year; again, a bit too cozy, so I stopped after four sessions.

I'm sorry - that's not a lot of help but it does perhaps illustrate the fact that you need a therapist who's prepared to push you and challenge you.

Bumping this up cos I am looking to reconnect with my partner too.

We did have therapy that we paid for privately but I found it let than useful. We talked about what was happening then but it did not help us establish a stronger relationship. It was like first aid and a plaster for an emergency. I tried same therapist on my own but again no luck. She may have been linked to relate but we went private. Anyway unfortunately my experience was same as @Eric1964 But I am sure that it works for many others.

Hi,
thank you for replying. I had therapy for a year a couple of years ago, which I found helpful in that I learnt a lot about myself, but unhelpful in a way as it opened up a lot of stuff that I wasn’t helped to resolve. I stopped abruptly when I started having panic attacks and my therapist didn’t know what to do at all.
My husband has also had therapy.
I think I am aware enough to realise that we both communicate in different ways, have very different needs and have different attachment styles (I’m anxious and he’s avoidant). Prior to kids, nothing we went through was hard enough that it exposed our differences, but genuinely having kids was like having a bomb thrown into our relationship and I still feel like we’re picking up the pieces.
He says he doesn’t see what the problem is, but he will hold on to little annoyances and irritations and will get very snappy, grumpy and negative which will gradually wear at me until we have an argument. We always talk about it and resolve things afterwards but I am so fed up of this cycle, which I find emotionally draining and exhausting.
I want to be happy and peaceful
in my relationship.
To be honest I have considered whether I could leave him, but financially it would be really hard and it would involve a lot of upheaval for the kids, which I am not willing to put them through whilst I still think there are things we could do to work on our relationship. I genuinely think we could still be happy but I know we need help. :-(

There's a podcast that covers this territory: the Secure Love Podcast by Julie Menanno. Maybe give it a try?

Name changed as this is quite personal. But yes my husband and I went to couples therapy last year and it helped us.

We were not communicating well and had started arguing over it. I’ve also had depression in the past and had felt let down by my husband not taking it seriously/ignoring. Turns out he was just at a complete loss at what to do and had been trying to tell me that but it hadn’t been getting through.

I picked a male therapist so he didn’t feel ganged up on and went in with something specific. In our case “our communication and conflict styles are different and that driving a wedge between us”. We didn’t go in with a general “this is to fix our relationship” as we thought that was too big and I managed if we couldn’t even say what was wrong.

Importantly there where no cases of affairs or infidelity of any kind so there was no great betrayal one of us was having to work through.

I'm both a couples therapist myself AND I've been to therapy with my husband.
So I've been on both ends of the scale, which has been challenging to say the least. It's not easy being a therapist and having to admit that you need help too.

As a therapist, I have a few methods that work really well. I personally love working with the Gottman communication principles. However, when communication is only scratching the surface and there are deeper issues, I often use EFT or Stephen Karpmans Drama Triangle theory, wich really helps me get to the root of the problem.

When my husband and I did therapy, what stuck with me most was that just understanding what was happening, wasn't going to fix us. We had to be willing and committed to make very real changes, which would require a very real effort from us both. It helped us both get out of our victim mentality, where we were constantly blaming each other for the problems and passively waiting for the other to change. Therapy makes everything more circular. So to elicit certain behaviour, you need to bring the right energy to the table. Every toxic dynamic can exist only because it's a mutual invitation that has been accepted on both ends. And it takes a joint effort to step out of it.

What also helped me personally was recognising that I have a pattern of going in flight-mode. Whenever something gets hard, my mind immediately goes: I should leave him. And that this thought is not what's best for me. I can recognise it when it happens now, and still choose to stay actively engaged in working through the problem, rather than shutting down. To do that, I've made a very conscious choise that leaving my marriage just isn't an option, and that I have to make things work with the husband I've got.

If you take leaving the marriage off the table, its just not an option- how do you feel? What would a happy marriage look like? You might learn some things asking yourself those two questions. You could ask your dh the second one as well.

Brilliant post which really resonated with me, thank you