Has anyone been through marriage guidance and it's really helped?

[Lilliput]

I am considering suggesting it to dh but there is part of me that fears it will make things worse in a way. I know of one other couple who have been through it and they have now separated.

Counselling or marriage guidance does not always result in couples staying together, and I think if you were to go into it with the hope that it would "fix" your marriage, you might be disappointed. What it does do is help you both communicate your feelings better, and discover what may be causing things not to work. Sometimes these things can be mended, but sometimes it may be better to agree to part.
It may well make things worse in the short term, as it will mean that you have to be brutally honest with yourself and each other.
Think of it as like the saying " you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs." You can't make things better without looking very closely at what is going wrong- and that might mean achknowledging your own destructive or negative behaviour and being prepared to change it.
It is surely worth a try though.

The majority of couples go when the relationship is not recoverable, when they are divorcing and when one partner has already emotionally left.

If your relationship just needs work and you genuinely want to be together then it can be a real help.

LFCEC- how do you know that? ( they go when it's too late?)

am a therapist and studies unfortunately bear this out

I'd love to hear some positive stories

Unfortunately I think this is the case, most couples I know (me and ex-H included) only go when it's on the rocks, even if you don't know it at the time. The counsellor we saw from Relate totally failed to recognise that I was being emotionally abused and my ex even managed to get the counsellor on his side!

But that's just my view; what problems are you having in your relationship and have you tried to resolve them yourselves?

It's a general feeling of frustration and feeling a bit fed up. He is a very negative person and I feel really dragged down by him. It's difficult to pinpoint really. An example this morning - I had woken up early with ds being a pain, got up soted him out then went back to bed, fell asleep for another hour which in turn made me feel a bit rubbish with headache, I should have just got up. I said I was feeling like shit because of this and he said he was ok and felt fine(he had been disturbed too). A small word of sympathy then would not have made me bite his head off about something trivial before he left for work.

I get very little emotionally or physically from him and we don't have any disposable income so I stress about money a lot.
On the plus side we can be really good friends and can have a good laugh together. I just feel quite uptight a lot of the time.

why don't you go to the therapy for yourself - sounds like you could do with some support and someone to listen to you

sorry for what you're going through

Then it sounds like you're not too far down the line and it might help. Young children do put a strain on things at the best of times but if he's a really negative person anyway and you're not, it sounds like you're not particularly well-suited temperamentally.

I think the key to it is understanding and appreciating how the other person ticks. Maybe that's where the problem lies with you and a counsellor might be able to open the lines of communication between you.

No first hand experience, but I do know a couple who used it to fix things and it appears to have worked very well.

We had an 'incident' a few months ago that prompted me and DH to go see someone. We went to a few sessions...and it didn't really work for us. She just listened and didn't give advice. We had made rules to not talk about what was said in our sessios during the week. We seemed to be doing great through the week knowing we would have our time, but then always left our sessions feeling worse then when we went in.

We decided to stop going and made our own plan. Every Sunday when DD goes to bed we sit and have our weekly talk. I talk 10 min without interuptions...he talks 10 min...then we talk together for 10 min. It never goes over 30 min unless we decide it needs to. DH is not a talker...but he loves that he gets his 10 min and he loves to know it won't go over 30 min rather than a whole night of talking!

This seems to have really worked for us. We don't nit pick through the week because we will have our time, but by the time Sunday rolls around we only talk about things that really mattered. So now our weeks are great as we don't argue about the silly stuff...

Obviously we do talk about bills, DD and what not through the week...just relationship stuff or whatever is saved for Sunday...iykwim?

I have to say it is 4 months later and we are probably happier than we were before the 'incident'...

I think that anything is worth a try. My parents have been seeing someone for years and it really works for them...so it is different for everyone but worth a try because you won't know until you do what works for you as a couple.

You might benefit from seeing a counsellor on your own. I have a friend who has been in counselling for 5 years and although she and her DH tried it togther, it is her sessions on her own that have really helped her.

You might be right about counselling myself, I've done some soul searching lately doing a psychology course.
Dh was seeeing a therapist and doing a bit of CBT for anxiety/negativity but really annoyingly he let his appointments lapse and they were NHS too so I don't know how easy it would be for him to go back.

Me and the DP went to Relate after he had an affair and they were just fantastic. Obviously the onus was on us to do the work to repair our relationship, but we both found it hugely helpful.

Even if the relationship can't be salvaged, Relate can also help you achieve a 'good' split as well.