has RELATE or similar worked for anyone?........

[petitmaman]

Did you go to work through a particular issue or just general stuff? did your dh come with you?
I ask because I don't know what to do about our relationship anymore. It is not anything specific but I just don't feel as though I love him anymore. Have tried relate before but think it was the wrong counsellor and dh did not come.
Am worried that if I do not go in with specific ideas of things I want to happen or change then it won't help. Also dh says he will come if it will help but he is not that open to it. what is everyone elses ideas/experiences? TIA

Have just 4 months worth of Relate counselling. Can't rate them highly enough but a lot depends on the counsellor and also the people having the counselling, you have to be honest and open.

DH and I were in meltdown with our relationship, it was like a pressure cooker with the stresses of family and business. It culminated in DH having an affair (he actually left me for OW for 6 weeks).

Our therapist was very good and called a spade a spade IYSWIM. She did not let him (or me) get away with anything. She made us really look into ourselves and our past to see why we were both behaving badly.

We had one individual session each and the rest has been together. I doubt if we would be together now if it wasn't for Relate. The therapist saw us quickly and jumped the queue for us as we were in such a crisis situation as normally there would have been a waiting list. She said on our final session she still doesn't know why she did that - what it was about us that made her do it as obviously she sees many couples like us.

Good luck. You will both have to be really honest and if you don't like the therapist, try another.

i think it is fine to be general. it is the counsellor's job to get to the specifics. if you knew what the problem was, you would be half way to solving it already.

agree you need to find the right one, who you like, respect, feel is sympathetic to you, 'gets' you, has the right approach which you respond to.

its a very individual thing.

FWIW, our therapist says she wishes she could see couples before one of them has an affair as affairs are so destructive. It is good that you are recognising that you may have a problem and that you and your DH are willing to go down this road before the relationship deteriorates to the point of an affair on either side.

It didn't work for me and xp as he was abusive and needed to sort out his own issues. But having said that I am glad we went as at least we tried and it did get him thinking about his own anger problems. I still see the counsellor every few weeks just to off-load (me and xp split at the start of this year).

Hmm, we tried but I don't think we had the right counsellor.

For us, no it didn't work - we went a few times, and my eventually said he would rather leave me and the kids then go back...

I went for counselling on my own re. what to do with my marriage. I always came out feeling crap and no further on- I have talked to so many people over the years and said nothing different to the cousnellor.

It might help, but it depends how much thinking you have done on your own and how self-aware you are already.

i think it can work if you both go. it worked for me - we went about 15years ago. we are still together now.

We started at Relate and saw quite a few councellors till we met one we both liked. We saw her intermittently over about 5 years, and she helped us enormously. There were times when we were working and times when we were flat broke. It is really worth a try if you either want to stay, or if you want to leave, and just not have the same crap all over again.

We had to wait 8 weeks for an appointment - very difficult when your marriage is in real difficulty.

Neither of us found joint counselling helpful & we saw 2 different counsellors. We sorted out our differences - by separating.