# worried about seeing a counselor who doesn't understand our needs



## decent01

My wife and I are consummate communicators. We understand our problems perfectly, we are totally honest and open, completely trust each other 100%. 

The problem we're having is that she no longer feeling attracted to me, and this is making her want to get divorced. It's been an intermittent problem for 5 years, but she's been feeling really bad about it lately.

I'm not looking for advice about that. I'm worried that if we go to a counselor, they will try to help us with things that we don't need help with, when all we really want is the perspective of someone who has hopefully seen this same problem many times before, and can give us some data about how common the problem is, what the usual ways of dealing with it are, and what the usual outcomes for each way of dealing with it are.

Generally speaking, counselors help people communicate. We don't need help with that. How can I find a counselor who will understand our needs?


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## mablenc

Actually counselors help you identify the main issues, understand them and work through them.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## jay1365

I hear where you are coming from. When my wife suggested counseling because of our non-existent sex life, I said "no", because nobody can talk someone into wanting someone. And that's not exactly the kind of "duty affection" I was looking for. Make sense? It's great that you guys are so honest with each other. Refreshing actually. Good luck.


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## Karenwalker

I've been in a LOT of counseling in my life. I think you are trying to intellectualize this too much. 
People go into individual or family or marriage counseling with a "presenting problem", which is usually the tip of the ice berg.
Sometimes in relationships people have conflict but they don't want to address that so they say "let's meet over there in money or sex or attraction" because that is more comfortable for them.
I say let go, find yourself a great counselor, interview a few and just go with it. Don't try to be so controlling.


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## Keenwa

This reminds me of a comment someone made to me when they went to a naturopath, he put her on a detox diet which made her "worse, and didn't fix the problem"… she stopped the diet and went on anti-depressants instead. 

True, sometimes things get worse to get better, sometimes we think we have a problem with our skin but really it's a problem with our liver, or our hormones or something else, but we only see the symptom and not the cause. 

So if there is no attraction, there is something else at play, on her side, on yours on both more than likely. So walking away when a counsellor wants to delve into things "you don't have problems with" would be acting out of fear. If you truly don't have a problem with XY or Z then you shouldn't mind talking about it. 

I too thought I had great communication with my H… but turns out it was all intellectual and very rarely came down to feelings and needs. Actually it never did. And so the marriage broke down, the attraction disappeared, etc. 

Give it a shot, what have you got to lose?


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