# MC made my marriage worse than before counseling



## Funkykatz

Does anyone feel that the MC they received made their marriage worse than before they went to MC.


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## EleGirl

how did the MC make your marriage worse?


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## Funkykatz

My MC tended to side with my husband on every issue rather than stay neutral. This caused way more augments with us and also left more feeling attacked by both of them and so therefore I just shut down completely.


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## PBear

I can see how MC could make things worse. But I can see even more situations where it simply drags issues out into the open where they need to be dealt with, rather than being left ignored in a closet. Only you can tell which is which. 

As far as your situation... We have no way of knowing if the MC is doing a good job or not. Maybe your husband is right on the issues and that's why the MC is agreeing with him. Maybe the MC is a sexist pig and he slams all women. All you can do is try to look at things objectively and see if there really is something there to do on your side. 

C
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## *LittleDeer*

What are the issues? 
What does your husband say? 
What do you say? 
What does the therapist say? 

There are great counselors and some bad ones. You need to find one that you are both comfortable with. However you also need one who is not afraid to talk about the important issues.

*edit, just saw your earlier posts. It looks to me that you are in an emotionally abusive relationship, and you kept taking him back and he feels justified in treating you poorly and thinks you will be waiting around. 

Find a new therapist. 
And best of luck.


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## Funkykatz

*LittleDeer* said:


> What are the issues?
> What does your husband say?
> What do you say?
> What does the therapist say?
> 
> There are great counselors and some bad ones. You need to find one that you are both comfortable with. However you also need one who is not afraid to talk about the important issues.
> 
> *edit, just saw your earlier posts. It looks to me that you are in an emotionally abusive relationship, and you kept taking him back and he feels justified in treating you poorly and thinks you will be waiting around.
> 
> Find a new therapist.
> And best of luck.


Haha you have hit it on a nail littledeer. This is very true and has been true since the beginning of the relationship. As for me I am now in IC with a great therapist who seems to want to help me understand where I am now and how I got here as well as how to move on. He speaks the truth and it is not always what I want to hear but he does it in such a way that does not make me feel as if he is judging and attacking me. He also focuses on MC but my husband refuses to go to MC with me. Oh well.


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## Dreald

Couple's Therapy:

Therapist: We're here to resolve marital difficulties. Everyone Nods. Talking ensues. And then, after 1+ meetings, the following will occur in one form or another.

Thank you for sharing. You need to understand and meet your wife's wants and needs.

Therapist Conclusion:
Man Bad, Woman Good. End Therapy. 

Therapist will remind wife that 'when' she seeks a divorce, her office can prepare and provide a summary of the therapy and conclusions on his poor behaviors.


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## sammy3

It did mine. One of my MC insisted that I "hear" my husband "pain" before I could heal from his infidelity. WTF????? what about my pain???

~sammy


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## lonelyhusband321

I don't remember where I read it when I was going through, but one of the bits of advice was NEVER go to MC.

It basically said that MCs put their financial needs ahead of the clients wellbeing.

It made sense at the time.....


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## Luvmycop

I've gone and I think it helps. The key is to find a neutral counselor. We initially had marriage counseling with his personal counselor, and I felt it was one sided. We've seen my counselor as well, and I think it helps. Seeing his counselor, gave his therapist insight on what he may not have been telling her. So in the end it helped. I recommend it. And I think you do need to hear what the other person is trying to tell you or it can not be fixed. My husband cheated. but I also created a very competitive environment. And he lost all the time. I had dwindled him down to nothing, and some 20 year old came along. And made him feel like a person again. I always recommend the Love Dare book, it made me realize what I had been doing wrong, even though he broke our vows.


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## Mr The Other

I have been to two. 

She would feel that the first one damaged the relationship and in a way she is right. I was starting to think I was the crazy one, the MC rather felt it was the other way around. After many sessions I was encouraged to "consider what I want from life and whether this marriage can provide it". However, that was a Danish MC and very different to the Anglo-Saxon model.

The second one was different. The second MC was British and took my wife's version of everything as gospel and any variance in my version being my delusions. Some of this made no sense, but may have been to be more open in time.


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## TheHappyGuy

Funkykatz said:


> My MC tended to side with my husband on every issue rather than stay neutral. This caused way more augments with us and also left more feeling attacked by both of them and so therefore I just shut down completely.


We just completed a few sessions of MC and my wife thought he would side with me and I thought he would always question my behaviour and never hers when it was she who started ruining our relationship. We both ended up feeling unhappy with the counselor.


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## jasmine9

We were on the verge of divorce when we ended the sessions with our MC. I told him I was not returning to her as she was making matters worse. Did a lot of research for our next one and so glad I did. She is helping us heal and helping him with childhood issues that have caused problems in our marriage.


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## Mr The Other

Mr The Other said:


> I have been to two.
> 
> She would feel that the first one damaged the relationship and in a way she is right. I was starting to think I was the crazy one, the MC rather felt it was the other way around. After many sessions I was encouraged to "consider what I want from life and whether this marriage can provide it". However, that was a Danish MC and very different to the Anglo-Saxon model.
> 
> The second one was different. The second MC was British and took my wife's version of everything as gospel and any variance in my version being my delusions. Some of this made no sense, but may have been to be more open in time.


Looking back on this, I am grateful. The marriage failed, but she would still want me back it is down to me leaving. 

The first one did take my side a little, even unintentionally. However, she did seem to want the best for us both. She also had the integrity to end the sessions rather than persevere when she felt it was a dead duck. The second one perhaps did not get the time and may well have been seeking to get my wife's confidence and work on my having emotionally disengaged. 

Advice on here tends to be better than IRL and it is sporadic at best here and absolutely dreadful IRL. In both cases, it is as if you had a problem with a car and you were just advised you to put petrol in and it will work and the other says no it has to be diesel and neither will believe the tank is full. Actually having someone from the outside with experience assure you that you are not bonkers having had the same difficulties is very good for later life.


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## Faiora

I have a few thoughts on this subject. 

*The first:* The idea behind marriage counselling, as I see it, is to provide a safe place and good prompting so each partner can discuss how they really feel, and what their real needs are in order to move forward and heal.

Some couples do this naturally. In a healthy relationship, both partners are willing to swallow some pride or forgo thinking about their own feelings for a moment, to focus on their partner. But most people are not self-secure enough to do this is all situations, so we end up on the defensive, rather than looking evenly at both sides—even when we think we're being fair. 

People have a tendency to think they're in the right, or at least be unwilling to admit they're in the wrong, when it's not even relevant who's right or wrong. There might _be_ someone who's right and someone who's wrong, but there's always more to the story as well. 

For example: Someone gave an example here about their husband cheating, and a counselor telling them to feel their husband's pain. 

Even though the husband is clearly in the wrong in that situation, context aside, I think this is the right approach for a counselor to take. Why? Because the husband needs to be in a safe environment, free of judgement, to be able to talk openly about his thoughts and feelings on the subject. Otherwise the situation would be entirely an attack on him. 

And shouldn't the real reason for counselling be to fix things? Shouldn't you want to stop the cheating? You can't do that without input from both people, and if someone resorted to cheating because of relationship problems (not saying this implies the other person is at fault; it doesn't), then that person needs to be able to speak as well. 

I think it says something that a cheater would be willing to go to marriage counselling to begin with, when there's a possibility of it being all about attacking and blaming them. Perhaps they wanted to go through that to feel like they'd been properly punished, or perhaps there were other relationship issues they wanted to address but didn't feel they could. Personally, I think that when someone cheats in a relationship, it's often a cry for help, similar to cutting one's wrists. It means something is wrong in their life, and the person just wants out of this situation.

If you're not willing to try to empathize and really understand the root of the problems in your marriage, then the only reason you're seeing a marriage counselor is so you can feel properly vindicated when you get divorced. 

*The second:* I've been to counselling for personal matters, and it has never once helped short-term. All the benefits I've received from it have come in over the long term. 

So from that perspective, if there are real emotional issues to be dealt with in one or both people, there still needs to be a short-term solution in place to provide understanding by those who have to deal with the effects of those issues. 

If one person has a fear of abandonment, for example, based on issues from childhood, it needs to be addressed in a short-term way so their partner can simply be aware of the problem. Healing takes a lot longer, but awareness is helpful.


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## Mr The Other

Faiora said:


> I have a few thoughts on this subject.
> 
> *The first:* The idea behind marriage counselling, as I see it, is to provide a safe place and good prompting so each partner can discuss how they really feel, and what their real needs are in order to move forward and heal.
> 
> Some couples do this naturally. In a healthy relationship, both partners are willing to swallow some pride or forgo thinking about their own feelings for a moment, to focus on their partner. But most people are not self-secure enough to do this is all situations, so we end up on the defensive, rather than looking evenly at both sides—even when we think we're being fair.
> 
> People have a tendency to think they're in the right, or at least be unwilling to admit they're in the wrong, when it's not even relevant who's right or wrong. There might _be_ someone who's right and someone who's wrong, but there's always more to the story as well.
> 
> For example: Someone gave an example here about their husband cheating, and a counselor telling them to feel their husband's pain.
> 
> Even though the husband is clearly in the wrong in that situation, context aside, I think this is the right approach for a counselor to take. Why? Because the husband needs to be in a safe environment, free of judgement, to be able to talk openly about his thoughts and feelings on the subject. Otherwise the situation would be entirely an attack on him.
> 
> And shouldn't the real reason for counselling be to fix things? Shouldn't you want to stop the cheating? You can't do that without input from both people, and if someone resorted to cheating because of relationship problems (not saying this implies the other person is at fault; it doesn't), then that person needs to be able to speak as well.
> 
> I think it says something that a cheater would be willing to go to marriage counselling to begin with, when there's a possibility of it being all about attacking and blaming them. Perhaps they wanted to go through that to feel like they'd been properly punished, or perhaps there were other relationship issues they wanted to address but didn't feel they could. Personally, I think that when someone cheats in a relationship, it's often a cry for help, similar to cutting one's wrists. It means something is wrong in their life, and the person just wants out of this situation.
> 
> If you're not willing to try to empathize and really understand the root of the problems in your marriage, then the only reason you're seeing a marriage counselor is so you can feel properly vindicated when you get divorced.
> 
> *The second:* I've been to counselling for personal matters, and it has never once helped short-term. All the benefits I've received from it have come in over the long term.
> 
> So from that perspective, if there are real emotional issues to be dealt with in one or both people, there still needs to be a short-term solution in place to provide understanding by those who have to deal with the effects of those issues.
> 
> If one person has a fear of abandonment, for example, based on issues from childhood, it needs to be addressed in a short-term way so their partner can simply be aware of the problem. Healing takes a lot longer, but awareness is helpful.


This is very useful. Thank you for writing it. 

I think many relationships fall on very basic things, which is why books are often useful. It is often fairly common sense, but people make common sense all the time.


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## delta88

Faiora said:


> I have a few thoughts on this subject.
> 
> I think it says something that a cheater would be willing to go to marriage counselling to begin with, when there's a possibility of it being all about attacking and blaming them. Perhaps they wanted to go through that to feel like they'd been properly punished, or perhaps there were other relationship issues they wanted to address but didn't feel they could. Personally, I think that when someone cheats in a relationship, it's often a cry for help, similar to cutting one's wrists. It means something is wrong in their life, and the person just wants out of this situation.
> 
> If you're not willing to try to empathize and really understand the root of the problems in your marriage, then the only reason you're seeing a marriage counselor is so you can feel properly vindicated when you get divorced.
> 
> So from that perspective, if there are real emotional issues to be dealt with in one or both people, there still needs to be a short-term solution in place to provide understanding by those who have to deal with the effects of those issues.
> 
> If one person has a fear of abandonment, for example, based on issues from childhood, it needs to be addressed in a short-term way so their partner can simply be aware of the problem. Healing takes a lot longer, but awareness is helpful.


WOW!


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