Marriage counseling

I have found a therapist that is willing to try to work with my husband and I...even though part of me thinks this won't fix anything but I'll try. Anyway...what should I expect? Is it similar to individual therapy but the therapist talks with both parties at the same time? Should the therapist address the safety of both people like in individual therapy? Any questions I should ask at the first session? We do paperwork on the 13th, and then go from there I guess.

Going to do my best to address this, since I've been in marriage counseling off and on for a couple years now. Since I had a fair amount of experience with individual therapy, marriage counseling was weird to me at first. Because it's not just you and the T. It's you, your H, and the T. And the T is addressing you and H as an entity--as a couple--as well as each of you individually. Not sure how much sense that makes, just trying to say it will feel different, since I know you've been seeing a T.

Has your H ever been in therapy before? Mine had not (aside from a bit as a teen for ADHD), so it was like he wasn't used to how it worked. I felt like in the beginning, I was always the one bringing things up. I was used to going to therapy, so I tried to think of stuff beforehand that I'd want to discuss. While my H just seemed to walk in and be like, "Well, the past week has been OK."

The biggest piece of advice I could give is that marriage counseling won't really work unless both of you are willing to be open and honest about what's going on. That might mean saying things that could offend or hurt the other person. But if you don't bring up the real issues, it won't really help. I say this based on experience. When H and I first started seeing our MC, neither of us was particularly open. Then I started opening up more, and H would act like the only thing that bothered him was that I didn't do the dishes.

Which...obviously there was more going on than that. So we stopped going for a while, then I think I ran into our MC while seeing my T, he asked how things were going, and I said maybe we could try seeing him again. My T (with my blessing--they work together) told MC that there might be more going on between us than we were saying and that he might have to push us more.

So I started being more open and honest--which led to some really rough sessions--and eventually H got there too. And he was more honest about what was challenging to him about me and our marriage. Yes, some of it hurt, but I think we had to go through that, the honesty, to really address what was going on and come out on the other side. Things certainly aren't perfect with H and I now, but they're definitely much better than they were a couple years ago.

The one thing that makes me wonder if marriage counseling will work for you is what you've said your H does to you, in terms of But I'm not sure if that's always the case. Might add more in another post, since this is getting kind of long. Hope this helps a bit.

If the stuff that LT said under the trigger warning is accurate (and to further support the point she made about it), this link may be something you want to look at?

Please be safe.

An ethical therapist, if they suspect or discover what was under LT's trigger warning, is supposed to stop seeing the couple as a couple. I think they can keep on seeing one of them and refer the other out, or refer both out.

Thank you. I read the link you posted.

I've been told both ways, so it's confusing to me. I've been told by T1 that a therapist won't work with is with active abuse.going on. But my T2 was in the process (or still is) of looking for a therapist and said she found one that would be willing to work with us but I haven't heard back from my T about it in a few weeks. I told the intake of this new.place that there was abuse going on in the past year but nothing in the last month (that was the case when I did the intake) and they matched us with someone.

I guess I will just see what the actual therapist says when we do our initial appointment. My Husband is in individual therapy right now but he only has been going about once a month right now.

I hope you get the help you need.

For us, couples counseling started with family history (to see where patterns came from). By the time we were done with history (3 or 4 sessions) we were comfortable with talking about things that came up for us during the week, and the t would sort of coach us along while we talked about it. He would ask things like "what do you want...", "how could he be helpful" that sort of thing. It was pretty easy to talk about most things-sex, not so much. But we did address that also.