Need advice from marriage counselling vets...

Here's a million dollar question for you wives/girlfriends who have had any relationship counseling to try and get your partner to communicate: is there anything that works, or do they have to open up on their own?
Even now, in the middle of our marriage crisis (read my thread "Have I finally had enough?"), my husband acts like nothing is wrong, and has said nothing more than he doesn't want me to leave, and that he "can't do it on his own." What about what drove him to violence in the first place? What about how he's feeling, what he's thinking? The first year of our relationship, he would talk about everything, his feelings included, but when I got pregnant with our first son four and a half years ago, our "friendship" ended. I went through a gambling crisis half way through that pregnancy, partially because he had withdrawn, and I had no one in the state to lean on (it was a bad pregnancy). I know I lost his respect then, and he took me off the "pedestal" he had me on, but nothing like that has happened since. I feel I have more than earned his trust back, and he knows why I turned to the casino in the first place.
Regardless, it's now I need help with. I am tired of one sided conversations. I am tired of getting one word answers to my questions. I am tired of hearing "What do you want me to say?". How do I get him to open up, or is it hopeless?

By backing off, giving him some space to think on his own (maul it all over) and then by treating him with all the respect and dignity you would extend to any stranger you meet along life's pathway... and always with love for another in mind.

AND...... the BIGGY - by making the conversation about how you feel and not always about how he makes you feel when he does some thing to upset you.

If you go to marriage counseling, you can learn to communicate better with each other. You can learn (although you may already know) what things you each do to alienate the other person, make them withdraw, make them angry, make them feel loved, etc. You may have the goal for marriage counseling to get your husband to open up, but he may have other goals. You each get to raise things you want to work on and that are problems for you in the marriage. If you went to therapy together, maybe you would learn why your husband withdrew from you during your first pregnancy. And he can work on answering whether he will ever get over that. Men often withdraw from relationships to punish the spouse for something. It would be so much easier if they would say what they want to punish for, but they just withdraw, and the wife never has any idea what has gone wrong. She just feels hurt and emotionally abandoned. It's a common pattern. A marriage counselor could help.

I tried to get my husband to go to marriage counseling over 10 years ago. He wouldn't go, just pretended everything was fine, when it was obvious it wasn't. Now we are getting divorced and as part of that, have had some couples therapy. I wish we had done this many years ago. Maybe it would have helped save our marriage, but the time passed for that and the marriage became unsalvageable.

I would also suggest reading this book, in particular the part about "withholding" in abusive males. It might give you some insights as well as an action plan.
The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to recognize it and how to respond

We really needed a counselor to help us hear each other.
Plus, we'd hurt each other so much trying to get the other to meet needs, that we weren't able to talk without anger.

There was no way we could have done this without outside professional help.

Is he willing to see the counselor on his own? Sometimes that helps, he may not know how to verbalize what he's thinking / feeling. Some one on one time with the counselor might be just the trick. Good luck.

I agree with Rhapsody. The harder you push the more he'll withdraw?

You have to talk about you and what you'd like him to do, practical, for you, ask his opinion (and want it, not just want him to "talk"), etc. He can only know what you want if you tell him; if we can't get therapists, who are trained, to read our minds, I don't think mere mortal men have a chance? LOL

Hi there! "What do you want me to say"do" must be the question they all ask. That is exactly what my husband said, and I finally stopped the nitpicking by saying "Think it over and decide what you want out of this". I am staying right here where I am, going to counseling, etc. If you want to talk to people who have had multiple marriages, and live with one person after the other, then you are choosing bad advise, and I disagree, and will not give in when I know what is right in my own mind and heart. That completely stopped the silliness where he is trying to get me to feel quilty for the problems he caused. I am going about life usual, and hope that he can get this young woman out of his mind that he had a super crush on. In our case, it is some mid life crisis also, but , hey, I am hurt!!