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We've seen our MC twice and I'm just not sure I can do it. I don't know if she's not a good fit or if I'm just not strong enough for this.

There were a few things I was hoping to discuss but somehow I guess they seemed unimportant to her. Instead we worked on how I can respond better to my H on different issues.

It was so hard. I mean, of course I want that in the end but not yet. We're only 3 months out from DDay!!

I feel like everyone in my life thinks the sun shines out of my H's ass and now MC does too. H says that's not true but I can't even discuss how the MC session made me feel yet (it was last night).

Maybe everyone's right. Maybe H is wonderful in every way and I should just rug sweep and move on.

Sigh... I had high hopes.

No. Rugsweeping will get you another dday.

You need another MC. This one seems focused on rugsweeping this away.

This is one of the reasons we didn't do MC. I knew if we got an MC that was a rugsweeper,WH would latch onto that and never let it go.

A bad MC can do a lot more damage to an already fragile marriage.

Do not allow this to be rug swept. This only creates a perfect environment for him to repeat his behaviors, and allows you to develop all kinds of unhealthy resentment.

Obviously your MC does not specialize in infidelity. She is focusing on things that she knows. Improving communication. If she isn't even willing to discuss the A, and how it has effected you, and him, and the M then she's worthless.

I say get a new MC - Or try doing it on your own.
My H was not a fan of MC. He feels the whole practice of counseling is a way to get money from people that are hurt and broken. He also felt that any healing and changes had to come from within ourselves, and he was right on that.

We went to MC 3-4 times. First visit, get to know you, why are you here. Second visit, communication stuff, pre and post a. Small amount to do with my pain, and he had to be patient as I heal.
3rd visit, was a mess, I had just found broken NC, and H was obviously not wanting to be there, it led to a huge argument after, and ultimately no real help.

The MC did give us a few books to read, 7 principles for a healthy M, 5 love languages, codependent no more (for me), helping your spouse heal from A (for him).

We decided after we got a bill, and fighting after 2 sesions that we should try on our own. We did. H diligently read 5 languages, and 7 principles, and it helped us communicate better. He really held of on reading helpin your spouse. (He still didn't really accept what he had done, and wasn't 100% sure I wasn't gonna walk).

We always had fairly good communication, and getting back to those basics, doing the exercises in 7 principles helped us to reconnect.

He did eventually do the rest of the work, and figured out his own issues as well.

I guess my point is Therapy isn't for everyone, and R is possible without it, IF you do the work of R.

(((and strength))))

We worked on how I can respond better to my H on different issues.

Can you give some examples of this?

I mean, 'responding better' is great, if she means, 'Don't accept his bullshit,' but somehow I don't think that's what she means.

(my issues) seemed unimportant to her

That's a giant red flag to me. That sounds a lot like this MC thinks she knows all that needs to be known about helping couples recover from infidelity, which is pretty delusional. Besides, I think most - possibly all - modalities tell the C to start where the client is, which means she has to start with your issues.

Hmmm...even if she has a rigid ideology, she needs to start with your issues and show you how they fit into her ideology.

This MC sounds very dangerous.

(((Morhurt)))

[This message edited by sisoon at 5:56 PM, September 18th (Wednesday)]

It's time you take over the MC sessions. Demand disclosure and a timeline in the sessions.
Our MC was affiliated with the SA program my fwh was in which helped because this is what she specialized in. However, after the 1st session I told her I wanted disclosure and a timeline I was there for answers from my WH. If he wanted to do it inMC sessions fine by me.
She complied and even gave me a guideline on disclosure to follow, which I did.
There was no way I was ready to better"respond" to my WH "issues" until my demands were met.
If you can't get this from your MC
Get another one.
Yes, I had to listen to how my WH is suffering from depression, and his sex addiction and compartmentalizing but I also was able to express how I was so angry, hurt and disgusted with what he had done.
From there we are trying to heal from this mess.
Don't let them control the session.
It may also help if you have your own IC. This is where you can get it all out.

Our first MC actually helped damage us more, I think. She didn't want to really talk about the affair, and only wanted to talk about the problems we had in our marriage and problems WS had. I think she took his puppy dog routine hook line and sinker. Grrrrr....

One day I started talking about something that was bothering me and he said "ya know, (MC Counselor) said if I didn't want to talk about this anymore I don't have to."

This was about 3 months after DDay.

Um, no.

We found another MC that actually didn't pull any punches and to my surprise, WS LOVED her and it really opened his eyes and started clearing the fog for him.

I think you need another MC if you have even a slight gut feeling this isn't the right fit.

Morhurt,

I'm sorry you had that experience with MC! It pisses me off that any counselor would not start with the most horrible problem, which is the A, of course. If your house is burning down, you don't start remodeling the kitchen for f@ck's sake.

Are either of you in IC? fWH's IC turned out to be excellent, and after he saw fWH alone for awhile, we saw him together a bunch of times. That provided a "safe" place for me to pour out all my hurt and anger and questions at fWH. The IC made sure fWH was understanding what I was saying, and not responding defensively.

One of the first things IC said was that fWH did not have an A because of me or our marriage. In fact, he helped fWH verbalize that to me, and explain to me how I was the right person for him and more than enough for him and the A had nothing to do with me not meeting his needs.

Once I really started internalizing that this was not about me, and that fWH was doing the work on himself so another A would not happen, I felt like I didn't need to go with him anymore.

fWH did months of sessions, and then we went together to his IC again so that fWH could explain his brokenness and FOO dysfunction without me taking it as an excuse for the A.

In the eight months since d-day, we have yet to address any pre-A marriage "issues". That was just your normal, run-of-the-mill stuff that any relationship has. We can work on that without paying a counselor.

We've being dealing with two things only:
1. The problems within fWH (poor coping skills, bad boundaries, denial, fear of abandonment, low self-worth etc.)

2. The damage fWH did to me and our marriage because of 1.

If your H was really remorseful, I don't think he'd be liking your MC.

Btw, I'm pretty sure no sun is shining out of your H's ass because his head is up there causing an eclipse.

Something I have learnt since D-Day is that all therapists are not created equal!

In our very first session we had a therapist tell my fWH that as much as I had to forgive him for having the A, he had to forgive me for not meeting his needs thus forcing him to look outside the marriage to have those needs met!!!

The next one was completely focussed on improving our communication skills and seemed uninterested in dealing with the A.

Those experiences put me off any form of therapy for quite some time! We have now finally found someone that seems to "get" how to deal with infidelity, but it's early days, so we will see how things progress.

My advice is to keep looking until you find someone you are comfortable with - don't stick with a therapist that is not providing the type of service that you need.

Thank you all so much for your responses.
I was finally able to discuss it with H tonight, plus he read this thread. He gets it.

I felt so ganged up on, it was awful. But I needed to hear from you guys, to have my feelings validated, before I could even begin to discuss it with H.

It was quite a setback. :(

I guess we're in the market for a new MC

Hi,

I just want to say that you are correct to assume that MC is at fault and
Definitely not the right fit.
We went to MC and they were a couple. It made me so angry that all we did was fight for two days afterwards each time. It was so childish. He, the male MC! would whisper in hushed tone to my WH what to say to me. I could hear him! Then hubby would repeat to me Verbatim what was said to him without any feeling or emotion. A bad actor scenario. OMG! What a waste of money. I now see that we did a few things wrong.....we went too soon....only a few mths out, we needed IC first, we also needed to vent about the whole thing before involving MC who only knew what little we can say in an hour. Too early! IC first to deal with our own issues first and maybe in a year we will try MC again. Just my opinion. Don't be discouraged! Please try IC first. Take care and good luck!

[This message edited by Mel36 at 2:44 PM, September 19th (Thursday)]

Thank you! We are both in IC and have been for about 3 months. I hoped that MC would help us deal with A issues but apparently not.

I think we will take a break from MC. It was a very scary experience for both of us (for different reasons).

The thing that really chaps my butt? Paying $225/1.5 hrs of what felt like abuse!! And the setbacks. I hate losing what tiny bit if trust I have. :(

Maybe it is because we have a good MC, and it is 3 months post DDay, but I cannot believe that there are so many incompetent therapists out there. I would always try something new a few times before I decide. Not that there aren't bad therapists, but saying someone needs a therapist who specializes in infidelity is just silly. What do you think most MCs deal with all day long? 60% of marriages have infidelity in them, so the percentage of folks in MC with this as a primary issue have to be damn close to 100%.

I'm not sure if ours is so much incompetent as just a really bad fit. My H is a very sincere and likeable guy, perhaps that swayed her? Maybe there was something about me that she didn't like? I'm not sure. But I do know that many other people told us that she was great.

Who knows? All I know is, she made me (us) feel way worse!

We are three months out and are taking a break from MC. We are going to IC. Mainly because I am a mess and I am not ready to talk about "us" communicating better. My emotions are still so strong and raw, so IC is a better fit right now. When the counselor would suggest ways on how I can communicate differently or choose different words or ask me not to be so hostile and sarcastic, I wanted to rip his head off. So yes, I am not ready for MC

Normally, I am a laid-back person and in complete control of my emotions, but this affair has made me emotionally crazy. I felt like I was failing at MC and I was the "weak link", but my IC says that my body is still processing the affair and is still in protection mode, so I just have to give it time and not but pressure on being somewhere I am not.

This thread makes me think we need a different MC as well....

[This message edited by ILINIA at 4:23 PM, September 19th, 2013 (Thursday)]

I have a very charismatic (negative: manipulative) FWH who got his way and people think he shines like the sun. Many church leaders, counselors, hell even me end up sympathizing with him and apologizing to him... when he's the one who did the lying, etc.

Be wary. If your wayward is like this, you better pick a counselor that's not easily swayed. If this counselor has NOT validated you after 2 freaking sessions already, then change! Please do. If your wayward is as charismatic as mine, you need a counselor that can overlook that and can zero in on his actions and not his sweet words and puppy eyes.

If you rug sweep, this will happen AGAIN and AGAIN. Please trust me. My FWH had multiple affairs both EA and PA for 11 years...

We are in 5 year R now. And he's more aware now of how manipulative he can actually be and can sometimes be too brutally honest because he's scared of falling back the old ways.

Believe me, we are NOT going back. I'm still in trauma recovery from Wednesday. And H sees now how he behaved there and how that wasn't helpful for R.

Thank you for sharing your experience Simple. I'm not sure if my H is manipulative... I don't think so, then again I didn't think he was a cheater so what do I know??!!

I think I am definitely going to look for a different MC. I just wanted to say after one of my sessions, I cried for 2 days straight. I thought I was losing it and was upset because the MC didn't get it that he was trying to get me to be further ahead than I was. I felt like I was a failure and that I wasn't healing fast enough, I mean as wasn't MC supposed to help?

Reasonable people can certainly disagree on this, but I don't think infidelity stems from the state of the marriage. Infidelity is a result of the lack of mental/emotional health and integrity of the individual.

Many MC's seem to have the view that a good marriage would have prevented the affair and what the couple needs to do is work together to improve the marriage. I respectfully disagree. The marriage is off the table until the cheater addresses his/her damage that led to the affair, and the faithful partner gets help dealing with the trauma of betrayal.

If you feel worse after a MC session, you should get a new MC. It is WAY to soon to start looking at his point of view about the affair. Of course, a WS always wants to blame the state of the marriage (you) for their affair and any counselor should call foul.

There is NO excuse for an affair. There are reasons that people's marriages are unhappy, and those can be shared and worked on, but an affair is on the cheater, 100pct.

They have other options. When they are married, an affair is not one of those options.

Get another counselor, and try and get one that you can go to alone also. I started with ours, then then later he came. Sometimes he goes by himself also.

So sorry you are suffering this pain. We all know how it feels. Horrible!!

I do think you can feel worse after a MC appointment for a while and still have a good MC.

Also, it is smart to look at things from an individual and systems point of view. Affairs are individual decisions that do not happen, for the most part, in a vacuum. It is debatable whether getting personally healthy first is even possible if there are unhealthy dynamics in a marriage. It doesn't mean the unhealthy dynamics caused the affair, but in my experience trying to excise the part of WS that chose to enter into the affair was not a healthy, or accurate, way to look at it.

When an adolescent does drugs, we look at family systems because the ground on which they functioned was the family. It makes no sense to only treat them as an individual. I think the same is true for marriages and infidelity. Personal choice and responsibility? Yes, but within a framework.

I would also (gently) ask if maybe you were a little defensive regarding the MC acting as if your H had issues that needed addressed. If you look at an affair as a person's attempt to alleviate some kind of pain, then she has to focus on that.

[This message edited by bionicgal at 10:01 AM, September 20th (Friday)]