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Wondering how soon after finding out did you start marriage counselling. And did you set conditions before you agreed to go or did you have the discussion about your needs eg access to accounts, while in counselling.

About five years ago I asked my wife what she thought about us seeing a marriage counselor to help us learn how to communicate better and her response was an adamant NO. I asked why and she said, "It could bring up other problems in our relationship" to which I replied "Wouldn't it be a good thing to address these problems?" and she said "I think it's a bad idea" so I dropped it. I found an IC and when I told my wife she got upset. "Why didn't you discuss this w/ me?" to which I replied "I asked and you are dead set against it so I'm going by myself" It was amazing.

Two days after D-Day we met to discuss the next step. I was convinced she would show up still shooting daggers at me w/ her eyes and spitting vitriol but she had two days to think and she did a 180.

I demanded that we see an MC immediately and told her SHE would find one. I hadn't found SI yet and in hindsight this was a mistake. The better advice is for the BS to find an IC and after several months and once the BS feels like he/she is back on solid ground w/ clear thoughts then he/she decides if he/she wants to try and work on the relationship.

True to form our first MC was horrible. In our first session this mid 40's "therapist" asks my wife, "Did you catch feels for him?" to which my wife replied "Yes". I was crushed. After walking around for three days believing my wife had romantic feelings for this guy I brought it up. My wife took the question to mean did your AP make you feel good about yourself. For three F'ing days I walked around in misery. At our next session I said, "From now on can we use adult words in our questions" Therapist thought she was being hip or something. After a few more useless sessions I fired her.

The next therapist, now she is very good at her craft BUT like most she tried pushing the "put the affair behind you and build a brand new shiny sparkly relationship" BS and she tried using the Gottman therapy manual page by page. She tried focusing on making us better communicators. My patience wore out after a few sessions and I said, "Are we going to talk about the reason we are here?" The MC said yes yet still tried the Gottman stuff and I shut it down. I don't need to go page by page thru some playbook, let's talk about why my wife destroyed 27 years of relationship. The MC gave up on Gottman.

I made it clear to my wife and the MC that I was in NO hurry to rebuild trust. I said, "Until I can believe that whatever was broken/missing in my wife has been found/fixed and I can believe she can be a safe partner I am not putting my heart into this relationship." Session by session I slowly took back my power (balls) and during one session I said F' it and let my words fly, consequences be damned. If my wife walked out or we ended things so be it. That was a pivotal day for me.

My advice: Start w/ IC and cycle thru them until you find one you can bond with no matter how many it takes. After several months if you think you want to work w/ an MC to save the relationship then find one but in hindsight I see them as a bad distraction early on.

BTW, I also pushed/demanded my wife see an IC. She needed to work on herself w/ someone w/out me there. I honestly thought she would last a month or two and then proclaim ALL IS WELL and if she did then I was ending the marriage but she has stuck w/ it for about 20'ish months. She goes weekly and 99% of the time she comes home feeling bad because she is talking about some pretty bad stuff from her childhood that was never processed. I am proud of her for sticking it out. Early on she was discussing the affair. I don't even want to add up how much we have spent :/ Had she gone to MC when I suggested it five years ago maybe I wouldn't have gone thru the worst pain of my life. She has admitted several times that she wished she had done so.

[This message edited by WB1340 at 1:16 AM, Monday, February 9th]

Simply because I am tired of her inability to take accountability, so I proposed MC as my last effort for this girl, but I also prepared the divorce papers.

We'll see if there is any chance for her to develop empathy or I can save time and file for divorce.
I consider it now just an annoying duty (while she used to be the love of my life), so prepared all options first and will be ready when it's clear.

She does not deserve my time, she must earn it.

My experience is apparently an outlier. My W got us time with her IC on d-day. I had low expectations.

We had a 90 minute session which started with the C confronting my W for lying. C eventually switched to finding out how I was, validating was I was thinking and feeling, validating what I wanted, telling my W to answer questions if she had any hope of R. C didn't have to get W to take responsibility for the A because my W had already done that.

A few years ago I asked the C what she would have done if my W had revealed her A in an IC session. C said she would have told my W she had to find a new therapist unless she came clean with me - and she (C) would have called me to verify that W had come clean.

So MC helped me and, once it was clear we both wanted to R, us immensely.

Bottom line: if the MC addresses the A first and kept the A first and foremost until it wasn't first and foremost, MC is great. Our MC is not alone; others do that.

If, however, your MC sees the A as a symptom of M problems, they're useless for infidelity. The MC has to see an A as the WS's failure, not the M's failure, for MC to be useful soon after d-day, BUT ...

an MC can be useful in helping a couple to choose between D & R.

Put me in the camp of "started too soon".

We found an MC soon after DDay, and she seemed ok at first. I even tried to screen the MC before hand. The moment I knew I needed to fire her she was reprimanding me for revealing affairs to betrayed partners.

Our second MC was better and we had done more work individually. I actually had good luck with the Gottman method with her. We stopped seeing her once we felt we were in a good place in our M.

I would probably still go to IC, but my therapist can't hold down a job. You might say "TIF, why do you want therapy from a guy that keeps losing his therapist job?" The short answer is that we clicked and I found his advice very useful.

@sissoon Your wife's therapist said she would have called you to make sure your wife told you about the affair? I find that highly improbable because that would be grounds to lose her license. I'm not calling you a liar, but a therapist revealing information about a patient?