For those who have participated in couples therapy, how did it affect your relationship?

After several months, I mustered up the courage to end the marriage. (I was in private therapy also.)

After retiring from my police department, i guess all the anger came out of me that had been supressed for many years. arresting the bad guys and seeing children hurt eventually took a toll on me at retirement. wife and i both are seeing a therapist for my anger. its been about four months now and my wife states she see a great improvement in me.

Do i advise this for couples? yes.

We stumped the couples therapists. For some reason, our friendship and solidarity took precedence so when we’d go in then we’d become a united front, full of support and clever distractions in order to “bring out our best” when maybe we should have been tackling scarier stuff. It was unsuccessful for our marriage but our friendship has been superb for about 25 years now. I like the idea better of the couples seeing the same therapist/s separately and then jointly in intervals.

We did couples therapy twice- when we were newly weds, it got some stuff out in the open and improved open and honest communication. 15 years later, my exe’s mental health had deteriorated so much, a therapist told us we were toxic and should not be in the same room.

We ended our relationship, there was too much deceit, too many issues we both would not compromise on. I believe couples therapy was exactly what we needed, a safe place to say goodbye.

Did not work for beans. My relationship was too into the toilet. Does not mean it does not work though. Might work for some.

Couples therapy does not always result in the couple staying together, but rather can help them part without as much ill feelings as it could be, when they realize that is their best option.

@gailcalled hit the nail on the head for me.

He acted the same in therapy as he did in our marriage and the therapist basically said an option would be to end the marriage. I did.

Oh, and what sealed the deal is that she said we were having a mother-son relationship. That was enough to kill it.

My husband and I attended therapy on two separate occasions when we were first married. The first time had to do with the division of labour within our marriage. He was used to his mother doing everything for him and I was not willing to be his mother. We worked on it and things got better. We had to address the same thing a year or two later and it helped again.

For me, a significant experience.
It became clear to me at the first session that couples therapy was nothing more than my ex wife looking for an audience to make her case that all of our problems in marriage were my fault.
At first, I said nothing. I listened patiently to her list of complaints. It was the like the Inquisition.
When our therapist insisted that I speak up, and when I did, she made my life miserable afterwards for saying what I thought. At our next session, I told her and the therapist that I was walking out. Which I did.
I think without the first session, I would have stayed longer because of moral doubt.
And I would have been miserable that much longer. Maybe forever.
After that session, I knew what I had to do.
Great day. Great decision.

I went once with my first husband. She told us to get a divorce! Didn’t give us any help with how to work on our marriage at all.

My husband and I went for some months at a time when there was no peace between us. There was a lot of anger and blame, and everything was a battle. The therapist told us up front that it wasn’t her job to help us fix everything so we could stay together but rather to help us reach the right decision—for us—about what to do.

We thrashed all our ongoing issues and a lot of old ones, and I think we were both trying to be as honest as possible. The therapist helped us recognize unrealistic expectations, mistaken beliefs, misleading messages, and unintentionally antagonistic behaviors. She helped us see where we were pushing each other’s buttons. I thought we were working on making changes, but we didn’t seem to get along any better.

Finally my husband stood up in the middle of one session and said we weren’t getting anywhere and he was through there. I had no choice but to follow him out.

That was what you would have to call the nadir. There wasn’t much left to do after that but start the legal proceedings.

Maybe it was the knowledge that everything had been done, that there was nothing more to struggle for—but something happened that was utterly liberating. It really was like a phoenix arising out of the ashes. Six weeks after that low point, we turned a corner. That was twelve years ago, and by now I’d say we’re good for the long haul.

It’s hard to say exactly what part the couples counseling played in the outcome, but I do think it accelerated the resolution. I know some things have never been the same since, for better or worse. Sometimes we still refer back to things the therapist said to us and try to apply them. I believe we benefited from the process.

3 years after the death of my husband (it was a wonderful marriage), I married my high-school sweetheart and first real love. We had not seen each other for 32 yrs. and he had never been married. My 2 children were now grown, so no kid issues, but there were many BIG communication issues. The first question our therapist asked us was if we loved each other. This, for us, was a no-brainer. Yes, of course we did, we just couldn’t communicate. We were lucky to have found a good therapist who was able to cut thru crap very quickly and get to the heart of issues; he did not allow any of that, “well, she…. well, he…”. Nope. None of that. He also stressed that the way we act or respond at any given time is a choice. One chooses to react angrily or one can choose to act with understanding. He was not a pastoral counselor, just an intuitive, down-to-earth guy who stressed treating others the ways in which you would like to be treated yourself. He stressed empathy, stopping for a moment to put ourselves in the other’s shoes. Fortunately we were able to apply these strategies and our communication developed into a much more caring, understanding style. Took a while to get to the answer but YES, couples therapy helped us very much. I don’t think, though, that any amount of therapy can help two people who don’t really love each other.