OP, did you bother to ask him why he wanted a divorce? You don't say if you even tried.

Perhaps he recognizes that his point of view doesn't really matter to you, and he's fed up with you not listening to him.

If so, counseling is a long shot.

Anonymous wrote:My husband just told me he wanted a divorce. We’ve been married for 14 years. We’ve dealt with a lot of stress over the years and of course there have been ups and downs. I asked him to wait until after Christmas for our kids sake and he agreed. I’m sooo sad. I don’t want to break up our family. I don’t want to be alone. I still love him. I made an appointment for us to see a marriage counselor. I told him I would let him go (if you love something set it free, right?) but only if he would talk to someone with me. He agreed. Has anyone out there had success with marriage counseling or is this just over? Is there any hope left? I look at my kids and all I can think of is how it’s our last Christmas as a family. I look at my husband and I miss him.

How long have the two of you not been having sex? Just curious.

Of course counseling can work, but only if both parties are invested. I told my first husband I wanted a divorce seemingly out of the blue (it wasn't, obviously, it was based on many years of issues), but it just came out of my mouth one afternoon. Once I said it I realized I was fully done and nothing would change my mind. He begged and pleaded and I refused to budge, so counseling wouldn't have done anything for me. However, we didn't have kids and we were young. Having children I think changes things, so there is a chance that being forced to really think through the logistics of splitting your family up and sharing the kids is enough to make someone want to work on it. I'm sorry you're going through this.

I was in your shoes. Counseling worked for us during a very low point in our marriage. We did EFT counseling which is an evidence-based modality with a high rate of success (70%?). We chose a counselor with a PhD who was really so good at it and smarter than we were. Actually, that was part of the success because he had both of our respect. He was utterly neutral and wouldn’t be played by either of us. Very kind person.

It shifted things permanently in our marriage and we have maintained the techniques we learned. Married 26 years now. We went to counseling for 8 weeks total for 1.5 hours each time. One hour would have been way too short to make progress and would have flown by. I cried a lot and found it draining. But it saved our marriage and we both changed. We also unconsciously incorporated the EFT modality into our parenting which was a subtle and wonderful side benefit. Our relationship with our adult children is authentic, healthy, and connected because of it. The whole family system shifted in a good way.

Even if it doesn't work you will probably figure out what's wrong with your marriage.

No

And it’s even worse if one or both sides are doing individual counseling with someone else. Then they feed a biased narrative to that counselor and get emboldened that they are right and everyone else is wrong.

nope. and the therapy was draining.

IF both parties want it to work and there aren't personalty disorders, yes.

But if even only one side isn't committed, no.