Marriage Counseling Experiences

barneygumbled · 2013-10-28T21:32:28+00:00

I've been watching the Wire recently and one thing that made me laugh is the obese gangster summing it up as (paraphrase) "tell the husband he's got to bring home some flowers once in a while and the wife she has to suck some more cock".

[deleted] · 2013-10-28T20:00:26+00:00

I have been through marriage counseling. It was exhausting and ineffectual.

The counselor had a JD and was a social worker. Every comment I made was reinterpreted in the way lawyers bend words for a client. The only way this kind of mediation can work is if all parties are completely open and honest. When I brought hard evidence to expose untruths, it was dismissed by the counselor as "it doesn't matter".

By the end, I recognized that every problem that came to light was wrapped around to the notion that my wife needed to be more empowered. (We made the same amount of money professionally.) Eventually I became so guarded that the whole process collapsed. Even though there was zero abuse in the relationship, I became concerned that someone's imagination would create it.

If the marriage has foundational problems, I think that counseling only amounts to more liability for the man.

Archwinger · 2013-10-29T02:54:00+00:00

Marriage counseling is essentially psych 101. It's all about "communication" and understanding the other side's point of view, so that you can march forward stronger and more in love.

Women don't communicate well. Just because they communicate often doesn't mean they do it well. They say one thing and want another, because they have no clue what they want, only that they're unhappy. They're not manipulative or dishonest about this. They really just don't know themselves. There's a HUGE disconnect between a woman's conscious and subconscious. It's hard to grasp. So whatever they say during marriage counseling isn't what they really want, but the therapist doesn't know that.

Women, despite their reputation for empathy, have no ability to place themselves in anyone else's shoes. They're selfish. It's downright impossible for a wife to really and truly understand her husband's point of view and what his life is like.

Women enjoy emotional experiences and drama (even the ones who swear they don't). Getting emotional in front of a therapist is drama gold, and they can say it's all for the sake of their husband and kids and their marriage -- they can feel so righteous as they condemn their husband with their "honest" thoughts and "communication," because that's what they're supposed to do in that situation.

Women never truly understand when they've done something wrong. Even when they say the words and admit to doing something wrong, they still don't truly wrap their minds around what it really means to be culpable for something. A woman will never walk out of a counseling session knowing she was wrong and prepare to change her life for the better. She just walks out feeling good, like she's dumped everything off of her chest into the lap of a therapist. But her husband had definitely better get his act in gear.

angryadult · 2013-10-28T22:20:03+00:00

My now-wife and I went to relationship counseling a while back, before we got married.

It was surprisingly good for us. We had a great relationship, I already knew I was going to marry her, we were both curious what kind of stuff we'd talk about. It turns out that we did a lot of the hard work already. Kids, if she going to stay home, house responsibilities, sex life, financial matters, goals in life. Learned some potential conflict resolution stuff, but haven't needed to use it.

Didn't really learn much, but really confirmed that I had found my right woman.

GayLubeOil · 2013-10-29T04:19:34+00:00

Iv never been married but here is my experience getting marriage counseled, couple of years ago.
A quick disclaimer as in all true stories there are no heroes, no good guys just shitty people shitily interacting with each other. I make no claim that I was right in the way I behaved.

So im casually striding to the gym drinking my pre-workout listening to my Rammstien, having taken my epistane. Just having a wonderful time.
Then out of the corner of my eye I see a girl (lets call her Samantha ) with her friend, I pull out one of my headphones and say hi to her. Samantha is telling her friend how she was raped by Robert.
Now the problem with this story is that I saw Samantha on top of Robert reverse cowgirling him. I saw them fucking because I was at the party where it happened.
The party was super crowded, so I stepped outside to get a breath of fresh air. There was some sort of commotion coming from a window. The blinds were open and Samantha was Reverse Cowgirling the fuck out of Robert.

So anyway I call Samantha out for being a liar in front of her friend in the middle of a gym parking lot. Samantha starts hamstering then lying. Then I tell her about the window and she starts crying.

That's when the marriage counselor appeared. She saw a large man make a woman cry so she decided to lend her aid.

The marriage counselor pulls me aside and explains to me how shitty I am for making this girl cry. She also tells me that as a mother she would be ashamed seeing her son treat women this way. Also good men are chivalrous and respect women.

I calmly explain my perspective. I can tell She already made up her opinion on how im the Bain of the earth. I tell her the whole party story. The counselor doesn't believe me because she thinks that Samantha looks like good girl who would never bounce on party dick. She then tells me that I was incredibly disrespectful and that should apologize.

Now Jack3d and Epistane completely disagreed on her assessment of the situation. Epistane believes that I am a God upon this earth and that mere mortals should know their place when speaking to the chosen one. Jack3d doesn't understand why have a calm argument when you can have a loud one instead. Up until this point I was resisting the council of Jack3d and Epistane but after 30 minuites all three of us agreed it was time to act.

I told the concealer that when a lying whore accuses her son of rape, she can resolve the situation by making sure her son is chivalrous.

I then proceeded to have a great workout. The End.

Haraklus · 2013-10-29T01:48:30+00:00

I went to marriage counseling before divorcing my wife (a rare, male-initiated divorce).

It was pretty bullshit. I was sitting there saying, "The marriage has some serious problems and I am just about beyond the emotional point of no return, but I am making an effort to try to fix it. Work with me one day at a time and we'll see what we can do."

My wife was sitting there saying, "I will try anything, I want to save our marriage."

Our counselor was sitting there saying, "Now, now, husband, you have to change."

It was very unproductive. There were a lot of unspoken difficulties that arose from neither of us having healthy marriages to learn from in our childhood, and the counselor seemed to fall into the "Let's change the husband" game, with an emphasis on "make your wife happy". All we really needed, in retrospect, was for someone to identify specific behaviors we were getting wrong and correct them. Instead, we got a counselor who continually chided me for not being happy in a dying relationship.

Wolfwoodd · 2013-10-28T19:46:01+00:00

Not me, but here's an interesting perspective from somebody else who's very red pill. He advocates finding/going to a therapist when the relationship is doing really well. Not my cup of tea, but it's a really well written post about relationship management.

dischordiasnightmare · 2013-10-28T22:31:38+00:00

Depends on the counselor, which goes of all forms of counseling.

I have a friend who is a relationship/sex therapist. She is incredibly good, and very balanced. Apparently the most common question from couples is 'why are we no longer having sex?' to which her standard answer is 'is anyone initiating?'

Good relationship counselors get you to break off the routines you've become stuck in and remember why you're in a relationship in the first place.

Maybe ask other guys you know who are RP and see if they can suggest anyone? Shopping around is important, chances are the 'authority' of the counselor is going to be taken very seriously, and you don't want to get stuck with someone you hate.

And since when did TV shows like Entourage care about showing an accurate view of something?

FortunateBum · 2013-10-29T01:51:27+00:00

Done couples counseling. My experience is that she was not receptive. She was completely nuts, so that didn't help.

periscopepete · 2013-10-29T03:55:04+00:00

My wife and I went to a counselor for a year and I found it to be extremely helpful.

It's true that it's all about "communication", but it's quite a bit deeper than just understanding what your partner is saying. It's really about understanding that everything each of us sees, hears, and thinks is different from anyone else. The exact same words you say will be read differently by every individual on this page. Any good therapist is going to help you understand why you see/hear/think things in a certain way.

So the job of the marriage counselor is to help you both understand what is being communicated, how it's being interpreted and why. When this is done, you can come closer to understanding what you each might be thinking.

Obviously the counselor you pick is super important (I recommend a psychologist rather than just a therapist). But the real determining factor is whether you both want to actually understand what's going on and that you want to fix it. A lot of people go to counseling expecting that the counselor is going to fix things. But the counselor is just there to help you understand how to get to the root of your issues. From there, it's up to both individuals and depends on how much they want things to work.

Also, one thing that was helpful to me was to go to marriage counseling every other week and then go to an individual therapist on the week between. It was really helpful for me to gain perspective on what I actually wanted from it all.

I'm happier than I've been in a decade, in large part due to counseling.

Best of luck with it!

[deleted] · 2013-10-28T22:32:57+00:00

Have not gone, but everything I've heard has me thinking its a load of horseshit

bsutansalt · 2013-10-29T13:32:37+00:00

Is it as big a bullshit as I think it is?

Yes. You cannot negotiate attraction. What it boils down to is that both people need to want to be there and to make things work, which is rarely the case. What usually happens from what I've seen is one person lets themselves go, either physically or mentally (going full beta), and it turns the other person off and/or get resentful.

For guys, you'll be much better off following something like the Married Man Sex Life Primer and improving yourself than going to highly feminized counseling sessions that in all likelihood won't take your needs as a man into consideration, or give it the weight it deserves.

Title	Marriage Counseling Experiences
Author	FemtoG
Upvotes	23
Comments	19
Date	October 28, 2013 6:22 PM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/TheRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/1pei58/marriage_counseling_experiences/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/TheRedPill/marriage-counseling-experiences.7520 https://theredarchive.com/post/7520