Looking for an outside authority to manipulate your spouse into acting right is a waste of money, brains and time.

Men who seek marriage or pastoral counseling are in the bargaining phase who have not yet come to grips with their own reality.  Husbands are desperate to restore their marriage and avoid divorce.  The fundamental problem: You have no power, and no position to bargain from. You’re asking your wife to authorize you to lead, when leaders don’t need permission.  Women respect men they look up to.  When you ask a third party to be that authority, she’s looking down at you because it's validation seeking behavior.  She’s disgusted by it.  By this point she’s lost all attraction and respect for you.

Counseling is not going to change anyone.  You are who you are and she is who she is. Thinking counseling is going to solve your problem is kicking the can further down the road so you don't have to face the reality that the situation is not salvageable for many reasons.  The principle one being you cannot control her, but she can control you. There is no magic for your situation, nothing the counselor can tell you or your wife that will cause an epiphany and result in the fantasy either of you have for a family.

Sex (lack thereof) is the number one reason men seek counseling

If your wife has already disconnected from your marriage where you have infrequent sex or a dead bedroom, counseling isn't going to help. She's just further along in the detachment process than you, to the point where she thinks the relationship is irreconcilable. When she says “We’ve grown apart” or “I love you but I’m not in love with you”, she's basically saying: "I think our marriage is subtracting value from my life, therefore terminating my marriage will add net positive value."

You cannot negotiate genuine desire. Once you start negotiating, you lose your position in so many different ways because you are willing to compromise. You’re willing to say, “Okay, I know that you don’t really desire me so I’m willing to do more dishes, I’m willing to do more stuff around the house, I’m willing to negotiate with you. What’s it going to take for you to actually want to fuck me?” Which is precisely the thing that turned off your wife even more.  She doesn’t want a man who has to be told what to do like an instruction manual. She wants a man that just “gets it”.

When you negotiate desire, you are only negotiating obligated compliance which results in both parties resenting each other. Ever had starfish sex, duty sex or heard the most emasculating four words ever: “Are you done yet?” That's negotiated desire.  Arousal is not a choice.  You can’t logic her into bed because attraction is not an intellectual decision.

The Gottman Method marriage counseling is negotiated desire.  I’m picking on him because he’s the guy who trains the industry.

If a woman initiates counseling…

She wants to change the man because everything is all his fault.  She is treating you like dirt, blaming her own bad behavior on you, and considers any response you have to her bad behavior far worse than the bad behavior itself.  Women attend counseling to validate their viewpoints and put the burden of the relationship on their husband to fix.  She’s unable to take responsibility or acknowledge accountability of her actions because in her mind she’s done nothing wrong. 

No matter how many reasons there might be for a woman to be happy in her marriage, if she has visceral contempt for her husband, she can’t control how she feels about him.  The real reasons will not be discussed. She will not admit to being selfish and self-centered for blowing up the family. Instead she will describe an epiphany of beliefs that were present but suppressed the entire time.  She’ll gaslight you into believing you’re the one who changed, not her.  Women will promote marriage counseling just so she can tell her friends she ‘tried everything’ before leaving him to be with someone else. 

Women only stick with marriage counseling as long as the counselor agrees with them. And the marriage counseling industry knows this, so they cater to women.  Once the finger starts pointing at her, it's over.  Your spouse won’t do any “homework” because your spouse thinks she’s not the problem.  She chooses the way she feels and no one can change that. Marriage counselors are like churches. People go to the one that tells them what they want to hear.

Marriage counseling industry is a sham for men

Women: Communication is key.

Men: What’s wrong?

Women: Nothing.

"Communicating” is a never-ending downward spiral to the bottom of mostly the husband’s wallet.  You don’t need to learn how to "communicate."  It’s validation seeking wrapped up in equality. If you’re expressing a grievance or asking your wife to act right, the battle is already over and all you’re doing is displaying your helplessness in the situation. 

The YouTube comedy sketch “It’s Not About The Nail” illustrates this perfectly.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg

Communication gives all the judgement powers to your wife.  You’re talking because something bothers you. You’re talking because you want your wife to start acting better. If she wanted to act better, she already would be. But instead, she’ll turn it around on you and escalate using different tools:

·      She’ll play the tone card.  You didn’t communicate well enough.  You were too mean. 

·      She’ll make up an argument to distract you. 

·      She’ll play wounded trying to make you feel guilty.

You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars complaining to some guy in a sweater vest that "it's like she expects me to read my mind".  He’s only going to tell you to "listen to your partner."  So why spend $200/hour on some guy to tell you this?  Marriage counseling is designed to prolong the time spent and maximize billing from the counseling industry.  It starts with the marriage counselor.  Then each spouse gets a separate therapist.  Then they all meet together.  Then the woman files for divorce.

Counseling focuses on venting about the past and many counselors are not even schooled in action oriented approaches. They encourage the wife to pile on to “deload” all her feelings. Then they train the man to meekly listen, and to "reflect" what the wife is continually baying all while the wife continues to pile on week after week. Meanwhile the man's balls shrink because it’s a humiliating and emasculating experience for men.  That in turn makes him even more unattractive to his wife.  Marriage counselors will do nothing about this dynamic.  Mainstream relationship therapy has failed men, telling them they aren’t sufficient and that there’s nothing they could have done to improve their situation.  But they still should have tried harder.

The one outlier where you should consider marriage counseling…

If you suspect your wife of undiagnosed mental health problems, then you can use marriage counseling as a covert way to document that.  By mental health problems, I mean you suspect her of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) or Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).  By their very nature, personality disorders are very difficult to diagnose.  Trying to get anywhere with a diagnosis during a divorce is a Sisyphean task.  So you need to make progress before that.

Ask her to go to marriage counseling, then choose a counselor who will give each of you the MMPI-2 to assess for mental health issues before the counseling actually begins. This is essentially a way to trick her into revealing her mental instability, while simultaneously getting a professional witness on your side about how crazy she is. 

This is an advanced topic that requires much more discussion than what can be covered here and there are subreddits dedicated to it.  I recommend you read the book “Splitting, Second Edition: Protection Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissitic Personality Disorder”.  You need to prepare and protect yourself for the battle of your life.

The Only Way Out is Through…

 You feel trapped in your marriage.  Every man seeks to understand the forces that drew him into the downward spiral of his marriage. You are in the middle of an internal civil war between your intellect and emotions.  You assume you're the cause of the marriage falling apart even if you felt like you did your best.  You’ve spent years subjugating your emotions to your ideals and it’s undermined your resolve to leave. You have to sort through an immense, convoluted mixture of traditional and conventional notions about relationships, sexuality, and how you treat the people close to you. For reasons so subtle that they almost defy explanation, you’re seeking permission to dump her and walk away.  Intellectually you know this is crazy but your emotions are fighting you.  

Ask yourself this: "What happens if I accept that she will never change?" I realized that despite the damage being done to our marriage my then wife would always have reasons why her behavior was more important than our marriage. Perform a cost-benefit analysis on your marriage:

  1. What are the benefits to staying marriage?

  2. What are the costs of staying married?

  3. What are the benefits to getting a divorce?

  4. What are the costs of getting a divorce?

I accepted that it made sense to divorce and move on.  Because the point of marriage isn’t to endure it. There is no prize for making a miserable marriage last a long time. Marriage is supposed to be a partnership cemented by attraction, affection, respect and love that you enter into to make it easier for both of you get through life together. It’s like you become a team of horses, and you both help pull the wagon, and it’s easier with two than with one. But being yoked in a team with a partner that isn’t pulling is worse than having no partner at all.

Marriage requires two committed people working together in lockstep while divorce only takes one dissatisfied spouse.  Your marriage is over. You are getting a divorce. No amount of fawning or pleading with your wife is going to change the situation. If you think reconciliation is on the table, then you are being irrational.

Don’t use the excuse of marriage counseling as a way to “gently” approach divorce with your wife to avoid conflict. Talking to her about it will do nothing other than tip your hand and she will use it against you. In the eight years I’ve been helping men through divorce, I can’t recall the last time someone reported a marriage counselor reduced conflict in a contested divorce proceeding. I’m sure it happens - somebody is going to win the lottery, yet it’s probably not going to be you.

Instead, spend the money on a divorce attorney. Here’s why you need an attorney and how to find one in your area: https://www.reddit.com/r/Divorce_Men/comments/1c2n16i/fundamentals_you_need_a_family_law_attorney/

Go to personal therapy instead…

Don’t confuse marriage counseling with the benefits of personal therapy. Go see a therapist yourself for a few sessions, preferably one that practices Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, work through a Cost-Benefit Analysis for these matters and learn how simple tools can help you on your own. 

There are two frequent issues shared by men in this subreddit that need to be confronted and addressed before your divorce is final.  Otherwise your wife will steamroll you and take everything:

1.   Covert contracts. "If only I washed more dishes then she would have loved me." The book "No More Mr. Nice Guy" explains this in depth, written by an actual psychologist with 20 years of experience from his practice.

2.   The inability to set and enforce boundaries. Every wonder why you felt pushed around in the marriage? It's because you couldn't enforce boundaries. The book "When I Say No I Feel Guilty" has been around 50 years and is a must-read. This is super important to digest and internalize before you ever sign divorce papers, else you're going to get steamrolled and screwed there too.

Both of those books were immensely helpful to me get 50% parenting time.

I hope this resource has been helpful to you.