Toni, DH and I went after about 1.5 years of marriage. (We have now been married 17+years) The first session is usually an inventory of your past year. What bothers you, have there been any major upheavels in your life (birth, death, job change). THis will help the counselor find out where to concentrate. For example if one stress area is money, they can help budgeting. Ours (as I'm sure most really) turned to more "Learn how to TALK to each other" and "Learn how to LISTEN to each other". We learned to talk so we'd both (usually) listen. We learned that we learned from out parents - Good and Bad. It was HARD WORK. But since your DH is willing to go, and if both of you WORK on the assignments (yes there is usually assignments and homework), it will do wonders for each of you. Good luck Vickey

#1...post a message with a reference, but don't provide the link. Anyone that would do this would surely make a lousy spouse. Disinterested in nine others.

Marriage counselling can be very helpful even when a couple are really serious about sorting out problems. The idea that problems can be resolved by talking about them doesn't always work. What can happen is that you go round and round in circles covering the same ground but failing to reach a resolution. This in turn leads to a feeling that it is best to bury difficulties and not talk about them because talking leads to greater unhappiness. It highlights issues that cause the greatest hurt. In counselling a third party is brought into discussions. This person is trained to guide discussion so that it is constructive. If additional expertise is needed to help with specific problems then this is also available. For us counselling brought us back to the point of reliving what it felt like to fall in love all over again. A word of caution. Our first attempts at getting counselling was a disaster because neither of us related to the counsellor. We tried again elsewhere and found someone who was superb at listening and guiding. It's a case of 'If you don't at first succeed - try, try again.'

OK, I see your point about it not being fair to dump everything on my MIL. It would probably be painful for her to listen to us discuss our problems, and maybe we would tend to overshare. I wouldn't want her to feel that she has chosen sides or been unsupportive of one of us. And we would not have been discussing sex! that would definitely be awkward! But no problems there. And I wouldn't have considered it if there were any ugly secrets to be revealed (I always thought it was a mistake for dh's cousin to talk about her husband's affair. He seemed sincerely contrite, and wanted to try to work things out, but I think that everyone knowing the details made it harder for her to think of taking him back. Anyway, I digress..) We have very different parenting styles - he is the authoritative type, and I am firm, but non-confrontational. One of our children is very stubborn, emotional and passive-resistive, and it's dealing with this child that brings out dh and my differences. I love the Love and Logic parenting books by Foster Cline, but that style is the polar opposite of what dh does. Although I asked dh to read these books, which I found very helpful, he just doesn't ever get around to it. I tried to explain/summarize, but even to my ears the message didn't come across as very convincing. I copied a few pages last week, and asked him to just read that much (hoping to pique his interest) but he hasn't got around to that either. I'm not sure how to convince dh to change, but I feel like my love and respect for him slipping away every time I hear him shouting at our son. And finances - we are not in dire straits, but of course with four kids there is never enough money to buy all that we want. He has a hard time denying himself things he wants to buy, so he's working like crazy (sometimes 100+ hours per week) to make enough to keep us afloat. While I am grateful that he is not a deadbeat, I think we'd be stronger as a family with less money and more time together. And he probably does feel that he will be blamed for everything. I am so unhappy and frustrated lately, and I can't imagine that he is not unhappy, too. He says that he has no complaints about me (I must be perfect, right??) but I wonder how that can be true. When we talk, he appears to listen, but nothing ever changes, so I feel like he doesn't really value my thoughts and feelings. I think our issues have been around for awhile, but it's just recently that our finances have been tight enough, and our children challenging enough, that I'm really bothered. I was listening to a radio show on the way to work last week, and the host said that sometime it is pointless to try to change your spouse, who probably has had the same habits for years. In that case, he said, it is better to change the way you feel. I just can't imagine feeling good about our relationship the way it is now.