A year for me would be next September. I won't even think about going that long unless it's obvious I can turn her in plan A with more time...and I mean OBVIOUS. I need real progress to even go beyond March.

My wife did the same thing. Went back and forth between teenager and acting like she was going to reconcile. In the end she settled in the middle and sucked me along with her.

Btw, I understand that reconcile is possible after disliking your spouse, but my situation is difficult. She has to file paperwork in order to adopt our foster child (I know, how messed up is that) and if she doesn't she will loose the child. So my marriage is heading to divorce regardless. After divorce I'm not sure I want to try and work on it, as I could do much better for many reasons I won't get into.

I don't want to take over your thread, so I'll step out now, just want to make sure you don't end up like me in a 3 year long limbo that's ending in divorce.

I understand. That's what makes each situation a little different. Thanks for your advice, though. It's great when we try to help each other out in this forum.

I can't say much right now, but I think she may have started counseling.

I will try to confirm.

Confirmed.

Counseling with someone local?

Careful, falcon. The counselor will base everything on what she sees now and, likely, give her the "do whatever makes you happy" line. In other words, the counselor will hear nothing about the affair--only that you're a subpar husband and that she has been unhappy with you for longer than she's known you--and will use that information to formulate her "advice" to your WW.

Tell you what, ask your WW why she is starting counseling. Which answer do you think you'll hear?

1. I want to recover my marriage and fix this mess.

2. I just need to be happy with me before I can be happy with anyone else and need to get everything figured out before I can do anything.

#1 is proactive. #2 is, well, number two.

Falcon,

I can second everyhting prior. My W started IC alongside our own MC at the time.

All the IC did was discuss the past, our marital history (revised, of course), "reasons" for having an affair, etc.

Incredibly, I was lucky. My W went to her only 3X, quit seeing herself because, as my wife stated, "the IC can't undo what I did, and is doing NOTHING for me to help me save my marriage NOW".

AT BEST, counseling with an MB-principled might work...working with SH directly is optimal. One session with SH did my W more good than any/all counseling combined.

Most of it is all a waste.

OK...let me stop everyone right here...it's not MC it's behavioral health. She's seeing someone about her root issue, self-esteem. I appreciate the comments, though, and I would be very leery of her going to MC unless I knew who they were and what philosophy they go by.

But thanks for the all hands on deck.

The counseling she is getting, I hope, will get her over the core issue that caused or mess. If she does, then we can address our marriage. She'll still need to be willing to reconcile, but that was never going to happen if she didn't get help for herself.

IC is nothing but affirmation of what she is doing, why, what makes her happy,follow your heart, etc.

This is not a good thing, no matter how you spin it(behavior health for self esteem).
You are making excuses for her.

Ask her the question above, answer #1 is good, anything else is bad.

And that's the problem that we're talking about, Falcon, as the results can be what you're NOT looking for.

MC: So what brings you here today?

WW: Ugh, I'm just so unhappy with the way things have turned out. Through no fault of my own, my marriage is in the toilet and I can barely function half of the day. It's been like this for so long and I'm just so tired of being tired and my husband keeps pushing me to just "get better", my parents don't support anything that I want and it's driving me nuts trying to put on this happy face and keep up appearances while I'm just really dying inside and the poor spotted owl in Alaska is suffering and the poor starving kids in Africa keep me up at night and and and....

MC: So have you thought about just getting happy with yourself before trying to be happy with someone else? Maybe a short separation would be in order to give you time to find yourself, regroup and figure out what you want in life. We sell road maps in the lobby to help you find yourself.

WW: Yep! I feel so much better now that you've validated my feelings without me having to actually be honest with you about anything!

Um...I disagree entirely. This is marriage counseling you are referring to. She is seeking psychological help for her issues. She actually has a hand written note about her issues to go along with the emails that I had sent, and her father sent, that discussed what we had seen in her. She is seeking help on her self-esteem issues not the marriage. This step is critical, because she has, in her actions and writing, acknowledged now that she has esteem issues and is seeking help on them. She must get over this issue or no amount of MB will fix our marriage as she will always be vulnerable to another affair.

I am 100% in agreement about MC (individual or couple). It's a waste unless done by those who are well versed in MB and follow it well. This is not the type of "counseling" she is seeing.

BTW, I do understand the possible ramifications if the counselor she has chosen chooses to focus on the marriage as a source of her unhappiness versus her self-esteem. But someone knows what they are doing will focus on the root cause of her unhappiness, not the corollary cause. At some point, I will push to find out more. But based on what she took with her, it appears the main focus is our comments on her self-esteem. We'll see if she has chosen wisely on the counselor front, but she MUST get over her self-esteem issues, or our marriage is toast.

I am not talking about marriage counseling. I am talking about individual counseling (life coach, behavior counselor, etc).
That line of counseling is full of people who tell you to follow your heart, what makes you happy, no accountability.

You are very defensive, all here are trying to warn you of pitfalls and themes that have been repeated here endlessly.

You are correct, if she chose wisely it may be beneficial. I give it about a 2 to 5% chance she chose wisely.

I'm defensive because I know she must do this. What other choice is there? She also appears to be seeking help from God, which, if she is listening, will probably do her more good, but I'm not counting on her doing that. If she is getting bad advice, I will find out and I will do my best to confront and change it, but unless there is some other option to fix her problem, she was lost too me anyways.

If you have a different solution, please let me know.

I would prepare for Plan B

Been prepared.

This is not good. I know all too well where this ends up.

In a nutshell the way that councelors deal with self esteem isn't to promote change as that is against their ethics to not sway people, instead they will walk your wife through being ok with who she is which is the last thing you want.

Read in SAA where Sue went to counseling and how it made everything worse.

My wife went to counciling because she had an 'identity crisis.' Do you think she is any closer to reconciliation? Nope. Instead she learned how she has the right to be as independant as she wants as long as it is in the name of who she is or who she wants to become.

IC rarely makes people interdependent, it makes them independant which is another thing that strains the marriage. Go read about the co-dependency movement in the arcticals section for more information.

What kind of counselor was she seeing?

I've been reading up on the professional literature out there and articles on self-esteem therapy, and most of them talk about working on the thought process that make a person have negative thoughts of themselves. I do know that there are bad ones out there that have their clients just do what they think will make them happy, and that will make things worse. The ones who do their jobs work on fixing the core thought process that makes a person not like themselves.

I just finished reading th article on co-dependency. I think there is some conflict on what she needs versus that article, so I have emailed the good Doc to see what he says. The thinking here is that if she continues to always be concerned about her weight, and kind find a way to become comfortable with herself, she'll never be happy on a general basis, and will always have issues with filling my SF needs, especially in terms of wanting to do it, as opposed to feeling obligated to do it for my needs.

Hopefully, he'll answer my question and guide me on this. I am definitely in agreement that any advice that says you should never want to make others happy as part of your own happiness, is bad advice. But I also believe that you have to be confident in yourself and who you as so you make sound decisions on who to do things for/with, and how.