Please, if anyone out there has had a succesful experience with a MC in the San Francisco Bay Area, post here or message me your recommendations.

I need to find a therapist who coaches and guides us to the path of recovery and rebuilding our Love, and *NOT* someone who takes us down the path of facilitating a divorce!

Help! Still hurting...

I was wondering if anyone have answers to this. I'm desperately looking for the same. Thank you.

Go to the source, Steve Harley. OR, if your marriage is not in conflict, you can go through the online program where they assign you a coach who is directly supervised by Dr Harley. The coach will take you and your wife through the weekly lessons.

We signed up for the Online Seminar and it saved our marriage. We had gone through a lot of marriage counseling in the past, and in the end, it turned out to be useless. Worse, it was actually destructive. Destructive because, at the time, we THOUGHT we were being helped, but it did nothing to build a romantic passionate safe marriage.

If you have a reluctant spouse, then try the phone coaching, as MelodyLane suggested.

Thank you so much. I'm so happy to hear that you have a successful recovery. How do I go to the source, Steve Harley? Please help. I feel so helpless.

CCM, click on the coaching center link at the top and you will find the 800 # to call. It also gives you information about phone counseling that is helpful.

Here's the link to the Coaching Center Click Here

Note: The MB coaching center doesn't take insurance and a lot of plans do not cover the fee of about $225 per session.

HOWEVER, the cost is still worth it. The coaching is very focused.

Consider: my H and I paid $85 an hour for about 9 months of counseling. I don't have the financial records for this anymore, but we probably spent a couple of thousand dollars. The sessions were painful and didn't really help, because they concentrated on things like conflict resolution and how to communicate. But not the really important stuff - like how to fall in love again or how to have a safe marriage. So we spent all that money and still didn't have what we have now.

You have a couple of options:

1.) Call the coaching center
2.) Email the radio show to get free counseling with Dr. Harley and his wife (mbradio@marriagebuilders.com)
3.) Start a thread and tell us your problem. You will find that this place is very helpful. The posters here share the Marriage Builders plan for a successful marriage.

Thank you, MelodyLane.

MelodyLane, I just read about it. May I ask how many sessions you and your spouse took, and was it as effective since it was via telephone? Did you supplement these telephone sessions with another counselor in your area face-to-face? (btw, I'm the wife).

Thank you so much for your help. I really hope I can get to where you are. I pray for this and will do anything in my power to get there.

My H and I never did the phone coaching. We went through Dr Harley's MB course. We started by going to a local counselor at our church and he told us all about Marriage Builders and sent us here. Even so, the well meaning counselor did not really help us much other than sending us to Marriage Builders. I don't think he really understood MB because he missed quite a bit of things that kept us stuck for a long time.

We did go through Dr Harley's MB course in 2007 [now called the online program] and it made an amazing difference in our marriage. They gave us personality tests that pinpointed some problems right away.

In my opinion, you have several options.

Option #1: If you and you husband are both motivated and very disciplined, you can do the program on your own at home. Depending on the issues in your marriage, you would get the books, Lovebusters, His Needs, Her Needs OR Surviving an Affair AND the workbook Five Steps to Romantic Love. You should probably start with Lovebusters and go through the lessons in the book. You can supplement this by listening to the free radio show every week day AND by posting on the forum.

Option #2: if one of you is not motivated, I would suggest doing the above AND counseling with Steve Harley. Steve can often motivate an unmotivated person

Option #3: if you and your husband are having trouble following the program, I would try the online program. This is what many of us have used here and it is extremely effective. They don't just claim that it works, they actually give you surveys to monitor your progress. The GOAL of the program is to restore the romantic love in your marriage. They send you a full complement of books and CDs and assign you a coach who works with you every week on your lessons. You have daily access to Dr Harley on his forum. That course costs about $1000.

So, those are your options depending on the state of your marriage.

Personally, I would not waste any time on marriage counseling. We see the fallout from them every week on this forum. They don't have the slightest idea how to save a marriage and actually have a higher personal divorce rate than the general population. They have an 84% failure rate and are destructive to marriages.

LongWayFromHome,

May I ask if you did the phone coaching as well and how many sessions did you do? I'm desperate, have been going to a local therapist, thought it was helping, but it wasn't.

If there are any local therapists in the SF Bay Area whom anyone can recommend to supplement the MB phone coaching, can you please message your recommendations?

CCM

CCM, can we help you with the problem on the forum? If you described the problem, we would know how to direct you.

My husband is a very very nice, caring man, but had an affair (mainly due to my absence emotionally and I have not given him physical attention). It was too late when I realized it. He has tried ending the affair but I feel that he is addicted and couldn't let go. The other woman is very aggressive and convinces him that she is better for him than I am. I recently found out that they have been seeing each other again. He told me he isn't sure if he can end it. I'm so hurt as I love him so so much.

Thanks for the summary. The reason I asked is because counseling will not help in such a situation. When there is an affair, it is of no use. So, your first step is to go into Plan A for a couple of weeks and focus on busting up his affair.

The most important step you can take in busting up his affair is exposure. Affairs thrive on secrecy so exposure is ruinous. It ruins the fantasy of the affair and motivates the adulterer to be more willing to work on his marriage.

Once the affair is exposed to everyone concerned, the next step would be to separate and remove yourself entirely until he ends his affair. Most affairs don't last [95% die within 2 years] so the goal is to remove yourself until the affair is over to avoid the serious emotional and physical damage that comes from affairs.

Please go read the exposure thread linked in my signature for directions. I would also get the book Surviving an Affair as soon as you can. It is available on kindle.

Do they work together? Is she married?

I'm so sorry to hear this. This is a very similar experience to mine, with an affair that my H kept burying deeper each time I found more evidence, and an OW who would not give up.

My dear, you don't need a marriage therapist in the Bay area. You need to expose this affair to OW's husband and parents, their employers if they work together, your children and both your extended families, especially parents. If you are churchgoer, tell the priest. You need to ask for all these people's help in ending the affair and saving your marriage.

Then, if you do not get proof that the affair stops immediately (such as OW moving away, leaving the job, selling her house, leaving the country), you need to go to Plan B next week. There is no more time for Plan A if exposure does not produce immediate results. You have been in Plan A for far too long already.

How long have you been married? How old are your kids? Is OW married? Kids? how did she and your H meet, and how did they conduct their affair? Did they have sex at work, or in hotels, or while he travelled for work? Is she an old girlfriend? Does she live near you?

Thank you MelodyLane. I have read about the exposure piece and understand the importance of it, but my husband and I are very close and talk through almost everything. Exposing makes me feel like I'm breaking our bond and I'm doing something behind his back. I understand that I shouldn't worry about that if I want to save our marriage, but it is still something that is very hard for me to do.

They worked together, but she moved to another company about 5 months ago (still close geographically).

CCM, what you have described here is an extreme example of enabling and you sound like the abused wife who is covering for her wife beating husband. If he were shooting up heroin or stealing money from his employer would you enable him in this way?

What you are doing is not compassion, it is helping him destroy you, your marriage and himself. What your husband is doing to you is as traumatic as rape or physical assault. And you are helping him do this.

You can't save a marriage if you are an enabler.

You and your husband might be "close" but he is betraying you in the worst possible manner.

The longer you enable his affair, the harder it will be to save your marriage and the more likely he will leave you for her. It doesn't have to be that way.