I would like to hear from those out there that have tried out Dr. Harley's telephone counseling. How was it? Did it help? How many sessions are needed to complete the treatment? I looked at the info on this site and it doesn't specify or even give an approximate # of sessions needed for good results. Let me give you some backround on my situation. After 11 years of a very loving marriage, my husband confronted me crying that he loves me deeply, but is not "in love" with me anymore. There is no other woman, it's not denial, we have all cards on the table. We still live together for our two small girls. There's no hate, no bitterness, he calls me from work to check on me because I'm an emotional mess, he's so caring but I think he's overworked, overstressed and confused and scared.

Thanks to all that reply
<img border="0" title="" alt="[Confused]" src="images/icons/confused.gif" />

Tried it once. A couple years back. Read a couple books. That was it. Spent another year in a miserable marriage, then spent $150K on a divorce. Best money I ever spent.

EX HUBBY

Your marriage may have been "miserable" and I can see why, your pessimism is the same.

HI MO169

Yes! My WH and I tried couseling with Steve (Because WH was to embarrased to have counseling with a woman and felt she would side with me, so he agreed to go with Steve.)
I had already been using plan A for a while and was at the point that I sought counseling with a Divorce Attorney. I had cought him in contact with OW three times. He was having a long distance emotional affair which quickly went from Chat room, IMing, to phoning. It was only by the grace of GOd and a Private Investigator that he was kept from going out to visit the OW.
My WH agreed to counseling with Steve because he knew I would leave him and he had no other choice if he was to save his marriage and family.

I had cought him and confronted him with his affair (he lied of course) however he could not stop the affair. He was into the emotional addiction and the affair had been going on for about 4 months by this time. I gave him a chance to change his behavior and get rid of the OW. However, as many have found out the WH/OW finds NC very difficult. I cought him in three other times of contact. I took prompt action, got a private investigator, put a software program on the computer to make him and our children more responibly in their surfing. Then I requested counseling with Steve.
The counseling started out well but WS lied the whole time. He was still in contact(in his fanasy) with the OW (but making things sound good to Steve that he was making a great effort to improve our marriage.) (NO effort CAN be made to improve a marriage if the fantasy of the OW is alive and in their hearts and minds)

Steve helped me greatly in getting through the
emotional hurt he explained that when a spouse in under the addiction of the OW it is like a drunk under the influence of alcohol. They are not the person you married, they do things that they don't remember and would not do if they were in a right frame of mind. I had to see beyond my hurt in order to help him through his addiction. I had to continue to be the mature person in order to keep my family together.
Well his addiction continued for almost three years.
At one point WS decided he did not want to pay for the counseling he thought he was wasting his money. (of course since he was lying his way through every session and not doing his homework why should he pay for it.) This was a big red flag that told me WH was still in contact with OW. We stoped the phone counseling with Steve. However I did get WH to go to one of the weekend retreats with Dr. Harley (when he was in one of his NC times with OW. This was very hard on me emotionally and it was one of the best things that we ever did. He got a BIG DOSE of Marriage Builders principles that weekend. He finally worked through his addiction of this OW and found out what a jewled princess she was! It took almost four years for WS to overcome his addiction and withdrawal. He still needs to address many other issued he brought into our marriage but it is a process one step at a time. I am still in hope of more counseling but time will tell if WS will join me.
Counseling is worth it IF YOU APPLY YOURSELF, even if your spouse is playing games. It is amazing the truth will eventually reap fruit, good or bad. We must decide how we are going to let the circumstance in our marriages effect us. We can always find something to improve in our own character. We can work on making us better even if our spouse doesn't want to join us. Don't let your spouse hold you back, go get counseling with or without them. This event in your marriage can be the catalyst to improving your marriage and yourself for a lifetime.
We found phone counseling worked well because he could be at work and I with the children and still have a conference call miles apart.
Counseling takes time. There is not a certain number of session. You go until you feel like you can handle the situation alone or together. The faster you understand/apply the principles the quicker your marriage/attitudes improves. If one applies the principles and the other spouse doesn't it is going to take longer. However, You must be determined in your heart to improve your situation and want to make it work. You can not change your spouse, you can only change you. You can take every situation, throw out the disrespectful judgements and improve yourself in the area of conflict to your betterment. The MB principles help renew ones mind and attitudes to treat other and oneself better. We must look at the situations in differnt eyes the MB principles help us renew our stinkin--thinkin
Please note: Watch for FLags. Your spouse may be in an emotion affair (even one sided on his part). (The grass is greener on the other side syndrom) These emotional fantsies can cause the spouse to have such intense confusion that the "not "in love" with me anymore." flag goes up. He is fighting his emotions because he might be focused outside the marriage and not inside on making the marriage better. Marriage Counseling will put a focus on improving both spouses words,communication,relationship and eventually your marriage.
Let mutual emotional truthand honesty be your goal, talk with your spouse and see where he is at emotionally with your relationship. Then suggest starting with reading some of the articles on this web site or one if Dr. Harly's books "Fall in LOve, Stay in Love" or "His Needs, Her Needs." Increase his Love Bank for you. Start making some deposits!
If your spouse will agree try to go to The Marriage Builders Weekend. It will be one of the best things you can do for your relationship and marriage if you want to grow together and not apart.
Best wishes in your emotional growth. I know the emotional pain your are going through (at this time is unbearable) but if you stay focused on improving yourself and the marriage you will be surprized at how much stronger you can become.
Best Wishes and God BLess

FaithAnn

Thank you for your reply. I know there's a MB weekend at the end of this month in Orlando. I guess all I can do at this point is ask him. I have to give so much credit to this website and all that have responded. Positive and negative replies have all been taken in and helped me cope.

There is no other woman,
Sadly, this is probably not so, especially with the fact that you have kids.

would like to hear from those out there that have tried out Dr. Harley's telephone counseling. How was it?
Great! Steve is really a great motivator!

Did it help?
Absolutely!

How many sessions are needed to complete the treatment? I looked at the info on this site and it doesn't specify or even give an approximate # of sessions needed for good results.
That is pretty difficult judge and "good results" is very vague.

You can get great results the first session or two IF you do what you need and understand exactly what it is you can expect to happen.

Also ,this is not "therapy" as much as it is developing a plan to save your marriage. You're not gonna simply pour your heart out and he says, "so how do you feel about that?"
It's about learning and developing behaviors which benefit a realationship and getting rid of those which are detrimental to relationships.
Also, you learn about what you can change (yourself) and what you cannot change (others).

Will this all save your marriage? Maybe/maybe not.
Will you get through all of this much, MUCH better? Absolutely!

I suggest you read "Surviving An Affair" (even if he is not having one. Gives a good understanding of relationships.
Also, "His Needs/Her Needs"

<small>[ January 16, 2004, 02:28 PM: Message edited by: Chris -CA123 ]</small>

Chris is right. When you call, you will get about 5, maybe 10, minutes to talk about what's wrong. The rest of the time, you will be discussing strategies to make it right.

Ex Hubby, with your attitude, I'm pretty sure your ex W is glad you spent the money, too.

Takola

Question for you. I keep seeing "currently recovering". I noticed that your date is back in 2002. This is really scaring me. I am ready to move forward with my H, and make the changes within myself to benefit us, and my relations with others, but he keeps saying that IF we do make it through, everything isn't going to be fine in a day, a week, a month or maybe even a year. Why can't we say from this day forward, we start anew and not think of it in such a time frame?

There are different levels of answers to your questions, so I will take them one at a time.

The quick answer as to why my signature line still says "Currently Recovering" is that I cannot edit my signature line. Since they last upgraded the bulletin board, signature lines have been limited to 256 characters. If I edit my signature line, I will lose most of it due to that. It is only as long as it is because it's grandfathered in, so to speak.

We are certainly recovered from that fiasco.

However, building a marriage takes time. It is not a microwave or DVD player that you take out of the box exactly as you wanted it and ordered it. When you marry, you have dug a hole to begin making a foundation and building a marriage on top. There are many levels to building, and, you should not expect to be complete with that building for a few months or even years.

Adjustments to each other always have to be made and there are always conflicts to solve.

My best advice to you is to skip the MB number altogether and contact Penny Tupy, who is my marriage coach, at Save Your Marriage Central. Through the MB counseling center you can talk to Jenn Chalmers (Dr. Harley's daughter) or Steve Harley (Dr. Harley's son). Jenn is very good, and I counseled with her. I'm not sure she is still taking clients. However, I do not recommend Steve.

m01069:

And to give the other side of the phone counseling, I counseled with Steve during my wife's affair (9 months or so). After my wife's affair ended, we tried joint counseling with Steve, but my wife didn't like it because Steve had done some counseling with her while she was in the affair. A year later, "we" (mainly wife) did counseling with Jenn.

I found Steve to be outstanding. I liked Jenn, but didn't find her approach as effective. I wonder if that was because we were in different "stages". And although I haven't counseled with Penny, I can certainly endorse her efforts both here at at her website---and she'll be a very much "by-the-book" Marriage Builder coach.

The bottom line is that they're all very good, very qualified counselors. I've heard very few poor results from people who have given it a try (Takola's poor report on Steve is one, and I know of one other---out of many dozens). I would encourage you to give it a try (either through MB or through saveyourmarriagecentral.com).

Actually, K, it's pretty sad on why I no longer recommend Steve. As you know, I have mentored many people on this board. I used to send them to Steve. Of the 20+ cases I sent to Steve, he did not recover a single one of the marriages. I have not counseled with Steve personally. The reason I no longer recommend him is because of sheer numbers and lack of success in the marriages, which actually didn't do my own credibility any good.

Tak,

Interesting point. Is Jenn doing substantially better, or do you think that Steve's cases were tougher from the start?

Chris would tell you that Steve is fantastic, but his marriage wasn't recovered. Heck, by the time he got started, he really never saw his wife again (if memory serves me correct).

I'd love to know if Steve, Jenn, Dr. H, and Cerri keep 'batting averages'---I believe that Dr. H does, because that's one of the metrics he uses to refine these techniques.

<small>[ January 22, 2004, 12:14 PM: Message edited by: K ]</small>

I have no idea if Jenn's numbers are better, as no one has reported back to me after counseling with her. They all seem to have chosen Steve or a third party. Since my own experiences with her were good, and I have no reason not to recommend her, I still do.

I do not know if Penny keeps exact numbers, but I was talking to her on the phone when I read your reply (she's my MC). She did tell me to post that all the couples who have stayed with her long-term have done exceptionally well.

Tak,

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">She did tell me to post that all the couples who have stayed with her long-term have done exceptionally well.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">That doesn't surprise me at all---because not only is Penny gifted and using a terrific program, but she has "couples" involved. I know of several individuals who counseled with Steve and really enjoyed it---but of that, only a few came out with restored marriages. But my belief was that this was due to having only one spouse invested in counseling (often times the other spouse was actively in an affair, with no indications of quitting it).

Of those 20+ people you sent to Steve---how many had both spouses involved in counseling??

Let's see.... probably 12-13 of them had some participation in counseling by the spouse. Meaning that the spouse had agreed to talk to Steve on more than one occassion. Probably 8-9 had active involvement by both spouses, for various reasons, meaning some agreed to the counseling for reasons of their own, such as convincing the other spouse that it was over.

However, since I personally, without having a pro involved, have helped recover such cases, I would expect a professional to be able to do so with much more of a success rate than 0%.

<small>[ January 22, 2004, 05:38 PM: Message edited by: *Takola* ]</small>

Thanks for the insight on counseling. I am not even certain if my H wants to save this marriage. He is so sad all the time and I don't know how to approach the subject of IF he even wants to save it.

I don't know how to approach the subject of IF he even wants to save it
So call an make an appt for yourself.
Your h doesn't have to be involved at this point.
Also, Steve or Jenn can help you to decide on what/how to approach him about doing it.