SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I always thought they were more or less the same thing, but it turns out they are not. I often see it recommended here not to do marriage counseling early on for couples dealing with infidelity, and from what I just read I can see why that's probably good advice.

Marriage counseling focuses on improving communication and strengthening the relationship before facing challenges. Geared more toward engaged couples and newlyweds. Usually shorter term.

Couples counseling is more for those wanting to strengthen emotional connections and/or dealing with ongoing issues, including infidelity. It's supposed to be suitable for any stage in a relationship, including long term partnerships. Usually longer term.

Like I said, I've often seen it recommended here to avoid MC for couples newly affected by infidelity, but haven't seen much said about CC. I'm curious what some of the more seasoned members here feel about the difference between the 2, and if CC is generally also considered a bad idea in the earlier stages of recovering from an affair. Dealing with infidelity is supposed to be in the CC wheelhouse.

[This message edited by Pogre at 12:10 PM, Friday, November 14th]

Speaking from my personal experience only, I think there has to be a demonstrated genuine commitment to the marriage on the part of the wayward spouse before joint counseling is attempted. Again, my personal experience only, but active unrepentant waywards can weaponize the process to do further damage to include manipulation of the counselor.

And I was way too traumatized to be put in that situation when I discovered EX WH’s extreme duplicity. Consummate liar that he is, he premeditatedly used the process to the point where the therapist was saying "I don’t know who to believe"….Well let’s see, I had pictures of him cheating…
There is also that for the process to work, both marital/couples parties need to be on team marriage—working together for the marriage. I am not saying this is the case with every single active wayward, but I can say that I consider cheating to be defection. I am not gonna put a Benedict Arnold on my marriage team ever again.

PS historically Benedict Arnold led some very successful battles on behalf of the Colonies until he decided to change sides. History suggests he did so because he "did not feel recognized". Well, well, well…

Oh, I agree that both people have to be on board with the marriage before any kind of joint counseling should be considered. If both are on the same page, then it would seem that a good CC with experience in dealing with infidelity could be helpful. That is unless they're the type of counselor who will shift blame toward the BS. Which as far as I know, might be the the norm with a CC as well as a MC.

I have no experience with either. Like I said, up until this morning I assumed they were just 2 different words for the same thing. My WW has been nudging for us to go to CC, and she's the one who told me there's a difference when I expressed my reservations about MC. I didn't know that so I looked it up. We're 7 months out from d day and have made amazing progress on our own. She's on board, and agrees with me if we ever did encounter a therapist who tries to shift blame to me, we would walk out.

[This message edited by Pogre at 2:59 PM, Friday, November 14th]

Hmmm ... I always thought the CC was developed in the late '60s and '70s to mean 'MC for unmarried couples living together'.

The biggest problem with MC after d-day is that MCs are trained in some sort of systems theory, one of the axioms of which is that problems in a relationship are due to the system that the partners developed unwittingly. IOW, the theory is that an A occurred because of something in the way the partners relate to each other.

Many BSes think, rightfully IMO, that the WS cheated because of their own issues, not because of M issues. It follows, then, that MC can be helpful if the MC starts treatment by addressing the betrayal first and who doesn't look at the system until the A is pretty much fully addressed.

Our MC started by asking me what I felt and thought. She validated a lot of my thinking and all of my feeling. She helped me understand that ending the M could be a great solution for me as long as I chose it mindfully. R, too, could be great, if I chose it mindfully. She confronted my W again and again on her fucked up thinking. It wasn't until after I had settled down into a new equilibrium that any relationship issue other than the A was addressed. IMO, our MC helped me a lot in my healing.

If our MC had started asking how we both contributed to the A, I expect it would have delayed my healing, and I might not have realized it until way after the fact.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 4:59 PM, Friday, November 14th]

There isn’t a one size fits all, but there are odds.

Odds are, jumping into MC or CC or whatever you want to call it, the counselor more times than not wants to assign some blame to the BS. Which is always just plain false. Show me any marriage problem that can exist and I’ll show you a couple that has that problem, yet neither one cheated.

IC is recommended for the WS at first, because to put it bluntly, for them to figure out what is screwed up in their head that allowed them to cheat and to start working on fixing that. Once that’s dealt with, then the WS is in better shape to make use of MC.

This also gives the BS some time to calm down, think clearly and decide if they even WANT to continue that marriage.

[This message edited by OhItsYou at 5:28 PM, Friday, November 14th]

Our MC started by asking me what I felt and thought. She validated a lot of my thinking and all of my feeling. She helped me understand that ending the M could be a great solution for me as long as I chose it mindfully. R, too, could be great, if I chose it mindfully. She confronted my W again and again on her fucked up thinking. It wasn't until after I had settled down into a new equilibrium that any relationship issue other than the A was addressed. IMO, our MC helped me a lot in my healing.

I've seen you talk about your experience with MC before, and IIRC she was also your IC? I may be recalling someone else, but in either case it sounds like you found a very good MC who dealt with it very well, and really did help you and your W through a bad situation. Unfortunately, I've also seen that those good MCs can be few and far between.

You might be right about CC. Or I suppose it's possible it may have started out the way you described and evolved to where it is now. This morning is the first time I've even thought to explore the differences, and I just went with the DuckDuckGo AI description. I haven't done a deep dive on it, but thought it might make a interesting topic for discussion here.

Doesn't matter what you call it.

If you are both in the room, the relationship is the client.

The problem is the counselor is generally most interested in perpetuating the relationship even if the best answer is actually divorce.

The other problem is CC or MC relies on both people being honest. A still lying WS cannot actually participate in CC/MC. So until they unravel their deception (and their internal deception!) it's a waste of time.

You will get a combination of the counselor trying to get you to each see the other person's point of view, and the person that has been a proven emotional abuser just continuing to lie and steamrolling the abused person.

I don't have the perfect analogy, but a CC/MC is not a referee. They are more like a coach for both of you. If you are playing a game of one on one, the coach might say "can't you see how BS might think it's unfair that you keep fouling and saying you aren't?" and the WS will say "From my perspective, I'm not fouling." And instead of being called on that bullshit the MC will say "BS, what do you think of that, are you sure it's really a foul?"

We got lucky with our counselor -- who listed both couples and marriage counseling on his list of things he worked on.

Of course, he didn't tell us up front, but near the end of our scheduled sessions, he revealed he was a divorced, single dad, betrayed spouse.

So, in the 'lucky' part, he held my wife accountable for her actions, without adding guilt or shame to her path back and he had no care in the world about our outcome. If divorce was the better choice, he would have gone for that too. His goal was get busy rebuilding or move the #$@^ on.

We both appreciated that, since we didn't want to aim for an outcome either, we we're just trying to find the healthiest way to heal and then see what happened.

I hadn't checked in a while, he may have retired after 40-years in the biz, but he helped us. We needed better tools for communication regardless of how things turned out, tools that have helped me with other relationships. Dudes in my day didn't get a lot of coaching about letting anyone on the planet know how we were feeling.