If you’ve discovered your husband’s lies or infidelity, will marriage counseling help? What you need to know about the best marriage counseling near me for couples.

Did you know that most couples who are seeking counseling are dealing with emotional abuse? To find out if your husband is using any one of the 19 different types of emotional abuse, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

Do We Need Marriage Counseling?

Are you considering marriage counseling because you just discovered your husband’s been lying to you. If you recognize that couple therapy is contraindicated for your specific situation, but are desperate for solutions, or at least support, please recognize that your emotional safety is the priority.

Rather than focusing on helping your partner recognize their harmful behavior, you can focus on establishing emotional and physical regulation and safety for yourself.

Consider:

• Listening to The Free Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast to understand more about what’s going on in this situation.


• Scheduling an Individual Session with a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Coach to determine what you need to meet your own basic needs, including sleep, hydration, and nutrition.


• Attending a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session to process your trauma and find strength in community

It can be devastating to realize that addiction marriage counseling will likely make the situation worse.

To discover if you’re emotionally abused, take this free emotional abuse quiz.

Transcript: Best Marriage Counseling Near Me for Couples

Anne: It’s just me today. So many women wonder about marriage counseling. Women in our community often ask our coaches or ask me, “I need a good couple therapist. Who should I go to?” And that’s what I’m going to talk about today. When it comes to women seeking couple therapy or marriage counseling. These are the two scenarios I see the most often.

Scenario 1: Unaware of Husband’s Actions

Anne: Number one when a woman is unaware that her husband secretly uses explicit material, has affairs or hooks up with women from online dating apps. Usually the woman isn’t aware that her husband is doing this. She just knows something’s wrong in her marriage. When couples are having problems, people usually recommend marriage counseling. And because this is the most common recommendation, of course, she’s going to think that marriage counseling will help.

Scenario 2: Wife’s Involvement in Therapy

Anne: And number two, the wife convinces the husband to go to therapy, his own therapy. But then when she doesn’t see a difference or feels like he’s getting worse. She’ll think, well maybe if I’m involved, then I’ll see the improvements I’m looking for.

When Marriage Counseling For Couples Isn’t Advised

Anne: I have a master’s degree in education. And abuse educators like me don’t advise marriage counseling in any way, shape or form. Some women are confused, because the rare abuse program asks for your involvement, meaning the victims. So the therapist can get the truth about what’s going on. Why does a so-called good abuse program want the wife’s involvement? It’s because they know that the abuser will continue to lie and manipulate the therapist.

They also know that if she’s not involved, he’s not going to go. Which is like the biggest red flag right there. I’ve interviewed over 300 betrayal trauma victims on my podcast and in our community. And due to their reports about the harm done to them in both scenarios. I don’t advise. Any of the following: couple therapy, marriage counseling, suggesting your husband get therapy, or being involved in his treatment in any way.

Even if you have your therapist, and your abusive husband’s therapist talk to each other. I do not recommend that either. I’ll talk about what I do recommend near the end of the podcast. It’ll become really obvious why I don’t recommend marriage counseling, ever.

Five Requirements For Effective Marriage Counseling

Anne: As I talk about the five things that need to be true in order for marriage counseling to be effective.

Requirement 1: Knowing the Truth

Anne: Everyone involved needs to know the truth about the source of the conflict and agree on the source of the conflict.

So in on a regular marriage counseling situation. It might be. That he likes golf and she hates golf. And that’s it. That is the source of the conflict, but he golfs a lot, and she doesn’t want him to golf a lot. And he’s like, yeah, that is the source of the conflict. I mean, the truth is out there.

Requirement 2: Honest Identification of Conflict

Anne: Both partners willingly, honestly, and humbly identify their contribution to the conflict without needing to be convinced of it by someone else. So no one is trying to impose their interpretation on one of the other people. And they both willingly, honestly, and humbly identify their contribution.

Requirement 3: Healthy Relationship Expectations

Anne: Both partners have healthy expectations for the relationship. So in regular marriage counseling, it might be that spending two nights together a week is healthy. But expecting your partner to be with you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, is not healthy.

Requirement 4: Consistent Demonstration of Responsibilities

Anne: Both partners have consistently demonstrated they actually do. So this is something that you’ve seen with your eyeballs, not something that they talk about. They actively actually do childcare, household chores, and relationship management independently. Without prompting or oversight from the other. So this would mean he takes care of the kids without being asked, without being managed.

He can do household chores without being managed. He takes the initiative to actively participate in the marriage, in his child’s life. And the upkeep of the household, grocery shopping, cleaning. You know, all that stuff.

Requirement 5: Improving Communication & Intimacy

Anne: The reason the couple will attend marriage counseling is to improve their communication skills, their conflict resolution skills or intimacy skills. It’s not to address his abuse, his lying, or his affairs.

So if a man is a explicit materials user and has affairs, inappropriately texts coworkers, or been lying to you for years. If he’s been blaming you to manipulate you and exploit you and you have betrayal trauma from infidelity. None of those five things I just said can be true.

Marriage Counseling Should Never Be Recommended In These Circumstances

Number one, because he’s purposefully lying in manipulating you and everyone else to avoid the true source of the conflict, his explicit content use, his lies or his double life.

Number two, he’s never willingly honestly, or humbly identified, that he is the source of the conflict. But his choices are the source of the conflict. In fact, he’s been hiding it from you on purpose. Gaslighting you so that you don’t discover it.

Number three, due to his explicit content use. He doesn’t have healthy expectations. If he expects you to look like the women in the content look, that’s not healthy. If he views you as an object, he’ll expect you to do what he wants. Like don’t ask questions. That’s not a healthy expectation. If he’s an exploiter, he’s going to see the relationship as a series of transactions.

He goes to work, you give him it, or he brings home a paycheck. And you manage the children in household chores, the relationship, and everything else. That’s a transactionship. That’s not a relationship.

Number four, if he has an exploitative character. The likelihood of him without you managing it for him, managing childcare, household tasks, any of that stuff, grocery shopping. The likelihood of him repairing the relationship, planning dates, or starting hard conversations is almost zero. He might do these things to groom you while he’s trying to achieve a goal. But once that goal was achieved, he’ll stop. So he doesn’t consistently do any of these things.

The Fifth Reason These Requirements Fail In Abusive Relationships

Anne: And number five, as you’re thinking about couple therapy in this scenario, if you’re thinking about marriage counseling. You don’t want to go to therapy to improve communication skills, because your communication is fine. Your conflict resolution skills, your intimacy skills are fine. So, if you’re not thinking, Hey, I need to improve my intimacy skills or my conflict resolution.

If you just want to stop him from abusing you, or you want to figure out what’s going on. Then number five is not true. And r addiction marriage counseling will not w