If marriage counseling doesn't work as a last resort, do you call it quits?

Have you only been seeing one marriage counselor? I wouldn’t jump the boat so fast based on one bad experience with counseling. If your current therapist isn’t helping but you both still want to make the relationship work I would at least try finding a different one before I started filing the divorce papers.

My ex husband and I saw two counselors who couldn’t come up with anything much so we decided to go with our guts, preserve our friendship and dissolve the marriage. Years later we are still best friends and feel we made the right decision.

Well, if you can’t make it work without help, and you can’t make it work with help, what other options are there?

Unless you are willing to try a new counselor or maybe some type of group and you don’t believe you two can do it on your own, yes, it’s probably time to call it quits.

It’s not an easy step, but it’s something that you both need to agreed on, or at least one of you really has to know that they are finished. I’ve been there, I don’t envy you. Good luck.

it’s not over until everything has been said or done, counseling is not, by any chance, the last instance…

to be honest, I’d never consider marriage counseling…I think I can deal with my issues with my husband on my own and on our own…

One more thing to try as a start is the book Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix. You can do it on your own, but if your spouse is willing to do it with you, all the better. I know several people whose marriages were saved using this book as the basis of the work.

1. It moves you off the arguments and issues you get on stuck on when things are going badly.

2. It gives you exercises to help you remember what you loved about your spouse and why you married them.

@simone – what will you do if that doesn’t work anymore?