Marriage counselor

Post Reply New Topic

I have Aspergers. My marriage has unfortunately suffered and it is coming to an end soon. I just started seeing a therapist but it was too late. Does anyone know of a marriage counselor in ny city or around?

I'm very sorry for your loss. Please hang in there!

I don't mean to be discouraging, but I'm of the opinion that if you need to see a marriage counselor, it's already too late. The reason I think that is too often people want marriage counselors to tell them what they want to hear or to take sides. It brings up a lot of feelings of insecurity and vulnerability. Even if you get a counselor who really is objective, both of you are going to hear a lot of things you don't like.

I had to break off an engagement once. Part of the problem I faced daily was the pressure to change, to mold myself into the kind of person she wanted me to be. For the longest time, I felt it was all MY fault, but I never could figure out how to make her happy. At the end, I realized that I just wasn't the one to make her happy. And I knew I couldn't handle a lifetime of misery dealing with someone who didn't even like me.

I personally do not feel it is right for any marriage to break up. The problem, though, is that things seem to have passed some point of no return. If you want to save your marriage, you don't need a marriage counselor. You need a lawyer. And you need to explain to your lawyer that you do not want to end the marriage. Your goal will be to bury your mate in so much paperwork that it just makes better sense to stay married and try for a reconciliation. Assuming there are no grounds for divorce, you are under no obligation to sign any papers. They can't force you to agree to a divorce. I don't know NY state law, but most of the time divorces are agreements. What you should do is fight the divorce proceedings and absolutely refuse to sign any NFD agreement...EVER. If it goes on long enough, your spouse might show the court that you are not living together nor have been for some time, that you are uncooperative, and then the judge will finally sign a divorce decree.

The trick is to beat him to the punch, though. Give them the usual runaround with all sorts of silly objections and keep them busy with paperwork, make NFD terms you know good and well he'll never agree to, nitpick any terms he offers, etc. As the divorce proceedings drag on, you can turn around and bring him up on charges of adultery (possibly, because you have to prove it. Get a P.I.) or abandonment (more likely, easy to prove). At that point, you have him by the balls. The judge will probably grant you spousal support (alimony), and probably all the joint assets you want. A NFD agreement at this point would be a complete joke since basically you'd have the power to ask for whatever you want. So you can be as unreasonable as you want to be, or you can reconcile. If he really wants to get away from you that badly, MAKE IT HURT.

The question I often get at this point is "Is it right to force someone to stay with you if they don't love you?" Well, if we're talking about marriage, yes, it is. You promised to be there through both of your personal best and worst, no matter what. I'm appalled by how casually most married couples dismiss their vows. Work through your issues over a couple of years and you'll likely find you have a lasting marriage.

If you do eventually have to go through with a divorce, keep in mind what problems you had that led up to the dissolution of your marriage. What will usually happen is subsequent relationships fail because you're dealing with issues left unresolved from past relationships. But...well..if you resolve the issues, you'll end up saving the marriage in the first place.

Tell us more about what's going on with you and keep us posted on how things are going. You'll find people here are very helpful and supportive.

And welcome to WP!! !

Yes, sympathies, that's an awful thing to have to face.

I have heard of marriage counselling being effective in healing the broken aspects of the relationship, I also know a couple who went to a counsellor in the very, very early stages of their marriage in order to work out how to do it right.
So, it is possible that it may be effective for you & your partner too, but it does require that you both be willing to do your genuine best -- to learn, to try different ways of communicating, finding understanding, and forgiveness for past mistakes.
If you once loved eachother enough to marry, that love has got to be around somewhere still, it just needs to be reignited and guided through the hard times.
That's the optimistic view.
I really do hope you find a great counsellor, and are able to work through the problems.

dunno ny but counsel is good.. i was in relationship and it was no good.. talk about with counseler and helped seeing that it was wrong.. also helped to do the talks to break up.. help is good

Sorry to hear it is not working out for you. If things do end in divorce try to make a point of not being vindictive.

This is terrible, terrible advice. It is selfish and mean-spirited and petty and BS.

Ah, so you are in favor of breaking up marriages? You don't believe people should hold each other to their promises? And it's ok for people to hurt each other or abandon each other when someone desperately needs someone they can depend on?

The real BS here is what marriage has been turned into, which is little more than fair-weather f*ckbuddies. If you "fall in love," pledge your lives together, share EVERYTHING, and even bring kids into the mix, I say it's an institution worth defending, even fighting for. I'm fortunate to be in the kind of marriage relationship where the "D-word" isn't even in our vocabulary.

Marriage is not always a lot of fun. I don't doubt that it is possible to benefit from marriage counseling, but it seems to me that asking for marriage counseling is just the last mile on the road to divorce, and it seems to me that it's typically a setup by the partner who wants out. It's a token gesture by the one leaving so she (or he) can pretend to have made an effort. Either that, or the person requesting the counseling does so in a desperate bid to buy time while the partner is halfway out the door. My ex-fiancée even pulled the fake pregnancy bit on me when she saw me with another woman, and that was when we were failing at being "just friends" (also a tactic to keep me to herself). People do a lot of things when they are in desperate situations, and they don't always make the best decisions as they would if they were to stay calm and think things through.

Mean spirited? I'm sorry if it comes across that way, but I'm trying to be realistic. It's a harsh reality: We have an aspie married presumably to an NT. She desperately wants to save the marriage, knows that she has issues to work out, and just needs some 3rd party objective POV to try to mediate the situation. A marriage counselor can certainly HELP. What the OP really needs more than a marriage counselor is the cooperation of mutual friends and family willing to support and encourage both of them to stay together. A marriage counselor can help them talk things out. But I don't think just talking is going to help. What we really need here is direct intervention during a crisis moment. And it has never been my experience in life for crises to wait for a regularly scheduled appointments to make appearances.

What is GUARANTEED to work EVERY SINGLE TIME is for the partner who wants to work it out is to dig in and bury the other in paperwork. A long, drawn-out, ugly divorce is guaranteed to buy the much-needed time it's going to take to get back together and try to work things out. Like I said, someone can still usually obtain a divorce if he's persistent enough without the partner's cooperation. But for someone who wants to reconcile, there's no harm in stacking the odds in her favor. Think about it--the one doing the leaving wouldn't hesitate if it meant getting his way. Turnabout is fair play. You wanna leave? You're gonna have to work hard.

There are two outcomes: Wear the leaving partner down to the point it's just easier to reconcile, or the leaving partner is made to pay disastrous consequences for leaving. I'm all about forgiveness, but not to the total exclusion of justice. Either way, the partner who seeks reconciliation gains SOME victory.

Now, I do admit I'm making a lot of assumptions that might not apply to the OP. Exactly WHY is her husband leaving? Is the OP a violent person? Has she cheated on her husband? Is she verbally or otherwise mentally abusive? Is she insane? Is she unable to have children? While I always disagree with divorce being the right way to go, I do recognize that there are situations in which it might be unavoidable. Some charges you can bring against a spouse are just awful, like sterility, impotence, insanity, etc. In my view, marriage is about taking care of each other with no regard for what either gets out of it personally, whereas culturally I think we are taught to always expect some kind of reward in all aspects of life. Getting a divorce because of a mental condition is just mean. But legally, if someone can find cause against someone for mental incapacity, she may not have a leg to stand on. I just find it absurd that someone could file suit against someone just for having Asperger's!

But if the husband is leaving because his wife is "a little weird" and can't prove any better case than that, I hardly think he should be casually allowed to get away with it. She should make it hurt as much as she can so he'll understand how she feels for a change.

Incidentally, I've never been burned by even the prospect of divorce, and my wife and I have often discussed hypotheticals when it comes to our relationship together. She has several years of paralegal experience and has told me that if she wanted a divorce, she could type out a NFD petition in a matter of minutes. But she also pointed out some of the same procedural facts I've already mentioned. I've heard stories about clients lying to their lawyers because they were embarrassed about infidelity, only to have their @$$es handed to them in court because an ex hired a private investigator. Most often these cases never make it to court, the reason being that lawyers on both sides show their hands during the NFD agreement process. The person who gets evidence of a spouses impropriety will gain the upper hand every time, and usually the cheating spouse's lawyer will tell them plainly they can't possibly win and it's just best to agree to whatever they want. I've seen mothers lose custody of their kids because of stuff like this. Oh...and I'm also a former paralegal myself.

Seriously, lawyer up and skip the marriage counselor unless your lawyer suggests it. Keep all your bases covered.