That advice is not only supporting dysfunction, but also seems very misogynistic and patriarchal. Was this counsellor a woman or a man? Their advice also seems to be rooted in the 1950s mindset, altho I'm sure it occurred way later than that.

@TomMcGiverin it was a woman, amazingly enough.

@Deb57 That is even more messed up, shows that some women can be just as misogynistic as men. So much for sisterhood. She must have drank the whole patriarchy Kool-Aid.

Well said. In my opinion, everybody who goes thru a divorce should get therapy of some type, both during and after the divorce. I run across so many divorced women in my online dating experiences that appear to have never gotten any therapy regarding their divorce, and it really makes a difference, I think, in their attitudes towards men, future relationships and dating in general. I think that's why the divorced women I meet tend to be so much more bitter and negative towards men compared to the few widowed women I have met from dating sites. I'm not saying that therapy always works, or that some people who get divorced don't move on or end up emotionally healthy without therapy, but I think it usually makes a big and positive difference compared to those who don't take advantage of it. Like you said, it only works if you really want it to and invest yourself in it.

What I see with so many women in the online dating thing with divorced women, is that they attend a divorce support group, or attend classes for divorced people, that are not run by a trained therapist. And these are no substitute for therapy with a licensed professional. Same as when they get counselling from a clergy person for their divorce. But that is what most people seem to settle for and it is not adequate, in my observation. Esp. the support groups and classes, because in those settings it is likely that the experience just reinforces or encourages an attitude of blaming the other spouse and resenting the other gender, joining the bandwagon attitude, from what I have heard from people who have attended them. If I had my way, everybody who uses dating sites would have to provide proof of recent therapy to be able to join one, lol.

I have talked to many divorced people over the years, and in most cases, it appears that marriage counseling, if it happened at all for them, usually came too late, just as you stated, where one party already wanted out, and the other party was either still in denial or else was wanting the marriage to continue no matter what. But you are also right in that in many cases, the party who was wanting to hang on no matter what did benefit some from the counseling, if nothing else from moving out of their denial and becoming motivated to finally move on and maybe also begin to gain some insight into their own role in the marriage failing.

While relationships between adults and their kids are a whole other ball of wax, I do believe that adult relationships between couples are never entirely 100% the fault of just one person. It takes two to tango, as they say, and that in those relationships there is always at least some sharing of the blame when relationships fail. I know that many people may feel differently, maybe due to their own pride or their very strong remaining hate of the other person, but I have yet to meet a therapist that disagrees with this proposition, based on their experiences working with real people and hearing the stories of how relationships fail.