What to Do When Your Spouse Won’t Go to Counseling
You asked. They said no. You’re starting to feel like you’re the only one trying.
When your spouse won’t go to counseling, you have several options that work better than asking again. A reluctant spouse is one who has refused a specific kind of help, which is a much narrower thing than refusing to work on the marriage. I’ve found that most refusals come more from fear or pride, than from simply not caring.
Why won’t your spouse go to counseling?
I still remember Erin and I sitting in a counselor’s office in the first year of our marriage. I didn’t want to be there. I cared about my marriage. I just didn’t want to be a guy who needed help with his.
I think the hardest part of the whole experience was me getting past my pride and walking through the door. Pride keeps people from getting help with their money, their parenting, their temper, and their marriage. When my feet hurt, I go see a foot doctor and think nothing of it, because he has forgotten more about feet than I’ll ever know. Somehow when the marriage goes south, calling a relationship specialist feels like admitting a failure.
There’s research behind the pattern. Brian Doss, David Atkins, and Andrew Christensen published a study titled “Who’s Dragging Their Feet? Husbands and Wives Seeking Marital Therapy.” They found that wives are generally quicker than husbands to name a problem and suggest getting help. Of course, there are plenty of times that it runs the other way. So if you’re a husband whose wife won’t go, none of the advice below changes.
What is your spouse actually afraid of?
You’ve probably noticed when a hurt animal feels cornered, it gets defensive. So does a hurt person. When you recognize that your spouse getting defensive is a reflection of the fact that they’re wounded, their refusal to go to counseling looks different.
Research on why some people avoid couple’s therapy consistently finds the same reasons: the cost seems high, logistical obstacles like time and childcare, they doubt it will work, and they prefer to handle problems privately. Underneath those concerns, the fear usually sounds something like one of these.
1. “It’s going to be 2 against 1.” Your spouse is picturing a stranger agreeing with you and teaming up against them for an hour, while they sit there on trial as the defendant.
2. “I’ll have to talk about my feelings in front of someone else.” Whatever they’re most ashamed of, they assume the counselor is going to drag it out and into the light.
3. “It will never end.” Weekly counseling often has no visible finish line, and “how long does this go on” is often a fair question that doesn’t get answered.
4. “We can’t afford it and we already argue about money.” Adding a recurring bill to a marriage that fights about expenses can feel like pouring gas on the fire.
Three approaches that work better than asking again
1. Make a smaller ask. Your spouse turned down an open-ended commitment to an unknown number of sessions. Replace it with something specific and finite like a weekend, a video course, or a book. People are more likely to say yes to clearly defined things and no to indefinite ones. That’s why “let’s talk” is probably the most terrifying sentence in marriage.
2. Answer the fear. Ask which part of counseling they actually object to, then address that specific concern. That’s the best thing you could do. Repeating the same question a fifteenth time stops being persistence. Eventually, the topic of getting help for your marriage becomes a fight instead of a question.
3. You go first. Change something on your side without announcing it. Work on your own reactions to conflict. Learn what your spouse’s actual emotional needs are and get intentional about meeting them without being asked. Read through a marriage devotional series. Pick one positive move you can make on your own and start there.
What can you do by yourself while you wait?
When one person in a marriage begins taking step to get healthier, less reactive, and easier to live with, the relationship starts to shift in a positive direction, even when the other person hasn’t moved an inch. If the two of you have been drifting apart for a long time, that gradual slide is exactly the kind of pattern one person can start to reverse alone simply by being intentional.
Our complete guide to saving your marriage lays out the steps that don’t require your spouse’s permission.
Why is a weekend easier to say yes to than months of counseling?
A marriage intensive is a workshop where a couple works through a full curriculum in one concentrated block of time, usually over a weekend, instead of an hour a week spread across months. For a reluctant spouse, the deciding difference is often what they are being asked to agree to.
| Weekly counseling | Weekend intensive | |
|---|---|---|
| The commitment | Open-ended | 2 days, with an end time |
| How often you agree to it | Again every week | Once |
| Time to the first result | Weeks or months | The same weekend |
| If it doesn't help | You find out slowly | Full refund |
In another article, we compared a marriage intensive with weekly counseling in more detail. A spouse who says no to counseling is often saying no to an unknown number of sessions, not to the idea of help. A weekend has a start, a finish, and a price you can see. Ours is $500 online and $750 in person, with a monthly payment plan available, and if you attend all 9 sessions and it doesn’t help, we refund your full registration cost.
Erin and I have coached more than 1,000 couples, and 98% report significant progress by the end of the weekend. A fair number of them arrived with one spouse who had said no for a long time. If you want something concrete to put in front of your spouse, our marriage retreat format and the upcoming weekend dates are both online.
One honest limitation: the weekend is built for two people in the same room at the same time. Everything above is aimed at the only conversation that matters here, which is the one where your spouse says yes.
Common questions about a spouse who won’t go to counseling
Can marriage counseling work if only one spouse goes?
Individual counseling can help one spouse a great deal, and it often changes the marriage indirectly by changing how that person responds. What it can’t do is repair the relationship, since the patterns between two people need both people fully present.
How do I get my husband to go to marriage counseling?
Find out which specific part he’s refusing, then make a smaller and more defined request. Men most often object to an open-ended commitment and to feeling outnumbered in the room. A single weekend with a fixed end time removes both objections.
Should I give my spouse an ultimatum about counseling?
Ultimatums sometimes get a spouse through the door, but rarely get them engaged once they’re there. A person who attends just to avoid a consequence spends the entire session on the defensive. If your marriage is at the point where you’re weighing an ultimatum, say the honest thing instead: tell your spouse plainly what you’re afraid of.
What if my spouse says counseling costs too much?
Price the alternative before you accept that answer. When people tell me they can’t afford to get help, my answer is that they can’t afford not to. Especially when you factor in what two households cost, on top of potential legal expenses. A weekend intensive is also a single fixed cost rather than an open-ended weekly bill.
Where to start this week
Your spouse said no to something. Find out what that something actually was, then make a smaller and clearer request. Start changing your half of the marriage.
You can’t drag anybody through a door. You can make the door far less frightening to walk through.
