You were all right...unfortunately...

[fearless]

I completely understand where your feelings are, about wanting her to admit what she is doing is wrong,

Dom,

It has nothing to do with getting her to admit that she has done something wrong. It is more practical than that. Marriage counseling simply doesn't work when there is a third party in the marriage.

My XH and I went to marriage counseling every week for 4 months with his affair completely unknown to me. While the counseling seemed good to me and I thought we were covering some good ground, we couldn't reconnect. He finally told me about the A on Christmas Eve and then ended it that night; he said that ending the A was more due to the holiday and the fact that the relationship was imploding (she was fairly psycho) more than anything else. Unfortunately the 4 months of counseling were used against me less than 2 months later (as in "Counseling hasn't fixed anything in 6 months so I don't think our marriage can be fixed.") Our counselor told him flat out that the first 4 months were almost useless to the marriage because of the A.

So I guess if I were b50 I would focus more on saying that as long as OM is any kind of factor in their marriage, then marriage counseling will not work affectively. It's NOT about getting her to admit fault (or at least it shouldn't be). That can come later, IMO.