Marcum, Sara makes some great points. It really depends on where you are with the relationship and how you interact. In my case, W was still involved with OG when I made the request. We had both been to lawyers and W wanted to go to a mediator to do the D. I was hesitant on the mediator, but I told her that I would agree to that if she would go to the weekend. We also talked about the using the weekend to improve communication regardless of whether we stayed together and also I wanted to be able to say that we had tried everything before giving up.
The timing worked out such that the A ended about three weeks prior to the weekend. We went into the program very skeptical about the outcome, but it really made a huge difference and we made a lot of progress. It obviously did not solve all of our issues, but I do believe it was well worth the time involved.
