I screwed up again

[techguy]

I do not want to screw up and my primary goal is to get her to keep coming with me to the MC.

Ding Ding Ding... I was coming here today to specifically mention that. I told Beth the same thing last week when she was going to have a big face-to-face meeting with her H. I said: "your only goal in this first meeting should be to get a second".

So I would try to avoid pushing too much on wife. Sure, she is probably wrong in many things. But you want to avoid her feeling like she is being 'ganged up on'. (My wife has said the same thing about some of our joint MC sessions and threatened not to go back).

Just do alot of listening and some validating. And if C starts to push on wife, you might even want to try and defend her a bit... even if you think she is wrong! This is an excellent spot for validation. Something like this:

W: Says something about kids which is blatenly unfair or wrong.
C: Starts telling wife that she should approach it a different way
You: Validate... I.E. I know you love the kids alot, etc...

So you're not disagreeing with the C, your just validating and making it seem less like you are both telling her she is wrong.

If you play your cards right, you will have plenty of other meetings to 'fix' things.