I think it is a very smart idea to interview MC's first.
Very early on in our marriage H and I went to marriage counseling (it was a joint decision as we had lots of communication problems right off the bat) and it was awful. All she did was play referee. Granted, we were not even thinking about divorcing or separating at the time we just wanted to learn how to better communicate.
And that is what she would say each session - you both need to learn to communicate in a more productive way. Um, yes, we KNOW that but don't know HOW to do that hence the reason we came to see you!
Essentially H and I would have the SAME talks (not productive) in MC that we had in our own living room. Round and round on the same issues with no solutions. H and I were very young at the time, both only 24, so we thought we were doing such a good thing by going to MC. We would leave a session and laugh and say "gee, we just paid a 50.00 co-pay to have the same talk we had at home".
It was a huge waste of time and money but things did improve for us. I guess because we felt we were doing something "good" even though we found no solutions.
Of course, at that time I had no clue what "solution based therapy" even was. My long winded way of saying I think it's grand to talk to a MC first and see how they approach MC as a whole.
