3x at the end of April, I'd try to keep that streak going.
You got that right.
In a nutshell: We've been in a nearly-platonic marriage for many, many years. For the past 10 years or so, we've been making periodic focused attempts to resolve the issues and rescue our marriage. When I started this process, we couldn't even agree that there was a problem. During the past 10 years, as each rescue attempt would grind to a halt, we'd go back on auto-pilot for another year or two (the last "dark period" was about 3 years). During the "dark periods", sex would be about as frequent as during most of the "autopilot" years - maybe once or twice (for the year), rarely more often, and usually very sub-standard. New Years' Eve this past year, we spent the evening just as most evenings, even though all the kids were out. We watched TV, she fell asleep, end of story. Except... when midnight came, she broke down and cried, and we had a long conversation, and we BOTH stated that we could not continue living like that, and we agreed to find a marriage counselor and start working to revive our marriage if we could.
Our first MC session was, IIRC, the third week of January. Second session was towards the end of Feb. So, from a sex perspective, Jan was a write-off, but in Feb we ML very passionately for the first time in YEARS. Then again in March, and again in April. And in between were some times that were not quite at the height of passion, but admirable attempts for various reasons.
And we got really lucky to find a GREAT counselor. He keeps us focused on the issues, calls us on our BS, and makes sure we BOTH feel heard. Several sessions have focused mainly on W's issues, and yet she doesn't come away from such a session feeling "attacked", and she has made admirable process in revising her POV. So have I. I now do a lot more for her, and we work together on a lot of stuff whereas in the past we were mostly living parallel lives. We're making great progress. The sex thing is still an issue, and we have other issues besides, which we're now becoming more aware of, which is the first step in solving them.
The best advice I can give is: If you try a counselor, and they don't seem to be helping, try another counselor. And another. And another, if necessary. We first tried counseling about 10 years ago, and that didn't last 3 sessions. We both felt he was an idiot. Then we tried another a year or two later, but that didn't work out, either. I liked her a lot, and felt she could help, but W felt she was just focusing on MY issues, and W didn't feel heard at all. Then W tried IC, but that counselor seemed to just validate W's POV and not indicate any kind of change needed, so that didn't help ME at all. One thing that all 3 of these C's had in common was they were paid for through the EAP at work, which is only geared for short-term issues, and not set up for big problems like ours. They don't let you choose a C, you just have to take what they give you. This time, we decided to go out and find our own C, and pay for it ourselves, so we can continue as long as we need to, without regard to any limits imposed by the EAP. And the C is part of a practice, so if it wasn't working out with him, there are other MC's in the practice that we could switch to. Anyway, so far this one seems to be working very well.
