MC's love to recommend the weekly dating thing and it's a great idea for marriages that are going through a hiccup, but a very bad idea for marriages on the brink of disaster. When one spouse is checked out, pushing the couple together each week does more harm than good. In fact, counseling itself usually isn't a good idea if one spouse is checked out because they will only hear what they want to hear. At some point the MC will say something like "things aren't going well, perhaps a separation is in order" and then the checked out spouse will suddenly act like they've just heard the greatest idea ever. This is exactly what happened in my sitch and I've read the same scenario in many other sitches too.
