Our therapist, ( who was new to both of us) upon looking over the six arrests in less than a year for alcohol related events, the fact that the court put him on antabuse, the fact that he'd lost several jobs for being drunk on the job, the fact that he would drink more than a fifth of alcohol a night to himself, announced the ex wasn't an alcoholic because he never drinks on Wednesdays or Fridays and doesn't hide his booze. I was floored. SO. Every night for a week when he was drunk and screaming I'd have him call her. Next session she transferred us to an addiction specialist. Interesting. Any bozo with a two year degree can be a 'counselor'.

i started conseling by myself first. the x and i then went to couples. she is one that has to have the last word, thats if you can get a word in. she sat there and took it all out on me. when it was my turn to talk she took over the conversation. when the counselor told her to close her mouth and listen, in a kind way, she got up and cussed me out and left. i went back one more time and the same thing happened. i believe that you need to get some help for you first. imho

You can't really tell anything from 1 session.

The first session, the counselor is observing, looking for patterns, observing the interaction. This is someone who has never seen you before. They can't magically read your, or your H's mind.

You won't find relief in the first session, and maybe not in the 2nd or 3rd either. It takes time to work through the layers to get to where the problem is and to work on it.

Counseling is a long-term commitment. It's not going to fix things in a few sessions. It takes time.

Give it a few more sessions before giving up, and always be honest with the counselor. They can't help you work through things they don't know about.

Thank you all for taking the time to comment.

My hope/expectation for the first session was that I would see a first step or a plan for what is to come. My fear was that it would just be another pointless argument.

The session seemed more like the latter. It may very well be that the counselor needs to see the arguing in order to help, but his attitude was so pessimistic, that I feel like I'm just enduring further emotional upset for no purpose.

We do have another session scheduled for next week. I plan to give it another try. I don't think everything will be fixed, but I would hope that I can at least see a first step.

I am normally relatively collected but I believe I told our counselor to fuck off and left before the session was over. Some counselors just suck. This one encouraged my STBX to lie to me and put me on the defensive for his long term affair with my child's teacher. As if it was my fault.
Some people are socially retarded too. If your counselor is either of the two, get a different one fast.