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Does anyone have any advice around relationships counselors in Western countries? Particularly regarding 'counselors' (eg did a counseling course with accreditation) vs actual trained psychologists. I'm looking at seeing one individually, but unsurprisingly there aren't any male counselors available so I'm trying my luck with a female one. I'm concerned that a woman won't be able to properly empathise with a male point of view, and might balk at certain 'how the sausage gets made' conversations.
This isn't for anything critical, just relationship advice regarding my specific situation (with details I wouldn't share here, even incognito).
N=1, but I had the amusing situation that while my wife talked me into going to a counsellor with her and I thought it's going to be a huge waste of money just to get someone to side with her, the (female, older) counsellor actually ended up being more sympathetic to me, if anything. It took only two appointments until my wife agreed that it was too expensive, and inconvenient for other reasons anyway. She also seemed somewhat mollified afterwards, so I guess it was worth the money after all.
This is just me speculating based on general life, but I wouldn't expect men to necessarily be more empathetic to you, unfortunately. Men can put women on a pedestal just fine. Especially if you're reasonably attractive & socially competent, you almost always can leverage some attraction/sympathy to your benefit, and that goes for both sexes. I'd say your best bet is a no-nonsense older married woman with kids (ideally teenage/adult sons with shitty girlfriends, but that's probably hard to find out). Those are both most likely to be sympathetic in my experience, and will usually have no problem being pragmatic. It's also important to start out nice and friendly at the first appointment, talk about her private life and be empathetic to her, which will allow you to both gauge whether she's the kind of person you want to get counselled by, and also to simply make her empathize back. Our counsellor was pretty open and happy to share, obviously nothing super-private, but she also though that a good match is important for counselling to work.
I'll keep it in mind to build some rapport before dumping on them. Luckily I'm doing individual counseling only, so I won't need to worry about them taking sides. I'll be the only one they meet.
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