[CaptainCrunch]

To be honest, I got some terrific advice from people on this board.

After this year when I lost a good friend and his wife, lost my job and had a family member kill himself, I went down a pretty angry path, that I didn't want to share with anyone.

I'm not one that shares my feelings all that often with my family or inner circle of friends. I didn't lash out at anyone, I more withdrew from most of the people, and I lied to them a lot about how I was doing.

I blamed myself for a lot of the things that were happening around me.

But the advice from this board to go out and talk to someone was actually really good advice. While I went to get counseling, and the most important thing that I did was tell the counselor, that I wasn't and never would be comfortable in terms of sharing things, or openly discussing what I was feeling. But he did give me tools to cope, and did work with me on documenting for myself what I was angry about, and why I was blaming myself and those were the foundation on giving me tools.

One of the most important things to realize is that you don't have control over everything in your life, and you certainly don't have control over other peoples lives, so there is literally no point in beating yourself up over things that you can't control or change. Once in a while . . . its really ok to give yourself a break, and not necessarily forgive yourself for things that go wrong, but realize that you did everything possible and it just wasn't possible to fix it and its not your fault.

Regret is a 10,000 pound rock chained to your ankle and whenever your in deep water it will drag you to the bottom and drown you.

So in a relationship if you strictly believe that everything that goes wrong is your fault, you're not only tying your rock around your ankle, but you are willingly chaining your significant others rock as well. That will drown you for sure.

Now, not to sound cruel here. But the bottom line on relationship counseling only works if both sides are open to communication and change and saving the relationship. If you're convinced that the other half is agreeing to go to either go through the motions of it, or to try to take that rock off of his/her ankle and tie it around yours and make you the bad guy, then before you go through that motion ask. Ask what they believe is going to come out of this, ask if there's any chance of fixing this. And if there's not and she's pretty much committed to leaving. Fore go the counseling and get help for yourself and be a little selfish.

Just my 2 cents.