Decide where your marriage is headed.
Discernment Counseling
You are considering divorce…
…but uncertainty is holding you back.
When you think back to your wedding day, you never once thought you’d eventually end up at this crossroads: deciding whether or not you’re going to stay married.
Whenever you think of divorce and all that comes with it: explaining it to your children, divvying up your belongings, selling your home, moving out, lawyers and mediators, co-parenting and custody agreements, taxiing your children back and forth to the other parent’s home…the weight of the emotion hits you like a ton of bricks.
But you also know, deep in your bones, that you’re at your wits end.
And the thought of spending thousands of dollars, and months in couples therapy … just to have nothing change … keeps you awake at night.
you know you can’t continue to stay married this way.
You’ve talked to your best friend, your mom, your sister, and your individual therapist. They are all supportive in their own ways, but they’re also (naturally) biased and defensive of you.
You need guidance from a trained professional who isn't on anyone's side: someone who listens to both of you and understands both views, and who asks the right questions and reframes things to put YOU in the best position to make the right choice for you and your family.
You’re in the right place.
Discernment counseling is specifically tailored to you and your situation.
Discernment counseling provides an opportunity to pause, reflect, and carefully evaluate the options for your marriage before making a decision.
More information about discernment counseling…
The two of you have a mixed agenda…
One of you wants to commit to therapy, roll up your sleeves, and work on the marriage until it works.
The other isn’t sure if they want to try therapy, or if they are better off moving out, filing for divorce, and moving on.
You don’t want to drag things on for months in couples therapy if, ultimately, the relationship can’t be repaired and saved.
You want a professional’s help and guidance with deciding what to do with the future of your marriage.
make a thoughtful and informed choice.
Discernment Counseling Meets You Where You Are and Helps You Decide
The bottom line is this: successful couples therapy requires an investment of time, emotion, and effort. If one partner is unsure if they want to stay married in the first place, they aren’t in the mindset to carry out that investment to completion.
If this couple goes straight to couples therapy, it tends to be half-hearted because it is not the right mental and emotional process for where the “leaning-out” partner is. The result is usually little progress in therapy, as well as frustration and confusion for all involved.
This is where discernment counseling comes in.
Discernment counseling is a way to give both partners space and time to pause before making a final decision. This process will guide you to developing a deeper understanding of how the problems in the marriage evolved, and to understand what each person’s contribution to these problems has been.
This helps set up any future couples therapy to be a much more productive and helpful experience.
On the other hand, if divorce is pursued, discernment counseling can help the divorce and coparenting processes to be less hostile and more collaborative.
The goal of discernment counseling is To:
Develop more clarity and confidence about the future direction of your marriage.
How Does Discernment Counseling Work?
Discernment counseling is a brief process. We’ll meet for 1-5 sessions, and each session is 2 hours long (maximum of 10 hours total).
The process ends once a decision about the future of your marriage has been made. The decision is one of the following:
Keep the status quo and make no decisions for now.
Separate (if you haven’t already) and ultimately divorce.
Commit to six months of all-out, balls-to-the-wall effort in couples therapy. Divorce goes off the table for that time so that you both can be vulnerable enough to work through the issues without thinking your spouse will leave tomorrow. We’ll re-evaluate after six months and look at whether or not therapy is working.
In discernment counseling, you, your spouse, and I will spend most of the time meeting individually. This allows each of you to speak freely about your experience in the marriage, and to reflect on your own role in the relationship dynamics.
We won’t be trying to solve the problems in your marriage during this process; therefore, there are no interventions for the problems. You are only trying to determine if the problems are solvable. Don’t expect your relationship to change during this time. We aren’t sure yet if it can be changed!
You’ll each spend about five minutes after your individual session sharing your “takeaways” with your partner. The reason for this is twofold: 1) so that each person can explicitly take accountability, and 2) knowing the details of what will be addressed in couples therapy can help the uncertain partner feel more confident that the therapy will be helpful (particularly when there’s been unsuccessful couples counseling in the past!).
Meeting with a discernment counselor instead of separate individual therapists has a big advantage. As your discernment counselor, I get perspectives from both of you, while individual therapists only see one partner's side (and are therefore biased!). With input from just one person, individual therapists are very limited in how helpful their feedback can be.
A discernment counselor is equipped to hear both your and your spouse’s points of view and to give feedback accordingly. You both want to be as informed as possible before deciding on how to move forward in one of the biggest decisions of your life.
I can lead you there.
Discernment Counseling Is a Good Fit If…
There is still a chance — even a small one — of saving this marriage.
You’ve gone to couples therapy in the past and you’re not sure if more couples therapy would help.
You are willing to reflect on your behavior and take accountability for your part of the dynamic.
You want to work with a trained therapist who has both your perspective and your spouse’s perspective so that you’re more able to develop insight.
Discernment Counseling Is Not a Good Fit If…
Deep down, you have already made up your mind to divorce and you are looking for a way to express that.
You believe your spouse is at 100% fault for where your relationship has ended up.
One of you is coercing the other to participate.
There is ongoing domestic violence.
You are in a relationship but have never made a lifelong commitment to each other.
What we’ll work on
Imagine If…
You and your spouse could experience more understanding towards each other, regardless of the ultimate decision you make.
You could walk away with more insight into the relationship’s dynamic and, therefore, less blame for your partner.
You no longer have to guess at — or agonize over — what decision is best for your family and your future.
You felt confident about your next steps because you’ve developed the necessary clarity.
To Get Started in Discernment Counseling, Contact Me Today.
Questions?
FAQs
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If this is your situation, discernment counseling isn’t a good fit because you aren’t discerning anything — you’ve already made up your mind. I would be happy to give you some referrals for professionals who do that work, such as a mediator, family law attorney, or a therapist who specializes in “uncoupling.”
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There is a protocol I offer for this scenario called “hopeful spouse counseling.” The goal is to help you learn from this crisis and find healthy, constructive ways to potentially prevent divorce and restore your marriage, if that is possible. When your spouse sees these positive changes in you, it may motivate them to become more open to discernment counseling or couples therapy.
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Discernment counseling is not couples therapy, It is a precursor to couples therapy. In discernment counseling, you and your spouse are trying to come to a decision together about whether or not to pursue working on your relationship. That doesn’t mean there aren’t breakthroughs or lightbulb moments; however, there is no therapeutic intervention related to the relationship itself.
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Around 10% of couples ultimately end up choosing to keep the status quo after completing discernment counseling. This is perfectly acceptable. Regardless of the reason, taking more time to make a very serious decision is always an option.
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No, because the ultimate goal of discernment counseling isn’t to go to couples therapy. The ultimate goals are to uncover what happened in your marriage to get you here, understand what you each contributed to the dynamic, and decide whether or not the marriage can be saved. Through that process, couples therapy is often decided upon in the end, but not always. While many partners leave discernment counseling with a clear idea of what they need to work on within themselves, they still make the decision to divorce, and instead opt for individual therapy.
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Getting started is easy! Just click here to contact me with any questions or concerns, or to schedule your first discernment counseling session.
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