Decide where your marriage is headed.
Discernment Counseling
You or your spouse are considering divorce…
…but uncertainty, questions, and what-ifs are holding you back.
Have you had thoughts about what it would be like to divvy up your belongings with your spouse, move out, and start over?
Was there an affair or other betrayal? Ongoing substance abuse? Perhaps you are resentful and fed up with the many misunderstandings and disagreements. Or, you simply drifted apart over the years, and now you’re more like roommates.
You’re not sure if couples therapy can work. You’re not sure about divorce. You’re not sure what to do.
If this describes you, 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.
Sound like you?
Only one of you wants to commit to therapy, roll up your sleeves, and get to work on the marriage.
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 help both partners pause before making a final decision, to develop a deeper understanding of how the problems in the marriage evolved, and 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: a maximum of 10 hours in total. There are between one and five sessions and the sessions are each two hours long.
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 effort in couples therapy. Divorce goes off the table for that time. Re-evaluate after six months.
In discernment counseling, you and I will spend most of the time meeting individually. This allows each of you to speak freely about your marriage and 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 marriage 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 so that each person can explicitly take accountability. 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.
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. 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 help you get 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 unconvinced 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 platform in which to express that.
You aren’t willing to reflect on your own behavior.
One of you is coercing the other to participate.
There is ongoing domestic violence.
What we’ll work on
Imagine If After Discernment Counseling…
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 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.
Discernment counseling locations…