online in oregon, washington state, massachusetts, and florida
DISCERNMENT COUNSELING
YOU NEVER IMAGINED YOU WOULD BE HERE.
When you got married, divorce was something that happened to other people.
And now here you are, lying awake on a Tuesday night, running the same questions through your head for the hundredth time: Can this marriage be saved? Do I even want it to be? Am I staying for the right reasons, or am I just afraid of what leaving looks like?
You think about the kids, the house, the life you built together, and the weight of it pins you in place.
Divorce means blowing all of that up: custody arrangements, splitting holidays, explaining it to your family, starting over financially, watching your children carry bags back and forth between two homes.
It’s enough to make you think you should just keep trying.
But then you have another conversation that ends in yelling and tears, or another silent dinner, or another weekend where you and your spouse move through the same house like strangers, and you think: I cannot do another ten years of this.
THE LIMBO OF DIVORCE AMBIVALENCE IS ITS OWN KIND OF SUFFERING.
People talk about how hard divorce is, and they’re right.
But nobody talks about how hard it is to live in the space before the decision, where nothing is certain anymore, and you’re carrying the question of whether your marriage is going to exist in six months into every conversation, every morning and evening routine, and every quiet moment after the kids go to bed.
You sit across from your spouse at dinner and wonder if you’re looking at your future or your past. You plan a family vacation and feel guilty for going through the motions when you’re not sure you’ll still be married next year. You catch your kids laughing together and your chest tightens because you know what a divorce would do to this picture, and you don’t know if you can forgive yourself for being the one who disrupted it.
And meanwhile, you can’t talk to anyone about this honestly. Your friends and family love you, but they’re biased. They’re either telling you to leave because they’re angry on your behalf, or telling you to stay because they’re uncomfortable with the thought of your family going through a divorce. Your individual therapist is only hearing your side of the story.
None of them have enough information to actually help you make this decision well.
YOU DON’T WANT TO LOOK BACK AND WONDER IF YOU MADE THE WRONG CALL.
Maybe you’ve already tried couples therapy, and it didn’t help the way you hoped it would.
Maybe it felt unfocused, or like you were going through the motions without making real progress, or like it wasn’t getting to the root of what was going on between you.
That experience can make it hard to trust that therapy will be different this time around.
Or maybe you haven’t tried couples therapy at all, and you’re not sure it’s where you should invest your time, money, and emotional energy if the marriage might end anyway.
Whatever the circumstances, what you’re looking for right now isn’t therapy for the marriage, because you’re genuinely unsure if the marriage can survive.
What you’re looking for is help making the decision, so that whatever you choose, you can move forward without regret.
DISCERNMENT COUNSELING: FOR COUPLES WHO NEED TO DECIDE
Discernment counseling is not couples therapy. It’s a brief, structured process designed for couples where one or both partners are unsure whether they want to stay in the marriage. The goal is to help you both develop enough clarity and confidence to decide what comes next.
Most couples who come to discernment counseling are in a situation where one partner wants to commit to working on the marriage, and the other isn’t sure if they want to stay married at all. That disconnect makes traditional couples therapy a poor fit, because one person is trying to rebuild while the other has one foot out the door. If that couple finds themselves in couples therapy before both partners are committed to the therapy process, the result is usually frustration, half-hearted effort, and little progress.
If that sounds familiar, there’s a reason: couples therapy is built for two people who both want to be there. When one of you doesn’t, the couples therapy process can’t do what it’s designed to do. The situation needs something different.
I know this because I’ve been on both sides of it. Earlier in my career, I was the individual therapist sitting across from someone who was agonizing over whether to stay or leave, and I could feel how limited my perspective was. I was only hearing one side. I could support my client, but I couldn’t help them see the marriage clearly, because I wasn’t in the room with both of them. That experience was formative for me, and it’s a big part of why I pursued couples training and eventually got certified in discernment counseling. I wanted to be a therapist who could hold the full picture.
THE DISCERNMENT COUNSELING PROCESS
We’ll meet for somewhere between one and five sessions, and each session is two hours long. Most of that time is spent with me meeting with each of you individually, which gives you both the space to speak freely and honestly about your experience in the marriage and your role in how things got to this point.
At the end of each session, you’ll each spend about five minutes sharing your takeaways with your partner. This keeps the process transparent and gives both of you a window into what the other person is thinking and feeling. It also means you’ll each hear, in the other person’s own words, what they recognize about their own contribution to the breakdowns in the relationship. (That self-awareness matters regardless of what you decide, because the behaviors and blind spots that contributed to this dynamic don’t disappear with a divorce. They follow you into whatever comes next, unless you address them.)
This process requires a therapist who can hold space for two people who may want completely different things without taking sides or letting either person feel abandoned. That’s a difficult thing to do well. My background in Gottman couples therapy, years of working with couples in crisis including infidelity, broken trust, and marriages on the brink, is what makes it possible for me to sit with both of you and understand the full picture. I know what healthy marriages require, what makes them break down, and what repair looks like.
I don’t come into this process with an agenda about what you should decide. My job is to make sure you’re making this decision with the fullest possible understanding of your marriage, your own contributions to where things are, and what each path forward would require of you.
By the end of this process, you will choose one of three paths:
Keep the status quo for now
After five sessions of discernment counseling, around 10% of couples choose to take what they’ve learned and give themselves more time to decide. This is a very valid choice when you’re dealing with something this significant.
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Separation and divorce
If this is the decision, you’ll make it with a much clearer understanding of what happened in your marriage and what each of you contributed to it.
Couples who go through discernment counseling before divorcing tend to have less hostile, more collaborative separations because they’ve already done the work of understanding rather than blaming.
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Commit fully to couples therapy for at least six months
This means both partners go all in, with divorce off the table for that period so you can both be vulnerable enough to do the real work without one person worrying that the other is going to leave tomorrow.
I’ll refer you to a skilled couples therapist in my professional network who can take you through that process. After six months, you reassess together.
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MAKE YOUR DECISION FROM CLARITY AND CONFIDENCE, NOT CRISIS.
What life looks like on the other side of discernment counseling
You know what you’re deciding and why. Instead of agonizing in circles, you have a clear picture of what went wrong in the marriage, what you each contributed to it, and whether the raw materials for repair are there or not. The decision stops feeling like a guess and starts feeling like something you arrived at with your eyes open.
You understand your own role in how things got here. Most people come into this process focused on what their spouse did or didn’t do. By the end, you have a much more honest picture of your own contribution to the dynamic, and that clarity changes how you move forward, regardless of which path you choose. If you stay, the couples therapy that follows will be significantly more focused and productive because you’re both going into it with real context, genuine commitment, and a clear understanding of what needs to change. If you leave, you don't carry the same blind spots into your next chapter.
If you do divorce, the entire process is more amicable. Even if you and your spouse disagree about the outcome, you’ve gone through a shared process of honestly examining the marriage together, and that changes the quality of everything that follows. Couples who go through discernment counseling before separating tend to navigate the legal process, the financial division, and the co-parenting arrangement with significantly less hostility. You’ve already done the hard work of understanding what happened and owning your part in it, which means you’re not dragging unexamined blame and resentment into custody negotiations or mediation. Your children benefit directly from that because they get parents who can co-parent collaboratively and respectfully.
You can look your children in the eye and know you made this decision carefully. Whatever you decide, you didn’t make the decision impulsively, and you didn’t make it by default. You thought it through with professional guidance, you examined it from every angle, and you chose the path that was most honest and responsible given everything you know. That matters, both for you and for how you explain this chapter to your children someday.
Discernment counseling is a good fit if you…
Are genuinely unsure about whether to stay in the marriage or leave, and you want help making that decision thoughtfully rather than reactively.
Have a spouse who is at a different place than you are about the future of the marriage, and you need a process that can hold both of your perspectives at the same time.
Are willing to look honestly at your own role in how things got to this point, not just your spouse’s.
Want to work with a certified discernment counselor who has both perspectives, not an individual therapist who only has yours.
May have tried couples therapy before and found that it didn’t work, or aren’t sure couples therapy is worth the investment until you know whether you want to save the marriage.
Discernment counseling is not a good fit if you…
Have already made up your mind to divorce and are looking for a way to communicate that to your spouse. If this is where you are, I can help with mediation, or refer you to a family law attorney who can help with that process.
Believe your spouse is 100% at fault for where your marriage has ended up, and you’re not willing to examine your own contributions.
Are being coerced or pressured by your spouse to participate.
Are experiencing ongoing domestic violence in your marriage.
Are in a relationship without shared long-term commitments like marriage, children, or deeply intertwined lives. Discernment counseling is designed for couples where the decision to stay or leave carries significant consequences for both partners. If you’re unsure whether your situation qualifies, reach out and I can help you figure out what would be the best fit.
GETTING STARTED IN DISCERNMENT COUNSELING AND WHAT TO EXPECT
FORMAT
Discernment counseling is between one and five sessions, each are two hours long, conducted online via HIPAA-compliant video. The process ends when you’ve reached a decision about the future of your marriage, which means not every couple needs all five sessions. The process can take longer than five sessions if there is ongoing infidelity.
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GETTING Scheduled
Reach out through the contact page or self-schedule your first session here. If you have a question that isn’t answered here, email me and I’ll get back to you within 1-2 business days.
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BOTH PARTNERS PARTICIPATE
Discernment counseling requires both you and your spouse. If your spouse is unwilling to participate in any form of therapy, please reach out to me and we can discuss individual options that might help you find clarity on your own.
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INVESTMENT
Discernment counseling sessions are $1,000 for 2-hour sessions ($500/hour). Please note that I am not in-network with any insurance company and cannot bill insurance directly.
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Meet your DISCERNMENT COUNSELOR
I’M ALLYSON.
Certified discernment counselor & Gottman-trained therapist
I trained as a Gottman couples therapist and spent years working with couples dealing with infidelity, trust ruptures, and the kind of slow disconnection that builds up over time without either person fully noticing.
Discernment counseling became the center of my practice because it matched the work I kept being drawn to: sitting with two people in a genuinely hard moment and helping them figure out what comes next without rushing the answer.
FAQs
COMMON QUESTIONS
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Couples therapy assumes both partners want to work on the marriage. Discernment counseling makes no such assumption. If one of you isn’t sure you want to stay married, jumping into couples therapy usually leads to half-hearted effort and frustration. Discernment counseling addresses the decision itself first, so that if you do move into couples therapy afterward, both of you are genuinely committed to the process.
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I am no longer offering couples therapy, but if you choose that path, I’ll connect you with a skilled couples therapist in my professional network who can take you through that process. Part of the value of working with me for discernment is that I have years of past couples therapy experience, so I can make a referral that’s well-matched to your situation rather than sending you back into a process that might repeat whatever didn’t work last time.
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Discernment counseling requires both partners. If your spouse is unwilling to participate in any form of therapy right now, that doesn’t mean you’re out of options. Individual therapy focused on your own clarity and behavior change can help you work through what you’re feeling, understand your own role in the dynamic, and make grounded decisions about your future even without your spouse in the room. Reach out to me directly and we can talk about what would make the most sense for your situation.
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No. Discernment counseling is genuinely neutral about the outcome. The process is designed to give both of you the clearest possible understanding of your marriage, your own contributions to where things are, and what each option would look like going forward. Some couples come through this process and decide to commit fully to working on the marriage, others decide to end it, and some decide they need more time. The process doesn’t steer you in any direction.
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No. If you decide to leave, this process will actually help you leave in a way that’s more informed and less reactive. You’ll understand what happened in the marriage, what your own role was, and you’ll have gone through a process of honest examination that makes the divorce and co-parenting process significantly less hostile. The goal of discernment counseling isn’t keeping marriages together; it’s about helping couples make the most thoughtful decision they can.
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About 10% of couples end up choosing to maintain the status quo and take more time before making a final decision. That’s a perfectly valid outcome. Choosing to not decide right now is still a choice, and sometimes it’s the right one.
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Yes, with a caveat: discernment counseling was developed for couples who have made a lifelong commitment to each other, which most often means marriage but can also include couples with children, shared property, or other deeply intertwined lives where the decision to stay or separate carries significant consequences for both partners. If you’re in a long-term relationship and aren’t sure whether your situation qualifies, reach out and I can help you figure out what would be the best fit.
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I see clients online in Massachusetts, Washington, Oregon, and Florida. As long as you’re physically present in one of those states, we can work together.
Get started today.
I built my practice around one of the hardest moments in a marriage: the point where you don’t know if it can be saved, and you need someone who can sit with that uncertainty without pushing you in either direction. My job is to help you see your marriage clearly enough that you trust the decision you make, and to make sure you have the right support on the other side of it, whichever direction that is.