Discernment Counseling

If you or your spouse are considering divorce but are not completely sure that’s the best path, you are in a tough spot. And Discernment Counseling is designed for you. It’s a chance to slowdown, take a breath, and look at your options for your marriage.

Discernment Counseling is a new way of helping couples where one person is “leaning out” of the relationship—and not sure that regular marriage counseling would help--and the other is "leaning in”—that is, interested in rebuilding the marriage.

The counselor will help you decide whether to:

Path A: try to restore your marriage to health and find support for the next chapter, which includes no talk of divorce for at least six months, while you work hard to re-establish connection and safety.

Path B: move toward divorce in a way that leaves you both with more clarity about what happened. This can also be a place where couples try out what is known as a controlled separation.

Path C: take a time out and decide later. Remain on the same path, but with more knowledge of the pain points for each other and how to detect the crisis level on a more frequent basis.

The goal is for you to gain clarity and confidence about a direction, based on a deeper understanding of your relationship and its possibilities for the future.

The goal is not to solve your marital problems but to see if they are solvable. You will each be treated with compassion and respect no matter how you are feeling about your marriage at the moment. No bad guys and good guys.

You will come in as a couple but the most important work occurs in the one-to-one conversations with the counselor. Why? Because you are starting out in different places.

The counselor respects your reasons for divorce while trying to open up the possibility of restoring the marriage to health.

The counselor emphasizes the importance of each of you seeing your own contributions to the problems and the possible solutions. This will be useful in future relationships even if this one ends.

Number of Sessions:

A maximum of 5 counseling sessions. The first session is usually 2 hours and the subsequent are 1.5 or 2 hours.

Discernment Counseling is not suited for these situations:

—When one spouse has already made a final decision to divorce

—When one spouse is coercing the other to participate

—When there is danger of domestic violence