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Are you or your spouse considering divorce but are not completely sure that’s the best path?

You are in the right spot. Discernment Counseling is designed for you. Discernment Counseling is different than couples therapy. 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. While the other (perhaps the partner reading this) is "leaning in”—that is, interested in repairing the marriage.

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What Makes Discernment Counseling a Better Choice for Us Than Starting Couples Therapy?
Discernment Counseling is a brief, specialized approach designed for couples at a crossroads: Should we end our relationship? 

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What Can We Expect to Gain From Discernment Counseling?
 The goal is for you to gain clarity and confidence about a direction for your relationship, based on a deeper understanding of your relationship and its possibilities for the future. The goal is not to solve your marital problems at this moment, but to see if they are solvable/manageable. 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.

How is Discernment Counseling Done?

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 or your partner's reasons for considering divorce while trying to open up the possibility of restoring the marriage to health, if possible. 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.

During Discernment Counseling, our goal is to help a couple and the individuals within the couple gain commitment and clarity

around 1 of three paths:

Path 1: Status Quo - Let's not change anything right now, but we potentially will in the future.

Path 2: Move towards separation and potentially divorce

Path 3: Make an all-out effort in couples therapy to attempt to restore the relationship to health

 

Number of Sessions: A maximum of 5 counseling sessions. The first session is usually 2 hours and the subsequent are 1.5hrs.
 

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