SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?
Discernment Counseling vs. Couples Therapy
“I’m not happy”
“I love you but I’m not in love”
“I want a divorce”
Whether those statements come as a complete shock or you’ve known something was wrong for a long time, they’re terrifying. Most people hearing those words would reply, “Let’s see a couples therapist.” And the partner questioning the relationship might agree for any number of reasons - they might feel guilty, they might be confused, they might want to say they tried. In cases like these, however, where divorce is on the table, couples therapy is not the answer. Discernment Counseling is.
The reason for this is that when one person is “leaning in” the marriage and the other is “leaning out” they do not have the same goals. For couples counseling to work, both partners need to be motivated to work on the marriage with the goal of improving the marriage. Imagine a couple where the husband has seen a lawyer and he is 85% sure he wants a divorce. Let’s say this couple goes to a well-meaning therapist who says, “Let’s work on communicating better.” The husband with one foot out the door is not going to be interested in learning to communicate with his wife when he doesn’t even know if he wants to be in the marriage anymore. The spouses don’t have the same goal - one partner wants to save the marriage and the other is ambivalent. We call this a “mixed agenda” couple and it will lead to frustration in even the best couples therapy. Even worse, it can seal the couple’s fate when it inevitably fails.
Discernment Counseling was Created for Couples with Different Goals
Discernment counseling was created for just this purpose. For those couples who are on the verge. My first Discernment couple was textbook. “Evan” was referred to me for couples counseling. His wife, “Deondra” had told him to leave and he was despondent after spending a month alone in an apartment away from his family. She had seen a divorce attorney and was not interested in coming to therapy. Luckily she was willing to talk to me. On our call she made it clear - it had taken her a long time to get to this point and she was done. They had done couples counseling before and nothing had changed so she had no hope that anything would be different this time. When I introduced another option - an option in which she wouldn’t be committing to working on the marriage, only to explore whether that was even possible, she agreed. She also liked the idea that Discernment Counseling was limited to 5 or 6 sessions and that she would only have to commit to one session at a time. I would ask at the end of each session whether they each wanted to come back. This gives the spouses a sense of control over the process.
Discernment Counseling is Different Than Couples Therapy
Discernment Counseling is different from Couples Counseling in many ways. As mentioned, the goal in discernment is not to improve the marriage. In fact, I caution couples not to expect any improvement during our work. The goal is to gain confidence and clarity in the direction you want to take the marriage based on a deeper understanding of what’s happened in the marriage and both spouse’s contributions. In discernment we are choosing between three paths: (1) to stay in the marriage as is, (2) separate or divorce, (3) commit to 6 months of couples therapy with divorce off the table. Notice path three is not to commit to the marriage but rather to commit to therapy.
Evan and Deondra did 5 sessions of Discernment Counseling and in the end chose to commit to couples therapy. When couples choose this path they come to therapy motivated to do the work and with a greater understanding of what they each need to work on. In fact at the end of the discernment process and before beginning couples therapy, I’ll work with each spouse to develop their own “personal agenda for change.” In my experience, couples counseling done after Discernment is more productive and focused than other counseling. Evan and Deondra, by the way, are still together years later, having taken the opportunity to create a “marriage #2” that is more connected and sustainable than “marriage #1” could ever have been.
Even in cases where the couple decides to part ways, we find that the discernment process has given them a chance to really understand one another, themselves and what’s happened in their relationship. This puts them in a much more empathetic, less conflictual, and more collaborative place going into the divorce process.
Slow Down the March Toward Divorce
The decision to divorce is rarely an emergency. Discernment Counseling can slow things down so that you can gain more confidence and clarity in this permanent decision that will have lasting repercussions for you and your family. Reach out today to see if Discernment Counseling is right for you.