DISCERNMENT COUNSELING  

FOR COUPLES ON THE BRINK OF DIVORCE

Now Offered in office and online

You are thinking about divorce. Your spouse has told you they want a divorce. “If it wasn’t for the kids, I would have been gone a long time ago.” Does this sound familiar?

If you or your spouse are considering divorce but are not completely sure that is the best path, you are in a tough spot and Discernment Counseling is designed for you.

Discernment Counseling is a chance to slow down, take a breath, and look at the options for your marriage.

It’s a new way of helping mixed-agenda 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.

I will help you decide whether to try to restore your marriage to health, move toward divorce, or take a time out and decide later.

The goal is for you to gain clarity and confidence about a direction to take your marriage, 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. There are 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 me. Why? Because you are starting out in different places in the marriage.

I will respect your reasons for divorce while trying to open up the possibility of restoring the marriage to health.

I will emphasize 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.

The sessions give your marriage three distinct paths forward:

1. Continue in the marriage as it is and not make any changes at this point.

2. Move towards a relationship separation or divorce.

3. Commit to six months of marriage counseling trying to fix the issues.

There is a maximum of five counseling sessions. The first session is two hours long and the subsequent counseling sessions are an hour and a half long.

Discernment Counseling is not suited for the following situations:

• When one spouse has already made the decision to divorce

• When one spouse is pressuring or coercing the other to participate in sessions

• When there are safety concerns

If you are interested in setting up a session, please read this page. I will need to go through pre-screen questions over the phone with both you and your partner prior to meeting face to face. The screening will take about fifteen minutes each to complete.

I am the only certified Discernment Counselor in the state of North Dakota. I have been practicing marriage counseling and couples therapy for 23 years, and I have been practicing Discernment Counseling since the model began eight years ago. If you have questions about the process, please reach out to me.

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