Helping Couples on the Brink of Divorce: Discernment Counseling for Troubled Relationships

by William J. Doherty, Steven M. Harris

This book presents a five-session protocol for distressed couples to learn about what has happened to their relationship and each person’s contributions to the problems, with the goal of clarifying a direction for their marriage. Therapists and counselors can find themselves at an impasse when working with “mixed-agenda” couples—where one partner is considering divorce, while the other wants to preserve the marriage and start therapy. Such couples are a common and difficult challenge in clinical practice. To help confirm each partner’s agenda before taking decisive steps toward either reconciliation or divorce, this book presents a richly-illustrated protocol called discernment counseling, for helping couples understand what has happened to their relationship and each person’s contributions to the problems. The goal is to gain clarity and confidence about a direction for their marriage. Discernment counseling generally ends with a decision to divorce or a decision to engage in six months of couples therapy. Chapters cover special topics such as affairs and when one spouse has “fallen out of love” with the other.   Discernment counseling features individual conversations with the leaning-in and leaning-out spouse, along with carefully orchestrated times for each partner to share what they learned in the individual conversations. A special feature of the protocol is its short-term nature, with an initial commitment to just one session and a decision each time whether to do another session, up to five. This strategy invites both spouses to keep making choices to continue the work.

Genres: Counselling

218 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 17, 2017

Reviews

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a terrific option for mixed-agenda couples (where one person is leaning out of the marriage and the other is leaning-in) to decide which path to head down:

Path 1: status quo, keep doing what you're doing
Path 2: divorce or separation
Path 3: commit to 6 months of couples therapy where divorce is taken off the table

The protocols and possibilities are so clear and could be so helpful for many couples "on the brink".

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid manual that clearly and carefully lays out a specific short-term counseling modality. I think this book helped me to understand the process of Discernment Counseling, but it's also given me a few thoughts for couples therapy in general that I'm still chewing on.

Very helpful, I'll have to look into getting the training next.

[Niki Payne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A specialty area of interest

I really enjoyed learning about the discernment process as it was laid out in this book. It seems like a nice intro into couples therapy for someone considering specializing in this field of work.