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 (DC) 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 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.

Betsey will help you decide whether to try to restore your marriage to health, move toward divorce, or take a time out and decide later. Betsey was in the first cohort of DC Residents to spend an additional year of training with the Founder William Dougherty. She and a few others now proudly hold the distinction of DC Fellow.

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 gals/guys or good gals/guys.

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

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

Betsey 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.

DC includes a maximum of 5 counseling sessions. The first session is two hours and the remaining two to five sessions are one and one half hours.

If this sounds like you and your partner, please contact me at BetseyLMFT@gmail.com

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