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

This second edition offers a session-by-session guide to discernment counseling, a specialized five-session intervention to help couples leaning different ways about divorce or separation find the best path forward for their troubled relationships. The authors have added new case examples that reflect different kinds of couples, as well as an additional chapter demonstrating the entire discernment counseling protocol in action.Updated scholarship and insights for learning to become a discernment counselor have also been included. Unlike traditional couples therapy, the goal of discernment counseling isn't to help the couple heal their relationship but rather to gain clarity and confidence about a direction for their relationship in terms of three potential paths: maintaining the status quo, getting divorced/separated, or entering couples therapy. Typically, one partner or spouse is invested in saving the relationship (leaning in) while the other is not (leaning out), so this book explo