One Foot Out, One Foot In: A Guide to Discernment Counseling

If you or your partner are stuck between staying and leaving your relationship, Discernment Counseling was designed for exactly where you are right now. It's a short-term process created by Bill Doherty to help couples gain clarity and confidence about what's next, especially when one of you is leaning in and the other is leaning out.

Think about the home you and your partner have built together. Maybe there's a closet full of things you never unpacked, or projects that used to feel urgent and now just blend into the background. There might be a quiet hum of dissatisfaction with parts of the home that you never really talk about. When you finally decide to bring it up, you realize your partner has felt it too, but their idea of what to do about it is different from yours. One of you wants to sell. The other thinks the house just needs some renovating.

That gap is where a lot of couples get stuck. Separation is rarely fully mutual, and both the leaning in and leaning out positions can feel confusing and lonely at a moment when clarity is what you actually need. Discernment Counseling gives you the scaffolding to figure out what's next, together, with mutual respect. 

What is Discernment Counseling? 

The purpose in this style of counseling isn’t to work on the relationship – it’s to get clarity on a decision for what to do next. The process will guide couples through individual and joint discussion to determine which of the three paths forward they wish to take: 

• Keep things as they are for now (no formal decision, but still more clarity to process) 

• Move toward separation or divorce with more clarity

• Commit to 6 months of couples therapy to work on the relationship

  
  

Importantly, Discernment Counseling is different from traditional couples therapy, which focuses on working through relational dynamics and improving the quality of the relationship. When one partner is leaning out, that kind of work usually isn't effective until both partners have gained some clarity about where the relationship stands and which direction they want to go.

What Success Looks Like 

Success in this style of counseling isn't about the outcome of your relationship, it's about both of you getting unstuck. A successful experience means that each of you walk away with a better understanding of your own role in the relational dynamic, more clarity in the next step you want to take, and some progress toward getting out of the stuck pattern you've been in. 

If you decide to commit to couples therapy afterward, that's a success. If you decide to separate with more clarity and less animosity, that's also a success. The goal is for both of you to walk out feeling more autonomy over your future than you did walking in.

What’ll Actually Happen In The Room

Discernment Counseling is short by design. You commit one session at a time, with a general max of five sessions total. The first session is two hours long, and if more sessions are needed, each session after that is 90 minutes. There's no homework or skills to practice between sessions, just space to reflect on what came up.

Each session starts with you and your partner together, but the bulk of the work happens in individual conversations with the therapist. You come back together at the end to share where you each landed. The reason for this structure is that you and your partner are starting from different places, so the deepest work happens one on one before you come back together.

Are You the Leaning Out Partner? 

You might be the partner who's already started imagining a life outside the relationship. If that's you, you might be feeling:

• Hopeless, checked out, or just done

• Like leaving would be a relief or set you free 

• Ambivalent and exhausted, without the energy to try again

If any of this resonates, you're not a bad partner for feeling this way. Discernment Counseling gives you room to slow down and look at where you are without pressure to commit to a direction you aren't ready for.

Are You the Leaning In Partner?

You might be the partner who wants to keep working on the relationship, even if you're not sure how. If that's you, you might be feeling:

• Like you don't get a vote in the future of your own relationship

• Caught between chasing your partner for answers and shutting down completely

• Out of control, in a way that makes it hard to show up as your best self

This position is its own kind of hard. Discernment Counseling makes room for that experience too, and gives both of you a way to be in the same room without one person pushing and the other pulling away.

Before you move on, spend a minute with the position you don't identify with. If you're leaning in, what might your partner be feeling? If you're leaning out, what might it be like to be the one trying to hold on? You don't have to agree with your partner's experience for Discernment Counseling to be effective, but you do have to be willing to sit with it.

When Discernment Counseling Isn't the Right Fit 

Discernment Counseling isn't the right starting point for every couple. It isn't a good fit when:

• One partner has already firmly decided to end the relationship

• One partner is pressuring or coercing the other into participating

• There is domestic violence in the relationship (please see resources here) 

If any of these apply to you, there are other resources that will serve you better, which we can help point you in the right direction of. 

You Don't Have to Be Married 

Discernment Counseling is built around the question of "what's next for us," and that question shows up in any committed relationship. Whether you're married, engaged, partnered, or living together without a legal label, the process works the same.

If you and your partner are in that stuck, in-between place and you're not sure which direction to take, Discernment Counseling can give you a structured space to figure it out together.

Reach out to our team of Washington State licensed therapists for a free 20-minute consultation today. We have openings virtually, in Seattle, and in Spokane.