There was a time when divorce was rare, and when it happened, the reasons were stark. Someone was chronically unfaithful. Someone was drinking destructively. Someone was violent. In 19th-century America, you could add a fourth: desertion — husbands who went west and simply disappeared.

These are what I think of as the “hard” reasons for divorce — affairs, addictions, and abuse, the Triple A’s. They represent behaviors that threaten the dignity and safety of a spouse and, almost always, the children. In their most severe forms, they are intolerable. No one can live with them indefinitely and remain healthy.

Few things create more tension in a marriage than the suspicion that a spouse’s “friendship” has crossed a line — even if nothing physical has happened.

I see this regularly in my practice. One partner is deeply unsettled by the closeness their spouse shares with someone else. The other partner feels falsely accused and becomes defensive. What follows are circular arguments about the definition of cheating — debates that never actually resolve anything. The suspicious partner remains hurt. The accused partner feels judged. And the marriage becomes a little less safe for both of them.

There is a widely held assumption — shared by therapists, attorneys, friends, and family members alike — that by the time someone files for divorce, the decision is settled. The thinking goes: if you’ve hired a lawyer and started the legal process, you must have made your peace with the end of the marriage. The only remaining work is to get through it as constructively as possible.

In my practice, I can tell you that this assumption is frequently wrong. And now, a growing body of research confirms what I have observed for years: a significant number of people who file for divorce are not at all certain they want one.

One of the first things that happens when a spouse announces they want a divorce — or when you begin to suspect the marriage is in serious trouble — is the overwhelming need to talk to someone. The weight of it is too much to carry alone. You need to be heard. You need someone to tell you that you’re not crazy, that what you’re feeling makes sense, that there is a way through this.

That instinct is healthy. But who you choose to confide in, and how you go about it, will shape the trajectory of this crisis more than most people realize. In my years of working with couples at this crossroads, I’ve seen the choice of confidant either stabilize or accelerate the unraveling of a marriage.

When your spouse tells you they want a divorce — or you begin to sense they’re pulling away in a direction you can’t reach — every instinct tells you to fight for the marriage. To make your case. To have the conversation that will finally break through. To fix it, right now, tonight.

I understand that impulse. It comes from love, and it comes from fear. But in more than two decades of working with couples at this exact crossroads, I can tell you with confidence: urgency almost always makes things worse.

This is not about the ordinary frustrations of marriage — the recurring arguments, the stuck patterns, the feeling that your spouse doesn’t fully understand you. Every marriage has those. What I want to talk about is something deeper and more frightening: the private, persistent worry that your marriage might not make it.

If you have been carrying that worry, you are almost certainly carrying it alone. And you probably assume that what you’re experiencing is unusual — that most married people don’t have thoughts like these, that the presence of such doubt means something is fundamentally broken in you or your relationship.

You’ve read about Discernment Counseling. Something about it resonated. Maybe you’ve already called a therapist and had that first private conversation. You feel a small, fragile sense of hope — or at least a sense that there is a concrete next step you can take.

And now comes the part that terrifies you: telling your spouse.

This conversation is one of the most delicate moments in the entire process, and it is the question I hear most often on initial phone calls. “How do I bring this up?” “What if they say no?” “What if it makes things worse?” “I don’t even know how to explain what Discernment Counseling is without it sounding like I’ve given up on us — or like I’m trying to trap them into therapy.”

If you’ve been through couples therapy that went nowhere — or if you’re a therapist who has watched it happen from the other side of the room — what I’m about to describe will probably sound familiar.

A couple arrives for their first session. One partner is visibly invested — they researched therapists, made the appointment, filled out the intake forms. They want to work on the marriage. They’re ready.

One of the most common questions I get — from individuals, from couples, and from the therapists and attorneys who refer to me — is some version of: “We know we need help, but we don’t know what kind.”

It’s a reasonable question, and it matters more than most people realize. Starting with the wrong approach doesn’t just waste time and money — it can actively make things worse. A couple who needs Discernment Counseling but ends up in traditional couples therapy is likely to stall, grow more frustrated, and conclude that “therapy doesn’t work.” A couple who needs couples therapy but delays it while agonizing over the decision to commit may lose months of momentum they can’t afford.