What Happens in a Discernment Counseling Session

Most people who contact me about Discernment Counseling are already in significant distress. They’ve been living with uncertainty — sometimes for months, sometimes for years — and by the time they pick up the phone or send an email, they want to know exactly what they’re getting into. They don’t want vague promises about “exploring feelings.” They want to know what will actually happen if they walk through my door.

This is what I tell them.

Before the first session

Discernment Counseling begins before either of you sits down in my office. When you contact me, I’ll speak briefly with each of you individually by phone. This isn’t a formality. I want to understand where each of you stands — who is leaning toward leaving, who wants to work on the marriage, and how far apart you are. I also want to make sure Discernment Counseling is the right fit.

It isn’t right for every couple. If one partner has already made a final, irreversible decision to divorce and is simply looking for help getting the other person to accept it, that’s not what this process is designed for. Discernment Counseling requires that there is still some opening — even a small one — in the mind of the partner who is leaning out. It also isn’t appropriate in situations involving active coercive control or serious safety concerns, where the priority needs to be protection rather than exploration.

If it does seem like the right fit, we schedule the first session. I ask both of you to come, even if one of you is reluctant. Especially if one of you is reluctant.

The first session

The first session is longer than what you’re probably used to in therapy — about two hours. There’s a reason for that. In a standard fifty-minute session, you barely have time to describe the situation, let alone do meaningful work with it. Two hours gives us room to actually get somewhere.

We start together. I’ll ask each of you to tell me, in your own words, what has brought you here. This is not a debate. It’s not a chance to build a case against your partner. It’s a chance for me to hear how each of you understands what’s happened in the marriage and where you stand right now. I listen carefully, and I make sure each of you feels heard before we move on.

Then — and this is where Discernment Counseling starts to feel different from anything you’ve done before — I meet with each of you separately.

The individual conversations

This is the core of the work, and it surprises most couples. In traditional couples therapy, the therapist is almost always in the room with both of you. In Discernment Counseling, I spend a substantial portion of every session in one-on-one conversation with each partner.

Here’s why.

If you’re the one leaning toward divorce, you are almost certainly holding back in front of your spouse. You may have thoughts and feelings you haven’t fully articulated to anyone — doubts, resentments, grief, guilt, relief, confusion. You may be afraid that saying certain things out loud in front of your partner will trigger a crisis you’re not ready to handle. In our individual conversation, you can be completely honest. I’m not going to judge you. I’m not going to pressure you to stay. What I will do is help you look more deeply at what’s happened — not just your partner’s contributions to the problems, but your own. Not because I’m trying to assign blame, but because understanding your own part is essential to making a clear-eyed decision about what comes next, whether that’s repairing this marriage or building a healthier life after it.

If you’re the one who wants to save the marriage, your individual time with me serves a different but equally important purpose. I know you’re in pain. I know the urgency you feel — the desperate wish to fix things, to convince your partner to stay, to do something. In our conversation, I’ll help you begin to see the marriage through your partner’s eyes — not to agree with their perspective, but to genuinely understand it. This is often the hardest and most valuable thing that happens in the entire process. When you can articulate what your partner has been experiencing — without defensiveness, without minimizing — something shifts. Not just in the marriage. In you.

What I’m actually doing

I should be transparent about something. Discernment Counseling is not neutral in the way people sometimes expect therapy to be. I’m not sitting back and asking “how does that make you feel?” I’m active. I’m asking pointed questions. I’m gently challenging both of you.

With the leaning-out partner, I’m exploring whether their desire to leave is based on a clear understanding of what went wrong and a genuine conviction that it cannot be repaired — or whether it’s based on exhaustion, hopelessness, or the gravitational pull of an exit that’s already in motion. These are very different things, and many people haven’t distinguished between them.

With the leaning-in partner, I’m exploring whether their desire to stay is based on a genuine willingness to look at their own role and make real changes — or whether it’s driven by fear, by a wish to return to the way things were, or by a hope that their partner will simply “come back” without anything fundamental shifting. Again, these are very different things.

I am not trying to save every marriage. I am trying to make sure that whatever decision you make is one you can live with — one grounded in understanding rather than reactivity.

Coming back together

At the end of each session, the three of us reconvene briefly. This is a carefully structured moment. I don’t ask you to hash out your differences. Instead, I may invite each of you to share one thing you’ve gained from the session — an insight, a question, something you’re sitting with. Sometimes one partner shares something that visibly lands with the other. Sometimes the sharing is minimal, and that’s fine too. The point is to close the session with both of you in the room, acknowledging that you’ve each done real work.

Then I ask a simple question: would you each like to come back for another session?

That’s it. No pressure. No six-month commitment. Just: do you want to continue this conversation? You decide after every session whether to return. Most couples come for two to five sessions. Some gain the clarity they need in one or two. The process never exceeds five.

What Discernment Counseling is not

Because people sometimes arrive with expectations shaped by other kinds of therapy, I want to be clear about what this process doesn’t involve.

I will not teach you communication skills. I will not give you homework assignments to practice active listening. I will not ask you to go on a date night. Those are all fine tools — I use many of them in couples therapy — but they belong to a different stage. Discernment Counseling is about the decision that comes before the work. It answers the question: are we going to try?

I also won’t tell you what to do. I won’t tell you to stay. I won’t tell you to leave. I will help you see your situation with a kind of clarity that is very difficult to achieve on your own, especially in the fog of crisis. But the decision is yours.

The three paths

By the end of the Discernment Counseling process, you and your partner will have arrived at one of three directions:

You stay together without entering formal couples therapy — at least for now. This is not simply going back to the way things were. During the Discernment Counseling process, both of you have gained new insight into what went wrong and into your own contributions to the problems. Those insights don’t disappear because you’ve chosen not to enter therapy. In many cases, they quietly shift the dynamic between you — a new awareness, a softened stance, a conversation that wouldn’t have happened before. Path One recognizes that not every couple is ready for the intensity of a six-month therapeutic commitment, and that sometimes the understanding gained through discernment is itself enough to begin changing the relationship from the inside.

You move toward separation or divorce — with the knowledge that you made this decision after careful examination, not in haste, and with a deeper understanding of what happened between you. That understanding often makes the divorce process and the co-parenting relationship that follows significantly less painful.

You commit to a six-month, all-out effort to repair the marriage — with divorce taken completely off the table for that period, and with both of you entering couples therapy with clear eyes about what needs to change and what each of you is willing to do differently. This is not a tentative, half-hearted attempt. It is a genuine, bounded commitment — and for many couples, it is the first time they’ve ever truly given their marriage a real chance.

Research on Discernment Counseling outcomes shows that roughly half of couples choose this third path. That number often surprises people, particularly those who walked in assuming the marriage was over.

What people tell me afterward

Regardless of which path a couple chooses, there is one thing I hear consistently: “I feel clearer.” Sometimes that clarity is accompanied by grief. Sometimes by relief. Sometimes by a sense of hope they hadn’t felt in years. But the fog — that awful, disorienting fog of not knowing what to do — lifts.

The partner who was leaning out often tells me that the process gave them something they hadn’t found anywhere else: permission to be honest about their ambivalence without being judged for it, and space to examine whether their desire to leave was truly about the marriage or about something else entirely.

The partner who was leaning in often tells me that they gained something unexpected: not just a better understanding of their spouse’s experience, but a clearer picture of themselves — of the ways they had contributed to the distance, and of the person they want to become regardless of what happens next.

These conversations change people. Not always in the direction they expected. But always toward greater honesty and self-knowledge. And from that foundation, whatever comes next — reconciliation or separation — is built on something real.

If you’re considering this

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably trying to decide whether to call. Let me make it simple.

If your marriage is in trouble and you and your partner are not on the same page about what to do — if one of you is thinking about leaving and the other wants to fight for it — Discernment Counseling is designed precisely for where you are. It’s brief. It’s structured. It asks nothing of you beyond showing up for one session and seeing what happens.

You can reach me at (212) 327-3624 or contact@drherwitz.com. The conversation is confidential, and there is no obligation.

Dr. Johanna Herwitz is a clinical psychologist on the Upper East Side of Manhattan specializing in Discernment Counseling for couples at a crossroads, couples therapy using the Developmental Model, and individual therapy for accomplished adults navigating major life transitions. She is trained and certified through the Doherty Relationship Institute and works with couples where one partner is considering divorce and the other wants to save the marriage.