Podcast: Keeping Romance Alive
March 24, 2025
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1) Considering divorce
2) Considering marriage therapy
3) Wondering what type of counseling is right for you
4) Wanting to save your marriage but your partner does not
I’m done with this marriage; it’s too late now even if my spouse were to make major changes.
If you are strongly leaning towards divorce because you feel done with the marriage, we can offer you two options.
One option is short-term Couples On The Brink Counseling to help you take one more look at the decision and to help your spouse get clear as well about what’s happened to the marriage.
The second option is to can offer you personal help and referrals to good mediators and collaborative lawyers.
A third option is to offer you individual therapy, with a “family first” approach to the ups and downs of your divorce process.
We are all about integrity and effectiveness, ensuring, if you have children, that you do well by them as well as to not overreact and behave poorly towards your spouse or your children. We can assist with reactions and emotions that come up for you with whatever distress is occurring.
I have mixed feelings about the divorce; sometimes I think it’s a good idea and sometimes I am not sure.
You are a perfect candidate for Couples On The Brink Counseling.
If you are not ready yet, maybe you feel you want to sort through thoughts and feelings before sharing them with your spouse.
Discernment Counseling offers support as you consider your needs and hopes for the future, as well as challenging wishful thinking or fantasies about the impact of future decisions.
An underlying assumption to Couples on the Brink counseling is that, whether this relationship can be repaired or not, there are areas that each partner can grow in and will need to take a look at to become the best version of their self. Discernment Counseling is designed to identify these areas as part of gaining clarity and confidence.
In from 1 to 5 sessions, each partner will choose a path moving forward:
Path 1 – Continue “as is” – neither leaving nor working on the relationship
Path 2 – Divorce or separation*
Path 3 – An “all in” effort for 6 moths, including couples therapy and any other actions needed to give the marriage its best chance at reconciliation, with divorce off the table. After 6 months we pause to re-evaluate the movement and direction from both partner’s perspective.
I would consider reconciling if my spouse got serious about making major changes.
This is a tough situation where Couples On The Brink Counseling will be helpful. We can help you clarify what has to change if you are to stay in the marriage, and we can help you make that clear to your spouse in a non-antagonistic way.
We can also help you figure out what you would need to change change in yourself in a future marriage or relationship, whether it’s in this one or a new one down the road.
Here we get a little murky. If you are really low on hope, Couples On The Brink Counseling is by far the best approach to gain clarity and confidence on what got you to this point and the work both of you have to do individually if there were to be any real momentum for your marriage.
If you have hope, motivation, and energy for a serious round of couples therapy, belief that things could improve, and you’re willing to look at your role in the dysfunction that is going on, you may be ready to go right to couples’/marriage therapy
.Overall, if you’ve taken this quiz and are demoralized, remember, this is a short term process, only asking each partner to commit to 1 session at a time, up to 5 sessions. With that said, sometimes the decision to stay together or end a marriage needs more than 5 sessions to discern the best course of action. If that’s the case, there is no shame in being on Path 1 for a period of time to continue discerning on one’s own.
On the other hand, if this process produces a commitment from both partners to give the marriage one more try, at Principle Skills Relationship Center, we are all ready to help you make that transition smoothly into marriage counseling.
I don’t want this divorce, and I would work hard to get us back together.
If your spouse is throwing out the divorce word, you’re in the right place.
If he or she is low on hope for the marriage and really not interested in couples therapy as a way to figure out what to do next, Couples On The Brink Counseling is likely the best path for both of you. Many times a leaning out spouse is pleased to find this type of service and will be open to attending one session.
( We only commit to one session at a time. Both partners decide if they want to return. This may be repetitive with the changes above).
If your spouse is uninterested in Couples On The Brink Counseling, then there’s still a lot of work and growth you could engage in to be the strongest, best version of you, regardless of your partner’s choice. We will help you through this stressful time to get you to a point where you can manage any of the choices and changes you must deal with.
If you think Discernment Counseling or Couples on the Brink counseling could help you, give us a call to book a session to get started.
