Divorce counselling, before and during
Most counselling for divorce arrives too late, once the decision is made and the damage is done. This page is about the part before that: whether to separate at all, and how to go through it if you do. I am Shagoon Maurya, a registered counsellor and psychotherapist (ACA Level 2, PACFA), working online worldwide.
People looking for divorce counseling are usually in one of three positions, and they need quite different things.
Some are deciding, and genuinely do not know. Some have decided and their partner has not. And some have both agreed, and now need to get through it without doing lasting damage, particularly where there are children.
If you genuinely do not know
Ambivalence is not weakness or indecision. It is usually accurate information about a marriage that has real things in it and real problems.
The mistake is waiting for certainty before acting. Certainty rarely arrives on its own, and years disappear in the waiting. What tends to work better is examining the specific things you would be leaving and the specific things you would be leaving for, rather than weighing the marriage as one undifferentiated mass.
Sometimes that produces a decision to leave. Often it produces something else: a clear view of what would have to change for staying to be tolerable, which is a workable question in a way that “should I stay” is not. If that is where you land, couples counselling is the next step rather than this.
When one of you wants out and the other does not
This is the most common version, and standard couples therapy handles it badly. If one partner is working to save the marriage and the other has half a foot out of the door, ordinary joint sessions become a performance for one of you and a trap for the other.
Discernment counselling exists for exactly this. It is short, deliberately time-limited, and its goal is not to fix the marriage. It is to reach a clear decision: separate, or commit to a defined period of genuine effort. Each of you also spends time individually, because the leaning-out partner rarely says the honest thing in front of the other.
The value is that it stops the drift. A marriage where one person has quietly decided and the other has not been told can continue for years, and that is worse for both than a decision either way.
If an affair is part of it
Then the decision is entangled with something that needs its own work first. Deciding whether to divorce in the first weeks after discovery is deciding under conditions nobody thinks clearly in.
That has its own process, which I have set out on affair recovery, and if it was your husband, the position you are in.
Getting through the process
If the decision is made, counselling during a divorce does something separate from what a solicitor does. I am not giving legal advice, and I would be careful of anyone who blends the two.
What it does address: keeping negotiations from becoming a proxy war, managing contact with someone you are still angry with, deciding what to tell people and when, and holding on to some version of yourself while everything is administrative and hostile.
Where children are involved, the practical work usually shifts quickly to co-parenting, because that relationship does not end with the marriage.
When divorce carries extra weight
In South Asian families a separation is rarely a private matter. It affects a woman’s standing more than a man’s, it is held to affect siblings’ prospects, and it is discussed by people who were not asked.
That pressure is real and I will not pretend otherwise. What it must not do is make the decision for you by exhaustion. If that is your context, I work with Indian couples and across the wider diaspora.
Coming on your own
Very common, and often better at this stage. A partner who refuses counselling has not refused you a decision. Individual sessions are frequently where the clearest thinking happens, precisely because you are not managing the other person’s reaction while you think.
Once the separation is done, the work changes again, and that is divorce recovery rather than this.
How sessions work
Fifty minutes over secure video, worldwide, or in person in Melbourne. Individually, jointly, or a mixture, which is normal. We start with a free 15-minute consultation, and you do not need to have decided anything to book one.
Written by Shagoon Maurya
Registered counsellor and psychotherapist, ACA Level 2 and PACFA. Post graduate studies in Counselling & Psychotherapy, University of Adelaide, Australia. Working online worldwide and in person in Melbourne.
Divorce counselling FAQs
Neither by default. The aim is a decision made clearly rather than by attrition. Some couples decide to stay and work on it, some separate, and some use it to separate more decently than they otherwise would have.
This is the position discernment counselling was designed for. It is short and time-limited, includes individual sessions for each of you, and aims at a clear decision rather than a repair you are pursuing alone. Ordinary joint therapy tends to go badly when only one person is invested.
No, and you should be wary of anyone who mixes the two. Property, custody and financial settlements are matters for a family lawyer. Counselling deals with the decision, the emotional process and the relationship you may still have to manage afterwards.
No. Mediation is about reaching practical agreements, usually with a specific settlement in view. Counselling deals with whether to separate and how you are coping, and can run alongside mediation without replacing it.
Yes, and at this stage it is often more useful. Individual sessions let you think without managing the other person’s reaction, which is frequently where the clearest decisions are made.
Earlier than most people do. The parenting relationship continues after the marriage ends, and the patterns set during the separation tend to persist. It is usually worth beginning that work before the divorce is finalised rather than after.
Discernment work is deliberately brief, often five sessions or fewer, because the aim is a decision rather than ongoing therapy. Support through the process itself varies widely, and can be intermittent rather than weekly.
You do not have to have decided
A free 15-minute consultation, online, whichever way you are leaning.