To Discern is to…?
Are You Facing a Choice Point?
Your relationship wasn’t supposed to be like this. The promises, hopes, dreams, and vows you made were sincere and most of all, they were shared. And still, here you are. What happened? Is it too late? Are you a fool to even consider leaving? Are you an even bigger fool to consider staying? Is one more try warranted or a “fool’s errand”?
When these are the agonizingly heartfelt questions you are facing, when your mind is flooded with constantly shifting scenarios, and your guts are tied up in knots, it may be useful to recognize several key points:
You are not alone. A conflict is a conflict precisely because we are simultaneously pulled in opposite directions. This tension is often a raw element essential to effective decision making. (The origins of the word conflict means to be struck or forced together, implying that the natural tendency when you are experiencing a conflict is to pull apart!)
These conflict-laden life choice points, when taken seriously and explored honestly, are where important transformations in your life are born. Deep change arises from conflict because it involves letting go of a present “known” in favor of a future “unknown.” It involves exchanging certainty and predictability for doubt and uncertainty.
This transformational energy - both positive and negative - that is feeding this point in your life has its roots in your deepest desires to live a life of meaning, connection, and purpose. No wonder you don’t treat the decision you are facing casually or flippantly.
The Moments of Discernment
To discern means to separate what is interwoven, to respond to what is muddy, blurry, confusing, and often what is heart-wrenching, and to separate the messiness so that greater clarity emerges. To discern involves deciding, distinguishing, and determining. To discern involves exploring, examining, and evaluating. To discern involves facing, feeling, and no longer faking. And to discern involves sensing, seeing, and finally solving or re-solving.
Relationship dilemmas involve feeling torn between two seemingly impossible alternatives. The more you lean toward one (e.g., I’ll give this one more chance.), the more you feel pulled in the opposite direction (e.g., Enough is enough. I’ve got to move on.). The dance between these opposites, these polarities, can go on and on. Discernment can help you to get out of the loop of the constant oscillation, the back and forth, between two wholly unsatisfying options.
Discovering the Third Alternative
The tug-of-war between opposing choices continues because each end of the polarity of options contains certain elements that have value to you. The value of engaging in a course of therapy that involves deeply immersing yourself (ideally both of you) into the experience and exploration of these polar values in a respectful and non-judging manner is that you can discover a third alternative that contains elements of both poles. You may divorce but invest your post-divorce relationship with ways to retain positive connection with each other that helps build effective co-parenting practices. You may decide to stay but find the within a restructured commitment the means to open up new vistas in how you relate to each other that have been blocked in the past or that sat largely unknown and unseen.
The investment of time into this process, which typically involves 5-10 meetings, alone and together, can help each partner to reach decisions that are mutually acceptable, rewarding, and that re-invest the “rules of engagement” that were perpetuating the conflict that created the need for a discerning focus in the first place.
I am ready when you are.