Discernment: Keep Working On It, or Call It Quits?
by Dr. Bruce Chalmer
Your relationship is at a breaking point. You know you can’t continue as it is, but you don’t want to go through the pain of separation if working on it would help.
But you can’t decide if working on it would help or not. You feel stuck. How can you decide which way to go?
Since you’re reading an article about whether to keep working on a relationship or call it quits, I’m guessing that your relationship could be at a breaking point. Something isn’t working and hasn’t been working for a long time.
And you don’t agree on what to do next. You feel stuck.
Maybe one of you is hoping to save the relationship and the other wants to move towards splitting up. Or maybe you just don’t know what to do next. You just know you don’t want to stay stuck.
Maybe you’ve tried couples counseling or individual counseling, and you still feel stuck. You keep going over and over your arguments, and endlessly analyzing your attachment styles, and crafting how you’re supposed to communicate, and none of it has helped you know what to do.
It’s not just frustrating, it’s painful. It’s a sick feeling, being in a relationship that just isn’t working and feeling stuck there. The prospect of losing everything you’ve built together is awful, and the prospect of staying in pain is equally awful.
The Discernment Approach
Let me tell you about an approach to counseling that was created to deal with this exact situation. Many therapists, including me, have been incorporating variations of this approach for years, but the best-known variant was invented by couples therapist Bill Doherty. He called it “Discernment Counseling.” What I’m describing here is my own version of discernment work, but I want to credit Doherty for a lot of the ideas behind it.
To understand the discernment approach, we start by recognizing what’s probably kept you stuck. On the one hand, your relationship has become painful—too painful to accept as is. On the other hand, leaving your relationship would also be painful—too painful to simply risk it.
If you knew that working on it somehow, such as couples sessions, could make it better, you’d want to do that. If you knew that working on it will just prolong the pain, you’d want to go ahead and split up.
And the problem is, you just don’t know if working on it will make it better or not.
The whole idea of discernment is to focus just on that question. Not “How can we improve our relationship?” but rather, “Is this relationship viable at all?”
If the answer to that is yes, then you can decide how and when to work on it, if at all. If the answer is no, you can move toward separation.
Three Options
Which means, essentially, that you have three options to consider:
- You decide to stay and commit to working on the relationship, at least for some period of time.
- You decide to just wait and see for now.
- You decide to call it quits.
So far, we’ve just identified the options. You probably already realized that those are the choices. How can you make a decision?
How Can You Decide?
Let me offer you a framework to help you get started. This brief article will just give you an overview, but I hope it will give you some idea that there’s a way out of the morass.
First, let’s distinguish between two types of problems you might be having in your relationship: (1) deal-breakers, and (2) growing pains.
Deal-Breakers
Deal-breakers are problems that can’t be solved by growth.
Oddly enough, the difference isn’t necessarily about how severe a problem is. Some very severe problems are really growing pains, and some problems that might not seem so terrible can turn out to be deal breakers.
Some classic deal-breakers:
- One of you wants to have children, and the other doesn’t.
- Each of you needs to live near your extended family, and the two families are thousands of miles apart.
- Each of you needs the other to embrace your religious tradition, and your two traditions each require excluding the other.
In each of these, of course, if one genuinely changes their mind to agree with the other, it’s no longer a deal-breaker.
But if both parties are deeply committed to their own side of the question, staying together is a recipe for resentment. Note that neither party is wrong, or misunderstanding the other, in these situations. It’s just that there’s no middle ground.
Growing Pains
What makes a problem a growing pain? It’s simple. If it isn’t a deal-breaker, it’s a growing pain.
In other words, if it’s at least possible that growth can resolve the problem, it’s not a deal-breaker.
Notice that you could still decide to split up, even if all your problems are growing pains. That’s up to you. But the bias in my approach is that if you don’t have any clear deal-breakers, you should at least consider working on the relationship.
The Basic Guideline
If you’ve identified one or more clear deal-breakers, your path is clear, albeit painful. You don’t need help saving a relationship that can’t be saved. Couples work can still be helpful, but the focus will be on splitting up as humanely as possible.
But you don’t have a clear deal-breaker, which means you’ve determined your problems are growing pains, I have a straightforward recommendation:
Don’t break up too soon.
What’s “too soon?” Only you can determine that.
But if you break up before you’ve worked to understand what’s happening, and learn what you need to learn, you’re just setting yourself up to go through the same problems in the future.
Are You Stuck In This Situation?
If you’re trying to decide whether your relationship is viable or not, you don’t have to figure it out by yourself. There’s help available.
If you’d like to work with me directly, you can learn more about couples sessions with me.
Prefer to work on this on your own?
My self-paced video course Discernment: Keep Working On It, or Call It Quits? guides you through a deep dive into your situation, and helps you clarify which of the three options to choose. The course is helpful on its own, or as preparation for couples sessions.
About me
Dr. Bruce Chalmer
Practicing relationship psychologist for over thirty years.
Author, podcast host, creator of video courses.
I’ve helped hundreds of individuals and couples navigate the most difficult decisions they face.