Divorce Counseling: How a Divorce Counselor Can Help

Jeff Schneider

Jeff Schneider, Counselor

Expertise: Counselor

Jeff Schneider is a N.Y. State licensed clinical social worker and relationship expert in New Paltz, NY. He has helped people from all walks of life struggling with relationship... Read more

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Updated: 30 Aug, 2022

Table of Contents

Unresolved conflict and blame erode trust and safety; divorce counseling can guide respectful dialogue and keep your children protected.
Children are watching and the fight affects their well-being; a counselor can help you discuss custody with care and foster cooperative parenting.
Ending with dignity can begin with support that makes the transition smoother, affordable, and focused on healing, so you model help and secure a better co-parenting future.

You and your partner have been arguing for years. The same challenges and issues recur repeatedly without resolution. When you try to talk about these, you interrupt and blame each other which only makes matters worse.

There are many challenges, inclusive of:

Differences around saving money and spending money: You want to save more for the future and establish financial security while your partner enjoys spending money and wants to enjoy the money in the present.
Sexual differences: You need emotional intimacy in order to have sex yet as you feel withdrawn, unsupported, unheard, and uncared. You don’t have had any interest in sex for years but your partner wants to have sex much more often than you do and attempts to use sex as a way to be close to you.
Issues with parenting: Your parenting styles are also quite different, with you being much more liberal, patient, and understanding. Your partner is more inclined to use strict discipline, re-creating the environment that they were raised in.
Issues of trust, or more accurately, mistrust: You both came into the relationship with trust issues having been raised in environments where there were numerous betrayals and violations of boundaries.

What you’ve done so far…

You have read books on how to improve your relationship and have gone to relationship seminars. You’ve invited your partner to the seminars and to read the books with them but they are always offering a firm response that they are not interested in these. And in some of their angrier and disparaging moments, they’ve characterized your interests and endeavors as a bunch of hokey, New Age crap. Other times they’ve belittled you for your interest in self-exploration, self-growth, and spirituality. You have tried marital therapy a couple of times. Both times this was short-lived with each of you withdrawing soon after you began the process.

You both cited time constraints, financial concerns, and dislike of the therapist as reasons to cease the process.

Why it didn’t work

In actuality, it was likely due to fear of you needing to look at your weaknesses, at your part in the marital problems and conflicts, at your fears of intimacy and at the chasm of your wants and needs.

I’ve seen many people drop out of counseling citing the reasons that you two have used it believing it was really due to their fears. This is understandable as counseling, in order for it to be of value, takes work and commitment, and can be uncomfortable.

As painful as things have been through the years they have gotten progressively worse and now are at a level where they are just about intolerable. The arguing has increased in both frequency and volatility. There is more cursing and name-calling. There’ve been some incidents where things have been thrown, where you’ve shoved one another and threatened one another.

Your two children are becoming increasingly affected by the arguing, the volatility, and the overall enmity that pervades the home. Your son is acting out more in school bullying the other students while your daughter has become more anxious, uncommunicative, and withdrawn. Her grades have been falling as well.

One thing that you and your partner agree upon is that you are truly hurting one another along with hurting your children. You want the intense pain to stop, both for yourselves and your children. You are in agreement that you want the marriage to end and that you want to get a divorce.

What you’re asking yourself

You’re wondering how to end the marriage and with some semblance of respect, self-esteem, and amicability.

You’re wondering whether a therapist might help you to do so, even as previous efforts at counseling have not served you well.

You’re wondering whether there is even such a thing as divorce counseling.

Yes, there is.

Role of a divorce counselor

Help you to divide your belongings and assets
Help you to discuss child custody and sharing of parental responsibilities
Guide and support you with how to share your decision with your children
Offer you the opportunity to bring your children in for some sessions so that you can all discuss your pain and fears regarding the break-up of your family and the uncertainty of what lies ahead
Discuss your regrets and remorse about hopes, plans and longings being unfulfilled and coming to an end
Lay a foundation for future interactions being done with respect and cooperation, given that you are linked together for life by your two children
Make the divorce process much more affordable than paying more expensive lawyers over a lengthy, drawn-out and acrimonious process
Model for your children that help is available
Lay a foundation for cooperative co-parenting
Provide assurance for your kids that you are attempting to work together and that you have their safety in mind

No matter how you experience it and even if it is for the best, divorcing is a painful process. Your marriage, once filled with love, support, hope, certainty, and dreams, is coming to an end.

As noted above divorce counseling has many benefits and can make a very painful process easier. It will also increase the probability that you keep your problems between the two of you and that your children will not be asked to choose sides or be caught in a crossfire of your conflict. This is extremely important for their well-being.

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Jeff Schneider Counselor

Jeff Schneider is a N.Y. State licensed clinical social worker and relationship expert in New Paltz, NY. He has helped people from all walks of life struggling with relationship... Read more problems, addictions, depression, fear, low self-esteem and how to integrate counseling and spirituality. Read less

(Jeff Schneider is also listed in Best Marriage Therapists in Putnam)