When you decide to separate: couples therapy that helps you end well

“We are not here so you can get us back together. We are here because we don’t want to destroy each other.”

That is how a couple explained, at their first session, why they had come. They sat at opposite ends of the sofa, not angry so much as tired. The decision had been made months earlier, the flat was already half divided, and the children did not know anything yet. What they needed was not advice on whether to stay together. They needed a space in which they could end things without burning down everything they had built together — above all two children, who would still have both parents after the separation.

People are often surprised to hear that couples who are separating come to couples therapy too. This post is about that less familiar side of therapy: separating with the help of a therapist, what happens in those sessions, how to protect the children along the way, and why a good goodbye is worth the effort.

Couples therapy is not only for those who stay

Most people picture couples therapy as a rescue: a couple is in trouble and the therapist helps them find each other again. That is indeed a common goal. But it is not the only one. Some couples come when the decision has already been made and they want help carrying it out. Others come because one of them wants to leave and the other does not, and they do not know how to go on. Still others come after they have already separated, because looking after the children together is not working.

Why would you bother ending well something that is ending anyway? The shortest answer is: because of everything that does not end. If you have children, you will be their parents for decades — at birthdays, graduations, weddings, through illnesses. If you share a circle of friends, a home or a business, the ending will last longer than the signature. And even if nothing ties you together any more, each of you will carry away a story about why it ended. That story will shape the next relationship.

With children, the reason is even more tangible. The psychologist Mavis Hetherington followed families after divorce for decades. She found that around 25% of children from divorced families had serious emotional, social or behavioural problems — compared with around 10% of children from families that stayed together. That means two things. Divorce really is a risk for children. But three quarters of children develop without serious problems, and what separates one group from the other is not so much the divorce itself as the way the parents go through it.

When one is leaving and the other still hopes

It is rare for both partners to decide on an ending at the same time and with the same certainty. More often one is already halfway out the door while the other still hopes something can be saved. Therapists call this a mixed-agenda couple. For these couples the family therapist William Doherty of the University of Minnesota developed a short form of work he calls discernment counselling.

It lasts a handful of sessions at most, and its aim is not to repair the relationship but to reach clarity. The therapist talks to both partners together and to each one separately. They help the one who is leaving understand what brought them to that point and whether anything could still hold them. They help the one who is staying see what they have contributed to the pattern and what they would need to change if the relationship got another chance. At the end there are three possible paths: stay as things are; separate; or commit to six months of serious couples therapy with a time agreed in advance, after which they decide again.

When only one partner is willing to come, the situation is different, but not hopeless — I wrote about that in When only one of you wants therapy: does couples therapy still make sense?

What happens in these sessions

Therapy around a separation is not mediation and not legal advice. The therapist does not decide who gets the flat and does not write reports for the court. Their work lies elsewhere: in what happens between two people as they part.

Broadly, the sessions revolve around four tasks:

• Putting into words what happened. Not to find someone to blame, but so that each of you understands at least part of the other’s story. A couple who part without any shared understanding often carry on the same argument for years — only now through lawyers and children.
• Separating feelings from agreements. Sadness, anger, guilt and shame are unavoidable when you separate. The trouble starts when they spill over into the question of who will drive the children to training. In the session, the feelings get their own space, so they do not need to take over everything else.
• Preparing the conversation with the children. When, where, who will say what, and what you will do when the children ask why.
• Saying goodbye. To the relationship, to shared plans, to the image of yourself as someone who made it work. More on this below.

In relational family therapy, in which I am training, one more idea matters here. Christian Gostečnik describes how partners bring patterns from their families of origin into the relationship and unconsciously repeat them there. A separation does not resolve these patterns. If someone withdraws during conflict and then feels abandoned, they will feel that way during the separation too — and in their next relationship. So one of the tasks of therapy around a separation is for each person to see at least a little of their own part of the dance. Not to be weighed down by it, but so as not to carry it forward unchanged.

Children: what actually protects them

Research on children and divorce has converged considerably over the past four decades. The sociologist Paul Amato summarised in a large review that children are harmed not so much by the event of divorce itself as by the chain of changes and stresses that comes with it — moving house, losing contact with one parent, worse finances and, above all, conflict between the parents. The psychologists Joan Kelly and Robert Emery similarly stressed that most children do well after divorce, and that resilience is supported mainly by three factors: low conflict between the parents, a warm and consistent relationship with at least one — ideally both — parents, and as few unnecessary changes at once as possible.

The most damaging kind of conflict is the one in which the child ends up in the middle: when the parents use the child as a messenger, when one speaks badly of the other in front of them, when the child feels they have to choose a side. Therapists call this triangulation — tension between two adults spills over onto a third, the weakest in the triangle. A child who has to look after their parents’ feelings loses something nobody can give back: the freedom to be carefree.

You can read more about what research says on protective factors in Children and divorce: what the research really says about what protects them.

How to tell the children

If there is one thing worth preparing together, it is the conversation with the children. Children remember it — not every word, but the atmosphere, who did the talking, whether the parents sat together or one stood by the door.

In therapy, this is often exactly the conversation we rehearse. What you will say about the reason — enough truth that the child does not sense a lie, and few enough details that they do not become a confidant in adult matters. How you will explain what will change and what stays the same. And above all, how you will make it clear that it is not the child’s fault and that you both love them just as much as before.

I go into this in more detail in How to tell your children that their parents are separating, and the knowledge base has a printable worksheet, Telling a child about a separation, which you can fill in together.

From couple to co-parents

When a couple with children stops being a couple, they do not stop being a family. They become something for which there is no lovely word: two households with one shared task. We call that task co-parenting.

The hardest part of co-parenting is not the schedule but the shift in your head. Your former partner remains someone who hurt you, and at the same time has to become a colleague on the most important project of your life. A therapist cannot erase resentment, but can help keep it from pouring into every message about who is collecting the children.

Very concrete things help here: an agreement on how you communicate (for instance, only in writing and only about the children), who decides what, and what happens when you disagree. The psychologist Robert Emery and his colleagues followed parents for twelve years: some had resolved their custody dispute through mediation, others in court. Twelve years on, the parents in the mediation group whose children did not live with them were more often in contact with their children and more involved in their lives. The way you reach agreement at the start echoes for years.

To get started, there is a Co-parenting agreement in the knowledge base, and I write about it more broadly in Co-parenting after separation: how to stay a team when you are no longer a couple.

The goodbye: the session most couples skip

People rarely truly say goodbye when they separate. The last conversation is often an argument, a text message or a signature at the notary’s. A relationship that lasted ten or twenty years ends without a single sentence that rounds it off.

That is why, at the end of the work around a separation, and when both are ready for it, I suggest a separate session. In it, each person says what was good in the relationship, what they are grateful for, what they regret and what they will not carry forward. It does not have to be beautiful. It is often very sad. But sadness spoken in front of the other settles differently from sadness you carry alone.

Such a conversation might sound something like this (a composite, not a real person):

“I’m grateful to you for the years we spent building the house. Back then I felt we could manage anything.”
“I’m sorry I just went quiet these last few years. I thought I was protecting you.”
“I know. And I shouted because I thought you couldn’t hear me.”
“I did hear you. I just didn’t know what to do.”

There is no solution in these few lines. But there is something the couple did not have before: an acknowledgement that both of them tried, each in their own clumsy way. It does not bring the relationship back, but it can give dignity back to both of them.

A separation is a loss, and like every loss it needs grieving. I wrote about why the end of a relationship hurts much like losing someone close in Divorce as grief.

Exercise: three sentences for the ending

You can do this exercise on your own, even if your former partner is not ready for a joint session. It takes twenty minutes and a sheet of paper. It is not a letter you send — it is a letter you write for yourself.

1. Write down one thing you are grateful for. Be specific: a period, an action, a quality. “I’m grateful that you taught me …”
2. Write down one thing you regret about yourself. Not about them — about yourself. “I’m sorry that I …”
3. Write down one thing you will not carry forward. A pattern, a belief, a way of reacting that you do not want to repeat in your next relationship.
4. Read all three sentences aloud and notice which one is hardest. That is probably where most remains unfinished.
5. Decide what to do with it. You can keep the sheet, burn it or bring it to therapy. If you have children, add one more thing you value in the other parent as a parent — it will come in handy on a bad day.

Where this does not apply

I want to be clear here, because the idea of a “good breakup” can become one more pressure.

Where there is violence, joint sessions are not appropriate. If there is physical, psychological or financial violence in the relationship, the first task is safety, not a conversation about gratitude. Joint sessions can give a violent partner one more stage for control. In Slovenia, help is available on the SOS helpline for women and children victims of violence, 080 11 55; if you are in immediate danger, call the police in Slovenia on 113.

A good breakup is not the same as friendship. You do not have to be friends after separating, and it is no sign of failure if you are not. Sometimes the healthiest ending is the one that sets a clear distance. I wrote about when friendship after the end is possible and when it is not in Staying friends after a break-up: myth or realistic goal?

Therapy cannot replace legal help. In Slovenia, for a divorce by mutual agreement, parents of minor children must reach an agreement on whom the children will live with, on contact and on maintenance. For questions about how to arrange this, turn to a lawyer, a notary or a centre for social work, which also offers mediation. Therapy can help you talk about these things more easily — but it cannot settle them for you.

Sometimes one person will not take part. A good breakup takes two. If the other does not want it, you can still take care of your own part — your grief, your relationship with the children and your share of the pattern. Individual support, as I describe under support through separation, is better suited to that.

What to remember

• Couples therapy is not only for couples who stay together — it can also help you end well.
• What harms children most after divorce is conflict that puts them in the middle, not the divorce itself; three quarters of children develop without serious problems.
• The conversation with the children is worth preparing together: enough truth, few details, a clear message that it is not their fault.
• Co-parenting is a new role: the agreements you make at the start echo for years.
• A goodbye does not bring the relationship back, but it can restore dignity to both of you — and where there is violence, safety comes first.