Therapy101 / Relationships
When goals differ
Partners or family members can come to therapy hoping for different outcomes, and practitioners work to clarify whether a shared purpose can be agreed.
When partners have different goals
People entering joint therapy do not always want the same thing. One partner may hope to repair the relationship while the other is unsure whether to stay; a parent and an adolescent may disagree about what the problem is. In research on couple and family therapy, this is part of the within-system alliance: the extent to which participants agree on the nature of the difficulties and value working together towards shared goals.
Discernment counselling for mixed-agenda couples
Discernment counselling has been described by William Doherty and colleagues for ‘mixed-agenda’ couples in which one partner is leaning towards divorce or separation while the other wants to preserve and repair the relationship. Rather than starting couple therapy immediately, discernment counselling is a brief protocol (typically one to five sessions) whose stated aim is greater clarity and confidence about a direction for the relationship.
The 2016 report’s abstract describes an analysis of 100 consecutive cases; this observational case analysis alone does not establish that the counselling caused the choices made.
A constructed example
Constructed for learning. Not a real case.
In a first meeting, one partner says they want to rebuild trust and stay together, while the other says they came only to show they tried before separating. The practitioner names this difference openly and explains that standard couple therapy requires both people to agree, at least for a set period, to work on the relationship. They discuss whether to spend a few sessions clarifying their options first.
Limits and open questions
A meta-analysis of 48 couple and family therapy studies by Myrna Friedlander and colleagues reported that split or unbalanced alliances were associated with poorer therapy outcomes (r = .316 across seven independent samples). Naming differing goals early can help avoid pressing ahead with an unacknowledged split, though it does not guarantee that partners will reach the same decision.
Sources and inspection notes
Supports: Abstract only was checked. It describes discernment counselling for couples where one partner is leaning towards divorce and the other wants to work on the relationship, gives its goal as clarity and confidence about next steps, and reports an analysis of 100 consecutive cases. A case analysis of this kind does not show that the counselling caused the choices made.
Supports: Abstract defines within-system alliances (agreement among family members or partners on problems and shared goals) and split alliances, and reports meta-analytic associations with outcome across 48 studies.