Gestalt Couples Therapy: Finding Each Other Again

Gestalt Therapy And Couples: Meeting The Other Anew

Often, couples arrive to therapy sitting slightly apart. One partner speaks, the other looks away. There is care in the room, but also tension, a sense of having tried so hard, for so long, and still feeling alone together. What is usually present is not a lack of love, but a loss of contact.

Many couples seek therapy not because they don’t care, but because they care deeply and feel worn down by repeating patterns. Conversations turn into arguments, silence replaces closeness, and old hurts surface again and again, no matter how much effort is made.

Gestalt couples therapy offers a gentle, relational way of working with these difficulties. Rather than analysing who is right or wrong, it focuses on how you meet each other in the present moment, and how the relationship itself can slowly become a place of support rather than struggle.

My approach is influenced by the work of Gestalt therapist Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb, who understands couples therapy as a process of restoring aliveness, curiosity, and spontaneity between partners.

What Supports a Healthy Relationship?

Spagnuolo Lobb describes three experiential dimensions that support the everyday “normality” of a couple. These are not ideals to strive for, but relational capacities that can weaken under stress, and that can be rediscovered when a couple feels supported to slow down and meet differently.

Seeing the Other as Truly Different

In close relationships, familiarity can quietly replace curiosity. Over time, we may stop checking and start assuming, responding more to our idea of our partner than to the person in front of us.

Gestalt couples therapy supports partners to see each other again as separate, alive, and different. When difference is allowed, something softens. The relationship has room to breathe, and moments of genuine interest can return.

You might recognise this if you feel you already know what your partner will say, if you often feel unseen or misunderstood in everyday moments, or if small differences quickly turn into big conflicts.

Hearing the Desire Beneath the Hurt

When we feel wounded by our partner, our nervous system often moves towards protection. We defend, withdraw, argue, or shut down. Spagnuolo Lobb invites another possibility: becoming curious about the desire hidden inside the wound.

Behind anger, criticism, or distance there is often a longing to feel close, to matter, to be reassured or held in mind. In therapy, couples are supported to slow the interaction down, so that hurt can be heard not as an attack, but as an expression of something deeply needed.

You might recognise this if arguments repeat without resolution, if you often feel blamed or criticised (or find yourself blaming), or if you sense there is something important underneath the conflict but can’t quite reach it.

Making a Relational Leap

The third dimension involves what Spagnuolo Lobb calls a leap into the relational dark. This is the moment when one partner risks responding differently, not from habit or self-protection, but from contact.

It might mean offering comfort instead of defence, staying present instead of withdrawing, or expressing care when uncertainty is still there. These moments are often small and quiet, yet they can gently shift the atmosphere between partners.

You might recognise this if you want things to change but don’t know how to start, if you feel caught between protecting yourself and reaching out, or if you miss tenderness, playfulness, or ease between you.

Letting the Relationship Affect You

Gestalt couples therapy is based on the understanding that relationships grow when both partners allow themselves to be affected by one another. Insight alone is rarely enough. Change happens when the other’s experience is allowed to matter enough to shape how we respond.

In the therapy room, attention is given to what unfolds between you: moments of tension, softening, hesitation, or relief. Together, we notice these moments and gently experiment with new ways of meeting that feel possible, embodied, and respectful of both partners.

An Invitation

If you and your partner feel caught in patterns that no longer reflect who you are or how you want to be together, couples therapy can offer a space to slow down and reconnect, not by fixing each other, but by rediscovering the relationship between you.

If you are curious about Gestalt couples therapy and would like to explore whether this approach might support your relationship, you are warmly invited to get in touch.

Author: Aneta Gawin

January 2026