by Kobus van der Merwe | Sep 21, 2026 | Blog, Couples
A bid for affection can carry a longing to feel desired. The same bid can be received as an expectation. When one partner feels rejected and the other feels pressured, even an ordinary touch may become difficult to interpret.
You may then protect yourselves in ways that deepen the distance. One stops initiating to avoid another painful refusal. The other avoids affection because they worry it will be taken as a promise. There can be grief on both sides, with very little room to talk about it safely.
Imago therapy brings attention to what happens between you around intimacy. Each partner gets to describe their own experience. Neither has to defend a level of desire, perform closeness or agree to sexual contact in order to be treated with care.
Consent remains essential. A no must be respected, and affection cannot create an obligation to continue. You can listen to your partner’s disappointment while keeping your boundary. You can also speak honestly about longing without making your partner responsible for removing it through sex.
In a facilitated dialogue, the conversation might begin with what helps each of you experience closeness, what creates pressure, or what you fear your partner assumes. The receiver mirrors, validates and empathises before you switch. The therapist helps you speak without accusation and receive what is said without turning it into a demand.
Desire has more than one influence. This relational work focuses on making the contact between you more respectful, honest and welcoming. It cannot promise a particular sexual outcome. What it can offer is a way to understand your experiences together and consider mutually acceptable next steps.
Ask about closeness without an expectation
At a time you both choose, ask: ‘What kind of connection would feel welcome between us this week?’ Use the dialogue sequence to understand the answer. Either partner may prefer a conversation, shared activity or something else entirely.
Agree only to what both freely welcome. Let that agreement stand without an expectation that it must lead further. If this subject quickly becomes painful, arrange a facilitated dialogue rather than trying to work it out during an intimate moment.
If intimacy has become difficult to discuss, enquire about a Couples Intensive. It offers space to explore the relationship around intimacy, with respect for both partners’ pace and boundaries.
Ask about a Couples Intensive
by Kobus van der Merwe | Sep 21, 2026 | Blog, Couples
Their spontaneity once brought excitement. Now it can feel unpredictable. Their careful planning once felt reassuring. Now you sometimes experience it as pressure. A quality you admired has become a recurring point of tension.
Differences take on new meanings when connection becomes strained. A preference can start to feel like a judgement of you. If your partner wants something else, you may hear that your way of living, feeling or choosing is wrong.
Imago therapy helps you make room for two experiences in the same relationship. In Imago, differentiation means recognising your partner as a separate person with a reality you cannot assume you already know. You can remain connected while discovering that the same event means something different to each of you.
That discovery needs safety. Mocking a preference, dismissing a concern or insisting that your interpretation is the only sensible one makes it harder for your partner to stay open. Dialogue provides a structure for curiosity: one speaks, the other mirrors, validates what makes sense and checks the feelings involved. Then you change roles.
Understanding a difference may also involve hearing what earlier relationships taught each of you about closeness, freedom or reliability. Explore those meanings with care. Your partner’s history belongs to them to describe; it should never become an explanation you use to dismiss their present concerns.
Once both perspectives have been heard, you can make a decision that takes more of your shared reality into account. One person’s attention to possibilities and another’s attention to consequences can both contribute. The agreement still needs to respect practical responsibilities, limits and consent.
Get curious about a small difference
Choose a low-stakes preference that you both feel comfortable discussing. Ask: ‘What matters to you about doing it that way?’ Listen through mirroring, validation and empathy before explaining your own preference.
After both turns, complete: ‘Something I understand more clearly about you now is …’ You do not have to settle the entire difference in this conversation. Begin by making it safer for both of you to be present as yourselves.
If your differences have become repeated arguments, a Couples Intensive offers guided time to understand each other and work towards agreements that make room for both of you.
Explore a Couples Intensive
by Kobus van der Merwe | Sep 21, 2026 | Blog, Couples
You know what needs to be bought, paid and organised. You can coordinate a day together. Yet you may struggle to remember the last conversation in which you felt warmly noticed by your partner.
A relationship can become efficient while contact grows thin. Perhaps you stopped reaching because too many invitations went unanswered. Perhaps your efforts to care are happening in ways your partner does not recognise. The distance can deepen without either of you deliberately choosing it.
Imago therapy pays attention to the small interactions through which you experience being important to each other. A greeting, a question followed by real listening, or a freely welcomed gesture of affection can carry meaning. What matters is how the action is received in this particular relationship.
This is why caring behaviours begin with curiosity. One person may value help with a difficult task. Another may long for undivided attention. Even after years together, you can ask again what helps your partner feel cared for now.
You also need room to hear what has made reaching out difficult. Imago Dialogue gives each partner a turn to speak about the loneliness, while the other mirrors, validates and empathises. The conversation stays with experience and concrete actions, without accusing either person of being incapable of love.
Daily appreciation can support this work. Name something specific: ‘I appreciated that you checked in with me. I felt remembered.’ Let the sentence stand on its own. Adding a complaint at the end makes the appreciation harder to trust.
Appreciation also needs to sit alongside honest attention to practical burdens. If one partner is carrying too much, the workload needs a real conversation and a workable change. Warm words alone cannot do that work.
Make care easier to recognise
Each name one small action that helps you feel connected. Mirror what you hear and ask why it matters. Choose something you are freely willing to offer during the coming week, with no demand for an immediate return.
Keep the invitation manageable and welcome a different suggestion. At the end of the week, ask what the experience was like for each of you. Small gestures become more useful when you stay interested in how they land.
If you miss feeling like partners, a Couples Intensive can give you time to explore the distance and practise the everyday contact you want to rebuild.
Enquire about a Couples Intensive
by Kobus van der Merwe | Sep 21, 2026 | Blog, Couples
One of you wants to settle things now. The other needs the conversation to stop. The more urgently one reaches for an answer, the more distance the other seeks. Both may end the evening feeling that their need for connection was missed.
These movements can have different meanings. Asking another question may be an attempt to feel included or reassured. Becoming quiet may be an attempt to prevent another painful exchange. Those meanings need to be checked with each partner. You cannot know what silence or urgency means simply by looking at it.
The impact matters too. Repeated questions can feel like pressure. Unexplained silence can feel like being left alone with something important. Each response can intensify the next, until the conversation itself becomes difficult to trust.
Imago therapy helps you recognise this sequence without turning either movement into a fixed identity. You may even exchange positions on different topics. The work is to create a pace at which both of you can remain in contact and speak freely.
That requires an agreement about pauses. During an ordinary argument, a pause can include a clear time to reconnect: ‘I want to hear this properly. I need a break. Can we return to it at …?’ The other partner respects the pause. Both take the return seriously, or communicate if a new time is needed.
When you return, use Imago Dialogue. Speak briefly, mirror accurately, validate the experience and check the feelings involved before changing roles. Begin with what happened between you when the conversation became difficult. Save major decisions for a time when both can participate.
Agree on how to stay in contact
In a calm, mutually agreed conversation, take turns completing: ‘When a conversation becomes intense, what helps me stay present with you is …’ Listen through the full dialogue sequence before offering your own answer.
Make one small agreement about pace or pauses. Neither partner should be followed, cornered or compelled to continue. If there is intimidation or fear of retaliation, seek private professional support to establish safety before joint exercises. Read more about safety and couples therapy.
If you keep losing each other when a conversation matters, enquire about a Couples Intensive. We can first consider whether this format is appropriate and safe for both of you.
Ask about a Couples Intensive
by Kobus van der Merwe | Sep 21, 2026 | Blog, Couples
You prepare your words carefully. You explain what hurt, why it mattered and what you meant. Your partner answers with an explanation of their own. Before long, you are both talking about the conversation, and the original hurt has disappeared beneath the argument.
It is exhausting to speak repeatedly without experiencing contact. You may begin repeating yourself, raising your voice or giving up. Your partner may be trying just as hard to explain their side. More words accumulate while understanding remains out of reach.
Imago Dialogue introduces a different rhythm. It creates a period in which one partner can finish being understood before the other responds. The structure protects both people: each will have a turn, and neither has to compete for the conversation.
Begin by asking, ‘Is now a good time for a short dialogue?’ Choose a manageable topic and speak in a sentence or two at a time. The receiver follows three steps.
- Mirror. ‘What I hear you saying is … Have I understood you?’ Let your partner correct or add to what you heard. Ask whether there is more about that. When they have finished, summarise the whole message and check it.
- Validate. ‘I can see how that makes sense because …’ Name the logic in your partner’s experience. You can understand their perspective while holding a different view of the situation.
- Empathise. ‘I imagine you might feel … Is that close?’ Offer a feeling tentatively and accept correction. Your partner remains the person who knows what the experience was like for them.
Then switch roles and give the same attention to the other partner. Speak respectfully throughout. Sarcasm, interrogation and criticism undermine the safety the structure is intended to create.
The wording can feel unfamiliar at first. In therapy, I help you use it with warmth and real attention. Over time, the aim is for both of you to experience that your words can reach your partner and that your partner’s experience has room beside yours.
Start with something easy to receive
Practise with an appreciation before approaching a frustration: ‘Something you did recently that helped me feel close to you was …’ Follow the listening steps and change roles. Bring conversations that repeatedly become hurtful into a facilitated dialogue.
Would you like help experiencing this kind of listening together? In a Couples Intensive, you can learn and practise Imago Dialogue with guidance when the familiar reactions appear.
Explore a Couples Intensive
