A Dinâmica dos Relacionamentos Amorosos sob a Perspectiva da Gestalt-terapia

Abstract

The present study aims to unveil the perceptions and meanings constructed by individuals regarding their long-term romantic relationships, understood as romantic-conjugal experiences, analyzing how these experiences are configured within the relational field in light of Gestalt therapy. This is a qualitative study with a phenomenological orientation, conducted with eighteen adult participants who were individually interviewed between March and April 2025 through online meetings. As an inclusion criterion, the experience of long-term conjugal relationships was considered, either in stable unions or marriages, ongoing or ended.

The interviews were fully transcribed and analyzed according to phenomenological principles, enabling the construction of five categories: (a) quality of contact, differentiation, and relational regulation; (b) extended family field, parenthood, and transgenerational inheritances; (c) conflict management and attempts to sustain the bond; (d) asymmetries, violence, and disorganization of the relational field; and (e) rupture and processes of reorganization of the experience of self in conjugality.

The results indicate that conjugality is configured as a dynamic relational field, marked by continuous negotiations, patterns of interaction, division of roles, and modes of regulating everyday tensions. The quality of the bond was associated with the possibility of dialogical contact, recognition of otherness, and negotiation of differences, whereas the maintenance of suffering was related to dynamics of rigidity, asymmetry, and restriction of contact.

Conflict management emerged as a central element in the sustaining or deterioration of the relationship, with the conflict itself not being determinant, but rather the ways in which it is regulated within the relational field. The findings also reveal the presence of asymmetries, especially in the division of responsibilities and in the everyday mental load, affecting the experience of recognition and partnership.

The sustaining or rupture of the bond was shown to be associated with multiple field conditions, including affective, familial, and sociocultural factors. As a contribution, the study broadens the understanding of conjugality from the perspective of Gestalt therapy by describing it as a relational process in constant transformation, traversed by movements of approximation, differentiation, and reorganization over time.