How to Use Your Wants & Desires As a Relationship Guide, Not an Obstacle

Rediscover and Express What Truly Matters for You, Your Partner & Your Relationship with Gestalt Tools

Intimacy is not just about sharing your life—it’s about understanding your inner world: what you want, what you truly desire, and how these shape your relationships. 

And how often do we pause to ask ourselves: 

• “Am I aware of my wants and desires?” And once you are, 

• “How do I express them to someone I care about?”  And most importantly,

•  “What happens when I’ve said what I want… and that want or desire is not met?”

At the Maine Relationship Institute in Belfast, our work is guided by Gestalt Therapy, and you are invited, as thoughtful and intentional individuals, to explore those questions. 

Gestalt sees wants and desires as powerful, inherent human forces that drive us toward growth and purpose. Often, these vital energies are obscured from our own understanding due to past experiences or coping behaviors that no longer serve us.

Understanding "Wants and Desires" Through the Lens of Gestalt Therapy

Gestalt Therapy emphasizes being present in the moment to help you reconnect more effectively with your authentic needs. Simultaneously, Gestalt recognizes that your authentic needs can be entangled with unresolved patterns from the past. 

Preexisting emotional wounds or unmet needs often persist until they’re acknowledged and addressed. According to relational psychotherapy theory, when a need is not met, it persists and intrudes in relationships with yourself and others, making it difficult to move forward.

Gestalt offers practical strategies such as the empty chair technique.

The empty chair experiment provides a setting to engage in dialogue with parts of yourself or others, with the goal of surfacing neglected needs or unspoken desires. 

By integrating all parts of yourself, such as your thoughts, emotions, and sensations, you theoretically act from wholeness rather than absence.

Asking Deeper Questions: A Path Toward Authentic Connection

What Do I Want?

1. How often do you honestly reflect on what you want—not what you think you should want, but what truly matters to you?

• Am I aware of my own wants and desires? 

• How influenced am I by what others want?

• How Influenced am I by what others may want for me

• How influenced and I by what I believe I should want?”

Speak From Longing

2. It takes courage to voice desires clearly and kindly. 

Renowned couples therapist Esther Perel advises: “Speak from your longing.” This means sharing your hopes in ways that invite connection and curiosity—not judgment. You may begin asking yourself:

• How do I express my wants?

Speaking and Observing 

3. Knowing what you want, being able to verbalize it, and recognizing when your expressed want or desire is received and reciprocated are central to self-awareness and healthy relationships, says licensed therapist Lexx Brown-James. You may begin paying attention to:

• What happens, or how do I feel, when my wants go unmet?

• What happens, or how do I feel, when my wants are met?

Gestalt Processes for Tapping Into Desire and Letting Go of Blocks

1. Bring Your Wants and Desires into Your Awareness
Try setting aside quiet moments of reflection: 

• What do I truly want from my relationship? 

• Companionship? 

• Emotional safety? 

• Shared adventure? 

Naming aloud what you want, writing it down, or both, can help direct your energy toward meaningful action.

2. Use Gestalt Experiments

In therapy, or solo journaling, try the empty chair (see this how-to if you’re doing the technique at home): 

• In one chair, speak to the part(s) of you that have been silent. 

• Kind, gentle statements and/or inquiry can be helpful here.

• Switch chairs. 

• Here, you’ll respond from the part of you that was just addressed. 

• If that part of you could speak, what would it say? 

3. Explore Your “Unfinished Business”
Gestalt therapy invites you to notice recurring emotional patterns or defenses that emerge when your needs aren’t acknowledged. These can trace back to old wounds, projection, or unmet relational needs

4. Dialogical Awareness with Therapeutic Presence

Dialogical awareness is a state in which the therapist is required to bring their whole self to the relational contact with you, the client. 

Entering therapy with a therapist who utilizes Gestalt tools, such as Ben Borkan, founder of the Maine Relationship Institute, can lead to a co-created encounter where both you, the client, and the therapist remain present in the here and now.

In such an environment of presence, the goal is to invite your experience to be authentic, empathetic, and validating, rather than being objective from a distance. 

Your Wants and Desires Are Not Meant to Be Obstacles; They Are Meant to Be Guides 

They point toward what matters most for you in connection and your life. 

Gestalt Therapy offers both understanding and tools:

• Reflection and naming your needs.

• Symbolic exercises, such as the empty chair, to help surface unconscious patterns.

• Dialogical awareness to live in the “here-and-now.”

• Therapeutic presence for acceptance, challenge, and clarity.

Contact Us

At the Maine Relationship Institute, located in the oceanside town of Belfast, Maine, we specialize in guiding thoughtful individuals and couples like yourself through the transformative process of exploring and expressing your wants and desires. 

If you're ready to slow down and ask yourself what you truly want, and discover how to express that in a relationship, we’d love to support you.

We offer complimentary and confidential exploratory consultations.

If you're curious, engaged, and seeking practical, compassionate tools to grow, contact us. 

We look forward to working with you.