A book about a Gestalt therapist’s Approach to Couples Therapy from a cross-cultural Perspective
Author’s reflection on the book and the ground it came from
I wrote this book because, after years of sitting with couples in Singapore, I began to notice something quietly profound: most of the suffering between partners does not come from what is visible or spoken, but from the fields they inhabit—cultural histories, family inheritances, unspoken loyalties, the weight of expectations, and the simple, human longing to be seen.
This book began as an attempt to understand what I was experiencing in the therapy room. Not to teach a method. Not to position myself as an expert. But to make sense of the moments that moved me—those moments where two people, often scared, angry, or exhausted, find their way back into contact with themselves, and then with each other.
Over time, the stories accumulated. I held them quietly for years. Some stayed with me long after the sessions ended. I found myself replaying certain scenes while on the MRT, or while walking my dog, or while preparing kopi in the morning—the small gestures, the pauses between sentences, the ways people protect themselves from the shame of being misunderstood. These were not just “clinical cases.” They were human lives unfolding in front of me.
Writing this book became my way of honouring those lives.
I wanted to acknowledge the complexity of being in a relationship in a place like Singapore—a meeting point of ancestral traditions, modern demands, and conflicting ideas of autonomy and duty. I wanted to give language to the way culture lives inside us, shaping how we love, how we retreat, how we defend, and how we try again.
But I also wanted to stay honest. Therapists are not omniscient. I certainly am not. Much of my work depends on uncertainty, listening with my whole body, and learning to stay present at the places where I am just as confused or moved as the couple in front of me.
Gestalt therapy has given me a language for this—field theory, phenomenology, shame as a relational experience, and the paradoxical truth that people change when they stop trying to become what they are not. But the book is not an attempt to convert anyone to a model. Instead, it’s an invitation to look at relationships through the lens of lived experience, cultural context, and the courage it takes to remain human in front of another human.
If there is one purpose I had in writing this book, it is this: to honour the differences that make relationships both difficult and meaningful, and to show how presence—not technique—creates the possibility of healing.
I hope readers will feel accompanied by these stories rather than instructed. I hope therapists will feel less alone in their uncertainty and more trusting of their embodied knowing. And I hope couples will recognise that conflict is not a sign of failure, but a sign of life—a sign that something in them is still reaching for connection.
The work humbles me every day. And I offer it with the same intention I bring into the therapy room: To meet what is true, to stay with what emerges, and to allow the field to show us what wants to unfold next.
→ Preorder / Purchase the Book Here
From AMAZON.COM , ROUTLEDGE