RELATIONSHIPS DEVELOP IN STAGES Falling in love happens in stages: Once begun, if all goes well, your relationship will continue to develop in stages, even after the honeymoon is over. You probably have passed through the early stages: • Meeting: Meeting may begin with a chance encounter or a LoveFilter Profile. From there, it usually progresses to emails and phone calls, and a first cup of coffee. Most people who are just meeting are focused on whether the relationship might work. It’s helpful to understand that relationship patterns can be set even in this beginning stage. Who takes the lead in conversation, and how you decide what to do next create patterns and expectations you may unconsciously continue to follow. Keeping a Tennis Match approach, where you make a phone call or test, or choose a topic of conversation, then wait for this new person to respond, so the energy moves back and forth, can help you keep the budding relationship balanced. • Dating: As you progress to making dates to see each other, you begin to get to know more about each other. This is the time to seek to learn as much about the other person as you can. Don’t worry about what your date thinks of you—focus on knowing what kind of character, maturity and relationship potential your date has. These are usually fun times you can look back to later to remind yourselves how much fun you can have and how good it can feel to be together. • Courtship: Once you begin to feel you are getting serious about each other, you’re in courtship phase. Courtship has a purpose. During this time, you are supposed to get to know each other’s character as well as your outer attributes, and to find out if you are capable of sharing a life together. You probably are spending more time together now, perhaps even traveling together, hanging out in each other’s places, figuring out how to blend your lifestyles, and making plans together. •Commitment: Commitment means you have decided you can spend a lifetime together, and you get engaged, or move in together. It’s easy to get focused on the wedding here, and forget to focus on whether you understand what your commitment is about. Some couples just move in, which bypasses Marriage, which might come later. • Marriage (or Moving in) and Honeymoon: In the Marriage and the Honeymoon Phase, where everything is brand new and wonderful. This is what the romantic songs and movies are all about, and it has become what people call “being in love.” Extending the Honeymoon Phase indefinitely is what people fantasize as “happily ever after.” However, when the all-absorbing process of planning a wedding and honeymoon is over, and the couple comes home to chores, work, money issues, etc., post honeymoon shock can set in. Real life is not as romantic as courtship, wedding and honeymoon, but the real work of developing a great marriage begins now. Because many people have not had lasting relationships of their own, they have no experience or models of the later stages: Development of Intimacy, and Settled Partnership Phase. • Development of Intimacy: In this stage, love matures and becomes reality-based. It’s the part where the magic fades, and both of you begin to relax and show your innermost, less perfect selves. You’re beginning to get to know each other, warts and all. You may feel vulnerable and awkward with each other. In this stage, you may argue, struggle for power, become irritable and unreasonable. The fear that your lover will not like this more realistic view of you arises. As a result, both partners need (and may have trouble providing) lots of reassurance and usually lots of personal space. Many relationships don’t make it through this stage, because if the lovers don’t understand or expect this change, it can feel like something is terribly wrong. • Settled Partnership: Eventually, if the relationship survives, you’ll develop a style of intimacy that works for you. When you’ve made it this far you feel more secure, more settled. Long-term partnership issues come up: how to keep love alive over a long period of time; how not to take each other for granted; how to set goals beyond just being together; and how to handle changes. This is the stage where the pleasures of lasting love are realized. When all goes well, you’ll have a feeling of security, intimacy and partnership that’s truly satisfying and rewarding. When problems arise, you have the wisdom and experience to keep your commitment alive through cooperation and mutual understanding. It takes several years to achieve the full benefits of these later stages. Unless you’ve been through a very long-term relationship before, it’s hard to understand the difficulties encountered in the development of intimacy stage and the settled partnership phase. It’s easy to be discouraged and give up. People often do much better in their second or third long-term relationships, because their early experience taught them what to expect, and gave them a chance to acquire the necessary long-term skills. If you lack knowledge and experience, your early unsuccessful relationships often serve as practice for later successful ones. © 2024 Tina B. Tessina. Adapted from: Dr. Romance’s Guide to Finding Love Today Author Bio: Tina B. Tessina, Ph.D. (www.tinatessina.com) is a licensed psychotherapist in S. California since 1978 with over 40 years’ experience in counseling individuals and couples and author of 18 books in 17 languages, including Dr. Romance’s Guide to Finding Love Today; It Ends With You: Grow Up and Out of Dysfunction; The Ten Smartest Decisions a Woman Can Make After Forty; How to Be a Couple and Still Be Free; 52 Weeks to Better Mental Health, and her newest; Stop Overthinking: A Workbook. She writes the “Dr. Romance blog, and the “Happiness Tips from Tina” email newsletter. Online, she’s known as “Dr. Romance.” Dr. Tessina appears frequently on radio, TV, video and podcasts.
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