Stages of Relationship Difficulties and Growth
Relationships usually evolve through various stages, starting with limerance and infatuation, then through dificulties then eventual growth. Where is your relationship currently?
Stage 1 – Pursuing and Romance (usually first 6 to 12 months)
- You are both feeling exciting, feeling loved and supported, and are awakening to new possibilities and potentials in each other
- Your focus is on enjoyment (dates), intimacy (getting to know each other), and pursuing and/ or impressing each other (showing your best self)
- Much time is spent on your relationship
- Your day to day normal life is obscured or slightly forgotten
Stage 2 – Settling in and emerging Shadows
- As you share more and more life together, less effort is made and time allocated to your relationship
- Unconscious patterns begin to emerge in each of you
- Taken-for-grantedness start to become more of the norm
- Power struggles begin
Stage 3 – The Struggle or Sad Resignation
- Stage 2 patterns entrench and escalate
- You tend to polarize as power struggles can worsen
- You start to feel like strangers and lose that loving feeling
- Power struggles turn into either arguments and withdrawals, or
resignation and giving in
Stage 4A – More of the same
- Duller routines become more of the norm
- There are more regular or worse arguments or fights, or
- One partner avoids by being over-involved in work, hobbies, drinking etc
- There is a sense of sad resignation and diminished expectations for the one giving in all the time
or Stage 4B – End
- One partner ends the relationship, or
- One partner looks elsewhere, has an affair, and then ends the relationship
or Stage 4C – Deep Love emerges
- Each of you look at your own patterns, and how you are contributing to the problems
- Each of your takes action to let go of your patterns and/or adopt new healthier behaviours
- Each of you takes a stand for those things that are dear to you, and manages the anxiety that goes with this
- Real respect grows for each other as you witness your partner taking these steps.
- Real appreciation and love emerge in each other, a far deeper truer form than ever felt before.
Stage 5C – Ease and Flow
- Each of you begins to appreciate and support the essence of each other, and compassion start to bloom
- A genuine mutual creativity develops
- Conflicts may still appear, but become absorbed in a larger version of yourselves.
Stage 1 – Pursuing and Romance (usually first 6 to 12 months)
- You are both feeling exciting, feeling loved and supported, and are awakening to new possibilities and potentials in each other
- Your focus is on enjoyment (dates), intimacy (getting to know each other), and pursuing and/ or impressing each other (showing your best self)
- Much time is spent on your relationship
- Your day to day normal life is obscured or slightly forgotten
Stage 2 – Settling in and emerging Shadows
- As you share more and more life together, less effort is made and time allocated to your relationship
- Unconscious patterns begin to emerge in each of you
- Taken-for-grantedness start to become more of the norm
- Power struggles begin
Stage 3 – The Struggle or Sad Resignation
- Stage 2 patterns entrench and escalate
- You tend to polarize as power struggles can worsen
- You start to feel like strangers and lose that loving feeling
- Power struggles turn into either arguments and withdrawals, or
resignation and giving in
Stage 4A – More of the same
- Duller routines become more of the norm
- There are more regular or worse arguments or fights, or
- One partner avoids by being over-involved in work, hobbies, drinking etc
- There is a sense of sad resignation and diminished expectations for the one giving in all the time
or Stage 4B – End
- One partner ends the relationship, or
- One partner looks elsewhere, has an affair, and then ends the relationship
or Stage 4C – Deep Love emerges
- Each of you look at your own patterns, and how you are contributing to the problems
- Each of your takes action to let go of your patterns and/or adopt new healthier behaviours
- Each of you takes a stand for those things that are dear to you, and manages the anxiety that goes with this
- Real respect grows for each other as you witness your partner taking these steps.
- Real appreciation and love emerge in each other, a far deeper truer form than ever felt before.
Stage 5C – Ease and Flow
- Each of you begins to appreciate and support the essence of each other, and compassion start to bloom
- A genuine mutual creativity develops
- Conflicts may still appear, but become absorbed in a larger version of yourselves.