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Many married couples laugh
at such jokes about how marital bliss turns into blisters, not just
because they're funny, but because they ring true. Understanding
these marital stages can help us tame our expectations and feel more
satisfied in our relationships.
Does every couple go
through these? Yes and no. Every marriage has its ups and
downs. These are periods where you may question the
relationship or when outside influences like financial, career,
child rearing or personal issues take priority over the marriage.
Healthy relationships recognize when they are entering danger zones
like stage two and three and take steps to reverse the trend
together. Together is the key word. Both people in the
relationship are committed to making it work.
Unhealthy or unfulfilling
relationships may have one person trying to keep it together and the
other not caring or both still in their own world and oblivious to
the needs of one another. In these cases, if action isn't
taken to fix the problem, the couple becomes more distant until
eventually the relationship disintegrates somewhere in stage two or
three. This does not mean the damage cannot be fixed. It
just means it will take twice as much effort and commitment to bring
the relationship around.
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Like the
8 Stages of
Intimacy, these stages should be used to help you identify where
the problem lies in your relationship or as a guide to heading off
problems before they occur.
Stage One:
"Why don't we do it
in the road?" --The Beatles
Early on in a marriage, we are swept away by being in love. We are
euphorically transported from being psychologically distant from our
parents and feeling intimately alone in the world to being attached
at the hip and heart with our soul mate. The rush we feel in going
from unconnected to viscerally attached is intoxicating. We can't
get enough of each other sexually. At this stage, we love the way
our partner makes us feel as much as we love him or her. We love
because of everything our partner does right by and for us.
Often this stage is
referred to as limerence, the period of relationship intoxication.
Limerence lasts for about five years. You'll notice when the
limerence wears off, many couples divorce. Suddenly marriage
isn't so much fun or exciting anymore! This is why so many
marriages never make it past 5 years. Couples believe the euphoria
they feel in the first years will continue a lifetime. When it
stops, couples mistake the missing roller coaster for a lack of love
and passion. In actuality, euphoria is replaced by more solid
emotions like trust, respect, empathy and admiration. The
highs aren't as high and the lows aren't as low; the relationship
becomes more stable, predictable and dependable.
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Stage Two:
"Sex in bed, missionary style -- and don't forget to turn out the
lights when you're finished!"
This stage is most common for people between 25 and 50, the family
years. Reality and a wide range of roles and responsibilities start
to impose upon our lust and love. Whereas we used to squeeze in the
rest of life to accommodate our loving, we now find ourselves
squeezing in the loving between being parents, workers, homemakers
and caretakers to our aging parents. Fun still finds a way to
survive in spite of our becoming slaves to our many routines, but it
takes work.
This is
marriage's vulnerable stage. It's the time when a woman can
go from feeling cherished to being taken for granted and when a man
can go from feeling admired to belittled.
Getting back on track if
you're mired in stage two may require an outside arbitrator like a
marriage counselor, coach or clergy. If you're just starting to
slide into stage two, regular couple vacations from real life (kids,
work, responsibilities and other distractions) on a regular basis
should help you reverse the trend. Couple vacations can be as short
as three hours out to dinner, (or breakfast) or a real vacation like
a ten-day cruise. The key is frequency, at least one a week
and no kids, no family, and no friends...JUST THE TWO OF YOU.
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The third strategy to
prevent communication alienation is to establish couple time either
in the morning or the evening, five or ten minutes where you just
check in with each other and talk about your day. This little
bit of time goes a long ways to keeping you connected, especially
when you both work. Neglect to take the time and one day you may
wake up one day in your forties or fifties lying next to a stranger
in bed you haven't known for years, wondering what is the point and
how did you grow so far apart.
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Stage Three:
"Screw me?
Screw YOU!"
When inevitable disappointment and hurt are left
unaddressed, they deteriorate into bitterness, coldness and
indifference. Relating drops out of the relationship and
we're left with an arrangement. We've gone from lovers to
roommates -- and unhappy roommates at that. This is what
happens when people don't work at their relationships.
Sadly, most people don't do the work, not because they don't
want to, but because they don't know how. They don't realize
that getting angry at their mate or feeling sorry for
themselves are actual choices that they can make or not
make. Or, they fail to notice that instead of jumping to
conclusions and down their spouse's throat, they can try to
listen to all the facts. |
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Stuck in Stage Three?
These
articles can give you tools to get out of it or past it.
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Stage three is volatile and
it can be the loneliest part of your life. There is no quick fix to
reversing stage three. Most couples require a counselor to
assist in opening up to each other. The therapy is much like
peeling an onion. Below the crispy distain and catty remarks are and
many layers of anger, hate and disgust. It takes months to
peel through these layers to the heart. Within the heart most
couples discover a frightened little girl and a terrified
little boy. It is within this heart the deepest fears lie: her
fear of being no longer cherished (desired/wanted) and his of losing
her respect.
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The little girl is hurt
because she feels like he doesn't love her anymore, desire her
anymore or care about what she feels. She's feels neglected,
unappreciated and lonely. She is invisible to him, except when she
screams, criticizes or complains. This negativity, though it
gets his attention causes him to pull even further away. She reads
this as "He doesn't care what I say" and cycle for attention
continues pushing them further and further apart.
The little boy shows
bravado to the outside, but inside her nagging, criticism and
indifference chip away at his soul. She once thought of him as
her hero. Now the little boy only hears what's wrong with him.
Can't he do anything right? This anger, criticism and
complaining translates to him, "She has no respects for me."
And if she no longer respects him, how will she ever want him again?
If you are mired
in step 3, here are some steps to BEGIN working on your
relationship:
1) Realize that working means
doing what doesn't come naturally or even comfortably (that's why
it's called work) to help something outside your own personal needs;
2) Probably the most unnatural, but
beneficial thing to do is stop yourself when you're having trouble
in your relationship and look at the problem and you from
the other person's point of view. You may discover that you've been
so busy being frustrated, hurt and disappointed by them
that you didn't see how you could be frustrating, hurtful and
disappointing to them. Just realizing this will take the
steam out of your resentment and make you more conciliatory. To
take it a step further and communicate this to your partner with
full humility is likely to cause her or her to reciprocate;
3) When you find yourself feeling
let down by your partner, immediately think of what you're grateful
to them for;
4) When you're feeling high and
mighty and a bit self-righteous (another closeness killer),
immediately think of flawed character traits that you have that
bring you back down to earth; finally
5) When all else fails and an
argument is not going anywhere good, make your default position
forgiveness and trust.
Do the work to prevent
drowning in stage three or head off the issues before they become
destructive. Around age 50, you'll enter stage four.
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Stage Four:
"Still in love"
This is what is possible when we continue to feed our relationships
with tender loving care, counteract our tendency to blame problems
on our mate, and choose to think of why we are grateful to our
partner. People in this stage do indeed have disagreements that are
not easy to resolve. Yet, rather than holding on to their anger,
they instead choose to forgive and trust. Armed with these tools to
fight for love, we easily learn to live the lesson of mature and
lasting love: loving someone in spite of what he or she does wrong.
Stage Five:
"Till death do you do part."
If we make it through stage three or four, which usually occur when
we are in our 50s, the final stage of marriage is ours to enjoy when
we're in our 60s and beyond. This has a lot to do with giving up the
non-winnable fight in our 50s to be who we were in our 20s and 30s,
or perhaps letting go of our need to make that final big killing in
our careers. We realize we can continue to want what we don't have
and be unhappy, or else want what we do have and be content.
Instead of focusing on the love that's missing, we begin to see and
appreciate the love that's present. We realize that we're not
settling for less, we're waking up to the more that has always been
there.
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