The Stages of Romance

Based on my experience and what I see in others, I conclude that there are generally stages in the life of relationships.

Stage One: The Chase

Pursuing someone else is oftentimes exhilarating.  Uncertainty and hope permeate this stage.

Stage Two:  Excitement

In stage one, couples are just beginning to get to know each other.  There is a lot of excitement and hope in this stage.  It's filled with unrealistic expectations and dreams of the future.  Your relationship in this stage is based more on  appearance and attraction  than in anything of substance.  Some would call this the naive time of a relationship.

Song of Songs is a book in the Bible that celebrates this time of life.  It is filled with a man and woman's powerful attraction to each other.  How the other looks - the appearance is mentioned a lot in Song of Songs as is the desire to be with the other and the desire to embrace, to kiss, and to fondle.

God had the book of Song of Songs to be included in the Bible and that tells me that this stage in a relationship is important and can be holy.  It is often seen as a time of naivety and as a naive time of passion and feelings, it is a time to be celebrated in God's presence.

Despite years of attempts to calm down Song of Songs, there is a lot of sexual tension that takes place in the book.  Some scholars have pointed out that there are a lot of sexual metaphors in the book; but even if there were no metaphors, the tension is there.

Stage Three: Getting to Know the Other

In time, the first stage quiets down. As the initial stage of attraction begins to die down, relationships either fall apart or continue into the next stage.  There are a lot of reasons people continue into stage two.  Some are good reasons, such as the beginning of love, but some continue for unhealthy reasons such as the fear of being alone.  But in a healthy relationship, stage two is about being with each other and getting to know each other.

A lot of people quit because they miss the excitement of the first and/or second stage, or they begin to feel smothered, or the attraction just stops.

Stage Four: Settling In

Eventually, most people in a relationship settle into a long period of being together.  They learn that their partner is a human just like them.  Things that were cute and fun in the beginning may become annoying; there are fights and feelings of anger and frustration.  There are feelings of things being unfair and feelings of things would be better if it wasn't for the other.  But underneath it all, there is still love.

In stage one and two, each person is concerned so much with the other; but by stage four each person looks much more to their own needs and feelings.  Some begin feeling neglected, disappointed, and unloved.  As each person in the relationship begins looking more to their own needs, each person can begin to drift from each other.

More than anything else, at this stage a couple is held together most of all not by feelings but by commitment to each other.

WHY IT MATTERS

So why do these stages matter?  The stages matter because the excitement of the first two stages with someone new lures people away from their spouses. During the last stage, a relationship can seem boring compared to a new found love.

The other reason these stages matter is because if you know the stages are a reality, you can more easily pass the temptation to start all over with someone else.  Eventually, you will be in the same "rut" with that person as you are today with a stage four relationship - although some of you will never call stage four a rut, either because you are in denial or your commitment to the other has worked well.  But with a 50% divorce rate, I think there are more who see stage four as a rut than who do not.