The stages of a relationship are often misunderstood, and confused with what at first appears to be the end of a marriage. Find yourself saying “I don’t love my spouse anymore”? Wondering what to do if you don’t love your spouse anymore? Wondering if your marriage is over and beyond repair? These feelings are normal in a certain relationship stage. This stage in a relationship can feel loveless, but it’s possible to bring back the loving feeling. Couples are often confused when their relationship takes a turn for the worst, but it’s completely normal. The middle stage of marriage presents the most conflict, but it’s the best time to turn toward each other and attend couples therapy to work on reconnecting with your spouse.
Relationships occur in stages, and the ups and downs we experience are normal. However unpleasant these points of contention serve a higher purpose; making a marriage change for the better. Understanding relationship cycles and stage helps couples normalize their situation and provide hope that their marriage can thrive once again.
Skip to Each Relationship Stage Below
Unfortunately, you have to go through the stages of a relationship in order in order to come out on the other side in a truly loving relationship! It starts with Romantic Love, then the Power Struggle creeps in, and then finally, you can can enjoy the phase of Real Love we all want to experience.
Understanding Relationship Stages Can Help Save Your Marriage
Wondering if you should hold on to your relationship (even if it’s making you miserable)? If you’re wondering if it’s worth it the answer is simple. If you want to stay with your husband and wife forever and are willing to put in the work to make it work and bring back the love you remember from when you first fell in love, the answer is an emphatic YES!
However, if your relationship is so bad that you wish you had never met in the first place you might answer feel differently. That’s okay too. Not every relationship is fixable, but if you love them and are willing to put in the work, it’s definitely possible to save your marriage.
Most Couples Don’t Make it Through the Power Struggle
Unfortunately most marriages end in divorce because they can’t navigate through the power struggle phase. But if you can stick out the power struggle stage and learn from it, you and your spouse will emerge through the other side into the best stage of all: Real Love.
It’s Normal to Have Relationship Problems. Here’s Why.
Know that it is normal for relationship to enter a power struggle. In this relationship stage, it can often feel like the relationship will not last.
The truth is that if the couple works on conflict conscious, communicating effectively, and discovering the underlying issues triggering certain behaviors they can get to a better place.
It is worth working on the relationship and staying put because leaving does not solve the problem. Keep reading to see which relationship stage you are in and where to go from here.
More inspiration about the stages of relationship:
- 3 ways to infuse love into your marriage
- Roomates or Soulmates? What to do when you’re falling out of love?
- A marriage crisis averted with this simple technique
- Self Guided DIY marriage counseling to shift from Power Struggle to Love Again’
We fall Blindly in Love to Get Married
Working through relationship problems begins with understanding how and why you fell in love. Without the mystery of attraction, you would never get married. Most likely, you would scrutinize the other person to no end. Unless you had no say in the matter of spouse selection or are extremely logical and emotionless, some form of attraction, not necessarily physical, must be present.
We have to “fall in love” so that we can be blinded by all of the reasons we should not get married. (While some of these terms have been abused by society, I preferred to view them as a feeling of connection that draws us to another person or a “click.”) How else could you commit to spending the rest of your life with someone you barely know?
Know this. You are specifically drawn to your partner, because you have a purpose, to become more whole and complete people. (We talk a lot more about the purpose of marriage and why you’re here left with relationship problems you didn’t expect to have in our No Blame, No Shame marriage and communication video.)
Let’s Explore 3 Relationship Stages & See Which One You’re In
Stage I: Romantic Love
The Romantic Love stage begins when you first fall in love with your spouse. You may feel a sense of oneness or completion. Most couples in this relationship stage are convinced that it will last forever.
Although they know of couples who have struggled after marriage, they are certain they won’t face the same fate. For some reason, they will defy the odds.
Of course, we know that this stage does not last forever and that eventually we all come off the cloud at some point. The reason we are so illogical in this stage is that our brain is being drugged by infatuation.
When we fall in love our brain becomes flooded with the neurochemical phenylethylamine. These neurochemicals increase our positive outlook, diminish pain, and cause us to feel safe and calm. They anesthetize us so that we can commit to a relationship. Otherwise, if we really could see clearly what we were getting into, many people would never get married.
The Honeymoon is Over & Relationship Problems Begin
So, we get married and then, all of a sudden, things aren’t like they were when we first met. What did we get ourselves into? We would have been better off single! If we would have only married someone else! This is not the person we thought we were getting! Sound familiar? The luster of the romantic stage has worn off and we have forgotten why we truly picked each other in the first place. After the romantic stage comes the inevitable power struggle stage.
Stage II: The Power Struggle
The Power Struggle begins after commitment. For some this may occur after engagement, for others after their wedding. The newlywed couple expects to be in the romantic stage forever so they are in for a rude awakening when the phenylethylamine begins to wear off.
There is an intense feeling of disillusionment in this stage, almost as if we were duped into marrying the wrong partner. We think that if we had made the right choice, we would still be experiencing romantic love.
The truth is that the Power Struggle is inevitable and is a natural consequence of the brain’s withdrawal from these love chemicals.
We begin to get defensive and focus on protecting ourselves instead of engaging in relationship.
We even begin to dislike many of the things that made us fall in love in the first place. When we fell in love we may have been intrigued by our partner’s fun-loving personality, we may now find them loud and obnoxious.
Why does it have to be this way? Did we make a mistake? The truth is that all couples experience these relationship stages to some degree. It is often the ones who experience a more intense romantic stage, who have a stronger power struggle.
The truth is that marriage is one of the greatest opportunities you will find in life for growth and healing. From a psychological perspective (as well as from a spiritual perspective), we are subconsciously looking for a partner that will help make us more whole and complete.
In order for this to occur, we are attracted to someone who will best stimulate our growth. This person will push our buttons and trigger some of our deepest wounds, usually from childhood, yet if we work through these issues we can achieve enormous personal growth. As the Talmud says (Makkos 7b) this is a descent for the purpose of ascent (yerida l’tzorech aliyah).
Stage III: Real Love or the Conscious Marriage
Most couples in the Power struggle are not aware of what they are experiencing. They wind up getting divorced or living as roommates instead of soulmates. Couples that wake up and become conscious begin the journey to the third stage of relationships which is called Real Love or the Conscious Marriage. Here is an example of how a couple began to leave the power struggle and create a more conscious marriage:
When Sam married Sarah he loved her spontaneity. This was something he was lacking in his own life and it was refreshing to find someone who was so much fun. Once they hit the power struggle, that spontaneity was a sore point for Sam. He experience Sarah as flaky, all over the place, and it made him feel extremely uncomfortable. Sam was very serious and reserved. Growing up in a home without structure, he felt the need to be more in control of his reality. He learned not to like surprises and to create order. During the romantic stage, Sarah’s personality represented an opportunity to claim a part of himself that he had disowned as a child. Yet, once they entered the power struggle and he began to return to his old defenses it made him feel uncomfortable. Then, Sam and Sarah became more conscious of the issue at hand and what it triggered in Sam. That enabled Sam to be less reactive to Sarah’s behavior and it allowed for Sarah to be more sensitive to Sam’s needs and be a little more reliable. This also allowed Sam to reclaim that lost part of himself and loosen up as he no longer needed to protect himself as he did as a child.
Becoming conscious of the Power Struggle, no longer getting locked in the issue, and seeing the big picture enables couples to become more balanced. The conflict becomes an opportunity for growth to happen.
We like how Linda Carroll, an Imago Therapist colleague of ours, talks more about this in her book Love Cycles. She says that the single most important ingredient to a long-time successful relationship is when couples work to stop asking their partner the question, “Why aren’t you me?”
She says,
“All of us ask this question, if silently. We fall in love and naturally assume that the two of us should see the world through the same lens even if we know better. So then we spend the next 45 years trying to convince each other to see everything our way. Often, people tell me they’ve come for counseling or a marriage communication skills workshop. What they’re really looking for, however, is a sure-fast way to get their partner to change. Yet who has ever been successful in changing another person? No one in my life, that’s for sure.”
Couples in stage III will tolerate the “otherness” of their partner with much generosity. They together will learn to explore their issues so that they feel safe enough to meet their partner’s needs, while at the same time holding onto their own separate self, all whilst feeling un-threatened by their partner’s uniqueness.
Knowing the three stages of relationships is incredibly helpful for couples who may become despondent once they start to face a rough patch in their marriage. Normalizing the situation and realizing that it is only a stage and that it is possible to re-experience love on a deeper and more mature level provides hope to weather the storm and confidence to commit to cultivating a deeply satisfying relationship. It’s really helpful if you or your partner are going through a midlife crisis or midlife transition that is causing you to question just about everything!
As we learn more about what attracted us to our spouse, we will see that the issues we have with them are really our own personal baggage that we transport to any future relationship we join.
Marriage is the unfinished business of childhood and for the purpose of growth and healing those unmet childhood needs. We find that people are attracted to a partner who will both have the positive and negative traits of their parents.
This means that if this relationship doesn’t work out, we’ll unconsciously look for the same thing next time around. So might as well get it right now, instead of going through the heartache of breakup .
Origin of 3 Relationship Phases
The three relationship stages are from “Imago Couples Therapy with Harville Hendrix, Ph.D.: Proven Strategies for Helping Couples Connect, Heal and Grow” by Dr Harville Hendrix and his wife Dr Helen Lakelly Hunt.
Alternative 5 Stage Marriage Concept
Linda Carroll expands on them further in her book “Love Cycles, Mastering the 5 Essential Stages of Love”. citing 5 relationship stages rather than our 3. Knowing more about the stages and cycles of a relationship is going to be very helpful to anyone that is questioning the future of their relationship.
Transitioning Gracefully from the Power Struggle to Conscious Loving Marriage Phase
In order to get back to the connection we experienced in the beginning of our relationship and give it permanence, we must work on our relationship. Marriage is the perfect opportunity for self-growth. More than just a positive spin on dealing with conflict, it is the reason the two of you were brought together. The very challenges and frustrations you experience in your relationship are necessary to elicit growth. A sociable and outgoing wife wishes her homebody husband would liven up. The husband wishes his wife would give him some space.
This situation will replay itself and tension will build until they can engage in a mature and conscious dialogue. After learning tools to relate and manage conflict and develop understanding and compassion, both parties are usually moved to grow towards each other. In doing so, they not only meet their spouse’s need; they become more complete and balanced people and more connected to their spouse.
Through working on your relationship you will once again reach those feelings you first experienced for your spouse, yet now they will be real, stronger, and more permanent.
Most of us get lost soon after marriage. Realizing that the initial excitement in marriage is transient and can return through hard work, helps ground couples as well as provide them hope. While the power struggle is inevitable in any relationship, a conscious marriage and real love is attainable.
Keep Your Eyes on the Prize: The Real Loving Phase is Waiting
Just having the awareness that the romantic stage comes to a screeching halt in order to get you into the next, deeper stage of relationship is so liberating! If you know that, you can properly equip you and your partner with that knowledge and then progress by alerting and arming yourself with the best relationship knowledge out there.
Getting Through the Contentious Power Struggle Phase
There’s a lot of relationship knowledge out there and it’s important, when going through a power struggle, not to play the role of the “therapist” with your partner.
If you’re researching imago relationship therapy or the imago dialogue exercises and reading material, don’t attempt to implement the advice that you may be reading or hearing about with an unwilling partner. A third party impartial therapist can play a key role in helping you and your spouse reach your relationship goals.
We can get you from the 2nd stage- the Power Struggle, into the 3rd Stage- Real and Conscious love. The best way to start that process is via our 2 Day Marriage Restoration Retreat which is an intensive way to get to the root of all your issues and then start creating a marriage with your partner the way it was supposed to be, before all the muckety muck got in the way! Talk with us ASAP about our 2 Day Marriage Restoration Retreat so you can finally get there!
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