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Stages in a relationship
Most marriages start off with a honeymoon, a time when two people don’t have to worry about their jobs, their parents or their children. In her book, How to Stay Lovers For Life, (Dutton, 1997) Sharyn Wolf says most marriages and honeymoons go through three stages: discovery, disappointment and devaluation.
Everything is rosy in the discovery stage. We are so excited and pleased with our partners that we can’t see anything wrong with them. They are faultless. We are in heaven. Actually, it’s not heaven, but a fantasy land we choose to hang around in for a while.
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Eventually, we run out of money, time (having to get back to work) or energy (it takes a lot of emotional effort to continually adore someone.)
Then we enter the stage of disappointment, which can’t be avoided. Most of us exaggerate our partner’s perfection, so when flaws or weaknesses appear, they seem much bigger.
If discovering is being “turned on,” then disappointment is being “turned off.” Once we start to feel negative about one aspect of our partner, it is easy to feel negative about everything.
Forgetting the positive
The third stage, devaluation, is dangerous. Because you feel disappointed, you lessen how you feel about the relationship and end up devaluing the person you love. Instead of their strengths and assets, you start to look at their weaknesses and deficiencies.
Although the devaluation stage is just a transition, it often feels like a crisis or the end of the world. You end up in deep trouble if you falsely believe that “I have to always feel loving toward him” or “he or she always has to be loving towards me.”
There are ways to avoid feeling hurt when things don’t go right. You need to reject the notion that it is the end of your love. It’s not. It’s only the end of a honeymoon cycle. If you both keep showing your love to each other, another honeymoon will likely take place. But you can’t rush it. You have to think and feel positively toward each other, and then when time and circumstances permit, choose together to have that honeymoon period again.
To quote Wolf: “The end of the honeymoon is not a wall; it’s the next perimeter of human experience, filled with great promise. In order to get through that perimeter you need … the willingness to risk, a belief that something good will come from this, the faith that you’re working toward something worth having, and plenty of energy. When you have the energy to want to throw each other out the window, you also have the energy to make your relationship work.”
