7 stages of development of relationships between a man and a woman

When the analysis of past relationships begins or nostalgia overwhelms you and you want to remember how it all began. Often a person comes to the conclusion that past experiences are somewhat similar. All events seem to develop in a circle and always go through the same stages of relationships. This is a natural process for healthy relationships, which must go through all periods of relationship development in order to become even stronger.

Why do relationships go through stages of development?

The harmonious development of a couple must go through different stages of building a relationship. It is impossible to always be content with sweets and bouquets, long walks under the moon and always relationships and meetings several times a week. Of course, this is a convenient format, but it is impossible to build long and lasting relationships on it.

Attachment is formed at the stage of falling in love, hormones are overflowing, it seems as if the world stops without a loved one. Gradually, passions fade, wild sex is replaced by marital duty, children appear and everything becomes ordinary and gray. From the outside it may seem that the couple is stuck at one stage of development and nothing further happens. The transformation of a couple’s relationship takes place according to its own scenario, with its own speed and characteristics, despite the fact that the stages of development are the same for everyone.

It’s hard to deny that everyone changes with age, demands become greater, complaints appear, and at this moment you need to grow and develop along with the relationship. If you neglect to work on the union, you can stop at the first stages forever. It is quite logical that then a break will occur and the relationship will cease to exist.

Every couple should know what stages of relationship building there are, what makes them special and how to get through them in order to maintain a harmonious relationship.

Stages of relationships between a man and a woman

What are the stages of a relationship between a man and a woman? This is what this article will discuss.

Each of us hopes that sooner or later we will meet our love - the one and only one about whom legends are made, poems and songs are written, films are made. Love is an amazing and incomprehensible feeling.

Love is a feeling of deep sympathy for a person, deep affection for him.

Source Wikipedia

But over time, feelings cool down, and a person begins to doubt, “Is this love?” We must be more patient, wiser and understand that love has stages of development.

True love must be built, developed, and then protected and created. Passion doesn't require much effort. She comes quickly, but after some time she leaves unnoticed.

Each person is individual, he has his own character, his own interests, and requirements for life.

Having met, the girl and the guy want to possess each other. But after some time they begin to crush their soul mate. Each of them is sure that he must be taken into account, obeyed in everything and live his life. But the second person is also different, and he also tries to crush his partner under himself.

And instead of lovers, we get two conflicted people who don’t want to be together because they turned out to be “the wrong ones.” Why? Yes, simply because they do not want to start from scratch to build their love.

A strong relationship is a sea of ​​different moods. And the main task is to preserve them, not to give up and not give up. True love never fails. But there are stages of love.

What needs to be done to overcome crisis situations and reach “eternal” love?

There are 3 stages of love:

• Honeymoon;
• Lapping;
• Love.

But we must not forget that all people are unique and their relationships develop according to different scenarios. Some people manage to “skip through” all these stages, while others cannot reach the last stage.

First stage3

Relationships begin from this stage, and sometimes end there. The easiest stage is when lovers see only advantages in each other, the partner seems like a fairy-tale hero, a real prince or princess, about whom everyone had dreams. Your heart is beating wildly in your chest, your cheeks are burning, your eyes are sparkling, you want to take each other’s hand and walk for a long time, not to separate even for a few minutes. At this time, even a small sweet SMS delights you and time slows down when there is not a single news from your loved one on your phone.

Guys behave like courageous knights and are ready to do anything to win the heart of their beloved lady. Girls tend to idealize the image of their lover. It's quite normal. When you don’t really know a person, haven’t seen him in everyday life, or in conflict situations, it’s easier to come up with an airy image and endow him with the desired qualities.

Every date is perceived as the most important meeting, for which they spend hours preparing. The state of being in love is inspiring, you want to shout to the whole world about love, write poetry, admire an ideal relationship and a wonderful person nearby. No one can fill the emotional hunger from lack of communication with a loved one. If the relationship is interrupted at this stage, then it will forever remain in memory as the best relationship in which everything was perfect.

Is it possible to speed up the development of relationships?

Age crises in children - at what age, period table

Advice. If the relationship has frozen in its development, you should not make hasty conclusions. It is better to try to bring novelty to them.

However, there is no need to rush things. The desire for a quick marriage usually ends with the search for new love. Everything must happen in due time. Jumping over one of the stages in the development of a relationship with an almost one hundred percent guarantee will lead to the end of the romance.

Second stage4

The onset of the second stage with satiety is inevitable. Communication brings the same pleasure, you no longer need to spend every minute together. At the second stage of the relationship, you no longer need to go everywhere together and visiting friends and events separately becomes normal. Leisure is becoming less romantic; evenings can now be spent lying together on the couch watching your favorite movie or TV series. Gradually, passions subside, and every minute of anticipation of intimacy is not perceived as a disaster.

Relations have become more harmonious, calm, everything is going smoothly. Partners reveal themselves and show their strengths and weaknesses. The veil of love gradually subsides, small flaws and character flaws become noticeable.

Everyone begins to behave more naturally; there is no longer a need to praise the partner for every joke or action. Communication remains just as warm, surprises excite and pleasantly delight. Emotions have become more stable, relationships are developing smoothly and nothing threatens to break up. Development at this stage resembles a hungry traveler who has already eaten his fill of the first fruits and becomes calm and balanced, well-fed and satisfied.

Psychology of relationships between men and women

To conquer a strong and worthy man, you have to go a long way. It may not always be successful, but you will gain invaluable experience. To attract the attention of the man you like, you need to know:

• His life position;
• Future plans;
• Interests;
• Preferences;
• Habits.

You can get such information about him using social networks or through your friends.

Find out what type of woman is preferable to him:

• The woman is the mother;
• Girlfriend;
• Lioness;
• Mistress.

1. A woman - a mother - is sensitive, emotional, loves children and dreams of starting a family.
2. A friend is an intellectual with whom you can discuss any topic. You can even take it with you fishing.
3. The lioness represents a bright, proud personality that a man will try to conquer, and after that show her to his friends and acquaintances as a trophy.
4. The housewife keeps the house clean, cooks well, takes care of the children, and still manages to pursue a career. Perhaps she is not too emotional, but she is reliable and predictable.

Having studied the tastes of the man you like, begin to build a line of behavior. Don't forget that a man loves with his eyes, so watch your appearance.

Third stage5

An important and crisis period that all couples who have been dating for several years or young spouses come to. There comes a turning point in the relationship and all problems become impossible to hide. Every movement, an incorrectly spoken word, an inappropriate joke could previously touch you, but now they cause an instant explosion of emotions and a stream of reproaches with a response. A loved one and close person causes negative emotions, he becomes imperfect, behaves in a way that he did not allow before. The romance has gone, perhaps children have appeared, and it has become impossible to see the same face in front of you every day.

The duration of the period depends on the duration of the relationship, the temperament of the partners, their wisdom and ability to evaluate everything critically from the outside and understand that this is a normal stage. You don't have to act like your partner. Getting irritated in response to actions and starting to scream heart-rendingly for every crumb on the table is not the best option. Most couples break down at this stage. Thoughts come that the partner cannot satisfy all the needs and the choice in his favor was wrong. Everything happens due to the lack of nourishing, intoxicating emotions that previously delighted the brain.

Refusing the alliance and breaking off the relationship is the easiest way. The new partner will delight you just as much and then everything will happen again. If you don’t want to constantly break off relationships and spend your whole life finding new partners, you need to learn to go through the third stage and move on to the next stage of development.

Love.

This period is called the candy-bouquet period. It seems that romance is in the air, the world has stopped, without a person everything loses its meaning. Walking under the moon, crazy actions, passionate kisses - all this takes place in a relationship in the first 18 months.

Helen Fisher, a scientist from Harvard, studied what happens to lovers from a physiological point of view. Using a tomograph, the professor was able to discover: in men and women in the first period, the so-called “love” hormones are actively released. They block the influence of negative emotions and rational thinking. The person seems to be “high” - everything is pink, moths are flying around and pipes are singing.

Amazing fact. The brain of a lover works approximately the same as that of a person who has taken cocaine.

Ardentness and heightened feelings fade away after about a year. But there is no need to be sorry. If the first period was longer, the lovers were hospitalized with a diagnosis of “Nervous and physical exhaustion.”

What happens on a psychological level. The couple discovers each other. It’s as if they have tasted a previously unfamiliar fruit, and now they want to feel its taste again and again. This period is the brightest. Less romantic types of relationships lie ahead.

What to do. The main thing is not to overdo it in an effort to seem perfect. Of course, you can and should demonstrate your strengths. But if you focus on this marathon, you can create a trap. Don't have a special love for cooking? Then it’s better not to demonstrate your culinary skills by studying a book of exotic recipes. The person who is nearby shapes your holistic image. He must be as close to reality as possible. Therefore, the task is to be yourself and give the opportunity to others to do it.

Take the test: Does he like me?

Fourth stage6

Overcoming the crisis stage is behind us. Problems become less noticeable, wisdom and understanding gradually comes that you can come to an agreement with your loved one and find a solution to any problems. Understanding comes to someone who is more mature, mature, morally prepared and mature for relationships. You need to share and understand that at this stage you need not to endure and think that everything will change, everyone has endured and I can do it, but to resolve conflicts wisely and be able to turn a blind eye to not minor irritating factors.

The big problem is to look at the world with negativity and constantly convince yourself that others are to blame for your problems. There must be a realization that half of the blame for problems and quarrels in partnerships lies with both partners. Previously, it seemed that the relationship had reached a dead end, and not a day went by without quarrels and problems. Now quarrels have become different, rare and associated more with external stimuli. Problems at work, women's menstrual cycle, sudden car breakdown and other irritants provoke quarrels. It's more like taking out your emotions on your partner to make it feel better.

Patience and wisdom, like threads, sew relationships together in those places where they are constantly torn. Just don’t confuse patience with bullying, beatings, moral violence in the family and patience with minor shortcomings. In the first case, you need to call the police, and not hope that your partner will suddenly have an epiphany and understand what he is doing wrong. You need to work on your ego, be able to overestimate changes in your partner, his needs and desires. Let there be no more romantic aura, no one greets you from work at the office door with a bouquet of flowers. There is a reliable partner nearby who has been tested in many situations and wisely resolves minor conflicts without showering you with hundreds of caustic words. At this stage, a person truly opens up and the success of the transition to the fifth stage depends on how he is perceived and accepted.

How should relationships develop?

Any couple - from dating to family life - has to go through many different tests, including conflict situations.

In order to have a happy life together, you need to know several nuances of a happy relationship.

• Feelings fade over time, so they need to be developed;
• Don't devote your whole life only to your loved one. You must have an interesting job or hobby. If for some reason your relationship ends, it is work that will give you the strength to survive the breakup.

Fifth stage7

Learning to realize the uniqueness of a partner, his needs, desires, and feeling a duty to him are the first steps towards true Love in its highest manifestation. Love is already on the threshold and waiting to be let into the house. There comes a clear awareness of the fact that the spouse is not an ethereal being, which is woven from clouds and tenderness. A living person with problems, worries, thoughts, claims and, on understanding the duty to him, the success of the relationship in the future depends.

He is imperfect, but he loves me, tolerates me, understands me. Acting the same way towards your spouse is a duty and a primary responsibility. I no longer want to scream over little things, there are no scandals due to the lack of candles and romance. It becomes clear that in order to receive benefits you need to put in your own efforts, and not rely on your partner and expect actions from him.

At this stage, one realizes the duty to the family and children. Maintaining an undying family hearth, a delicious dinner, the wisdom and understanding of a partner, time together, the desire to develop and find answers to all questions are the key to success at the fifth stage. Trainings, consultations with a psychologist, books will help you find answers to all your questions. You need to constantly work not only on relationships, but also on personal development. Maintaining interest in yourself and being a harmonious complement to your partner is something without which it will not be possible to maintain a relationship for many decades.

How to understand that love has arisen

Types of human memory in psychology, classification of main types

Signs of love are:

• Interest in the partner as a person, and not just as an object of sexual satisfaction.
• Tolerance for your partner's shortcomings. Truly loving people will not constantly point out their partner's weaknesses.
• Showing tenderness and care in relationships even after several years of marriage.
• The desire of partners to improve themselves and please their life partner.
• Forced separation increases the desire to be with this particular person.

Important! Love gives a person a lot of positive emotions. Therefore, the stages of love in psychology should naturally change. It's better to enjoy every new day. This is the only true path to happiness.

Love

Sixth stage8

The penultimate stage of a relationship, in which partners become not just lovers, parents, but true friends. There comes a time when another unwashed cup no longer causes an explosion of emotions, sex is not so bright, but emotional intimacy covers everything in full. These are two truly close people who steadfastly withstood all the hardships and difficulties, found the secrets of understanding, fulfilled their duty to their children, went through all the temptations and stayed together. This is where the desired fairy tale comes in, in which “they lived happily ever after” best describes the state of things.

Although a person has been known for a long time, there are new traits and virtues for which one can respect, admire, glorify and be proud. Love has not yet reached the stage of highest meaning, but is already very close to it. Two people talk cheerfully and openly, ready to spend time together. Relationships are built on dedication, boundless trust and defense of common interests.

What destroys relationships?

Now on TV screens and in any advertisement you can hear about how to build happy relationships. In fact, the main goal of such videos is to sell more of your own products. Therefore, the family model that is shown on television does not always correspond to ideals. Most often, such models are simply imposed on family people.

What destroys relationships:

• General family budget . As the experience of many families shows, the family may not have a common budget at all. The fact is that each family member must have their own finances in order to purchase gifts and allow themselves to buy some new things, even if not very expensive ones. It is best to build a family budget in shares and contributions. Each family member invests his own money to cover certain types of necessary services and purchases. These include paying for utilities, a basket of groceries, in order to prepare food. We can discuss a few more categories in which family members should invest money. Part of the money remains with each participant and partner.
• From TV screens we can see that a strong, good family is one that spends all its time together . It doesn't actually work. You can fill your time with each other only in the initial stages. Usually, when people meet, they are interesting because they are independent and very unique. This is what allows people to get to know each other, and every day is full of surprises. When people live together for a long period of time, the novelty goes away and everyday life appears. To prevent it from becoming monotonous and boring, it is necessary to dilute it. To do this, it is necessary that everyone has their own personal space and time that they can spend at their own discretion.
• Lack of self-development . People stop being interesting to each other if they are not interesting to themselves. A person can be interested in the opposite sex only if he constantly develops.

Love

conclusions

Every couple goes through universal stages of relationships. But it depends only on you what this path will be. Initial love develops into warm feelings and interest. We are rediscovering love in a new stage. The secret of a strong relationship is not endless love, but the ability to solve problems and find compromises. We gradually master the language of love, learn to speak, and begin to better understand the goals and values ​​of the other person. Of course, even in the strongest relationships there are quarrels. But if you have learned to overcome conflicts, you have nothing to fear anymore. Now you have tools in your arsenal that will help you solve problems. You can enjoy the journey. In the later stages, self-development becomes a source of inspiration. Personal growth opens up new facets of personality. Couples continue to develop their relationship. Love will last as long as you are interested in each other.

Of course, sometimes no advice helps. And the couple decides to separate. But even a breakup can be constructive. Breaking up is an experience (albeit a negative one) that will allow you to avoid similar mistakes in the future. Often it is simply impossible to continue the relationship. Falling in love hides the abusive nature of the relationship. If you notice that your partner is showing signs of a toxic relationship, it is better to leave. Such relationships cannot be corrected and returned to normal.

Service

At this stage, true love arises between partners. After a storm in a relationship comes true calm. You no longer demand anything from each other in return and are ready to give your love for free. Men show their love for a woman, and women give them reciprocity.

Signs of the service stage:

• There is a desire to spend time with your loved one again
• Conflicts pass calmly, without aggression, because people have learned to understand each other
• Partners are ready to give gifts and show attention just like that, without expecting reciprocity

This stage begins when you realize the full value of your loved one. You accepted him for who he is and rejoice in the fact that the Personality is next to you. You are interested in spending time together, you are sincerely interested in your partner’s affairs and do not demand anything from him. Only complete dedication and gratitude.

Stage No. 1. Superficial attraction

This is what we call “loving with the eyes.” When choosing a partner, we evaluate each potential partner according to a hundred parameters: too young, too old, too beautiful or unattractive, etc.

The choice of appearance parameters is dictated by:

• fashion trends - now fit skinnies are in trend, but in the 18th century they loved plump ones;
• national preferences - a Chinese man would rather like a Chinese woman than a woman of Slavic appearance;
• an unconscious search for a similar appearance of a parent of the opposite sex - there is nothing special about this; for children, the appearance of their parents is the standard of beauty;
• common sense and instincts - the one who can potentially continue the family is attractive.

Assessing physical characteristics is only one of the selection parameters. Girls mistakenly believe that appearance is the main thing for which they are loved and chosen. But that's not true. Appearance serves as the first screening filter, that is, it is enough to be well-groomed and pretty for a man who is determined to procreate to show interest in you. If you focus on creating your appearance and forget about the rest, you will sparkle like a light to moths. Ending up with a dummy is what scares men away.

Superficial people place too much importance on appearance, judging a person by how he dresses, how much his watch costs, and whether he goes to the gym. But appearance is the easiest thing to change. Put a person in a respectable suit, comb his hair, shave, and no one will ever say that in front of you is a street guy from the neighborhood, spitting sunflower seeds at his feet.

If you are judged by your appearance and only, then your partner has no serious plans for you, he is not interested in creating a relationship and marriage. So, take care of your time and self-esteem.

Disappointments

The third stage of a relationship is disappointment. This stage of a relationship can be called the winter of love.

. For many couples, stage three is the end of the road. The power struggle in the relationship comes to the surface, revealing contradictions. Problems carefully hidden under the rug become apparent. Some couples go into confrontation mode, others invest less and less energy into their love relationships, losing interest. The past experience of passionate love turns into a distant memory. Individual goals trump common goals. “I” comes to replace “we”. Not all couples break up at this stage of the relationship. Many people continue to believe that the frosts will be replaced by spring warmth.

What to do.

Stop pretending that problems don't exist. There is no point in hiding difficulties under the rug and creating the appearance of a happy relationship. Of course, sorting out relationships looks like a grueling task. But the only way to overcome contradictions is to find a compromise. Conflicts create the feeling that affection has evaporated. Therefore, try to demonstrate mutual support and warm feelings to remind you of the moment when the relationship first began. Try to separate rational complaints from irrational anger. You may be angry at each other, but that doesn't stop you from going to the movies together. If at the first stage of a relationship the brain notices only the positive, at the third stage we see exclusively the negative. You might think that everything is going wrong, destroying the idyll of the relationship. However, there is a feeling of affection between you.

Search

The initial stage of relationship development is the search . It consists in the process of searching for reflections of one’s inner male and female parts in real people - representatives of the opposite sex.

In fairy tales, the search for male heroes is their famous quest for happiness, the search for adventure. For heroines, this is the election of grooms, classically arranged by kings for their daughters. These stories reflect the healthy canons of search activity: men win their own happiness, this happens through competition, struggle, overcoming themselves and various obstacles. Women receive the groom who wins the competition organized by her father, that is, the groom approved by the father, which indicates the most important moment in the transfer of paternal responsibility to the daughter's chosen one.

Thus, fairy tales teach that a woman’s search experience should be carried out under the wing of the father’s protective function, the patronage of a strong man, and the one who tests the woman’s future chosen one should first of all be her father.

Since today many women are formed in the absence of full-fledged paternal protection, the protective paternal function may well be performed by healthy masculine principle , initiated (developed) to a well-functioning internal paternal protective principle.

The decline in paternal function in modern Western society has led to the fact that today the stage of conscious search for a partner is preceded by a more unconscious type of search activity. It can be distinguished as the zero stage of the search. We called it bodily . We are talking about a deliberately impersonal process of people satisfying their sexual needs, although these relationships never achieve complete impersonality. Any, even the most fleeting contacts between a man and a woman have infinite depth. Denial of this depth serves an immature person as just an attempt to protect himself from the fear of rejection and from a vague feeling of his incompetence in the field of relationships.

A high level of such competence is characteristic only of a mature personality. The maturity of the male phenomenon (both internal and external) is especially important here. When the masculine reaches maturity, it ascends to the stage of fatherhood, which is a reflection of the divine paternal principle. Therefore, the connection is obvious: to the extent that real fathers emotionally ignore their children, to the same extent their growing children are deprived of the spiritual experience of relationships.

The bodily stage is dictated by instinctive motives, which, in the absence of paternal protection, act as an exposed archaic mechanism for procreation. The instinctive nature of the zero stage of the search also contains a very specific spiritual goal: to find your true half through some kind of “sexual testing”. The bodily search stage is common not only among young people, but also among people of other age groups, when they are directly or indirectly engaged in searching for a “life partner.”

Everyone who has experienced the collapse of a relationship returns to the search stage, as well as married men and married women experiencing family, age and other personal crises. Unmated men and women live in a state of search, without always being fully aware of it. An obsessive search for a partner is a sign of a certain immaturity of the individual. This statement suggests a simple conclusion: the initiation of personality maturation brings relief from the compulsion of search.

At the search , marriages often occur and children are born. However, to achieve harmonious relationships, search motives alone are not enough. In the search process, its participants strive primarily for such an important emotional component of relationships as recognition. As soon as recognition is achieved, the relationship moves to the next, higher stage of development.