Love is one of the most beautiful and at the same time most complex manifestations of human relationships. Ancient Greek philosophers even classified this feeling into different types, and modern researchers have tried to find a scientific definition for it, although it does not sound too romantic - dopaminergic goal-setting motivation to form pair bonds.
In this material, we will look at love from the point of view of psychology: we will determine what stages the relationship between a man and a woman goes through and ask an expert psychologist to explain at what point you can calmly admit your feelings.
Psychologist's view
Love has always been talked about. It was touched upon by great poets in their poems, by artists who created delightful portraits, and by musicians who composed incredible masterpieces. Scientists from various scientific fields were not spared: neurologists, biologists, zoologists, physicists. Even mathematicians tried to come up with its formula. But most of all psychological works have been written on this topic. After all, it is psychology that studies the human soul, his behavior, feelings, and reactions. Therefore, the eternal problem of love and its stages through the eyes of a psychologist seems to us the most useful and interesting for knowledge.
At what stage of a relationship can you confess your feelings to a person?
Photo: pexels.com/ru-ru/@jonathanborba
Answered by Dasha Pankratova, analytical psychologist, ICF coach.
“The relationship between two people is an individual and largely creative process, which at first is supported by a cocktail of hormones and neurotransmitters. But there are certain stages of development in the first three years of a relationship that are the same for everyone.
In short, then: acquaintance stage → charm and idealization of a partner (first 3 months) → getting to know him in more detail (2.5 years) → seeing a real person (3 years).
In the question of when to confess your feelings to your partner, you should start from your feelings. Namely: how confident am I in my feelings and the person? To what extent does my recognition come from the heart, and not from some third-party goals? Will I feel safe after confessing?
Therefore, if you are at the stage of charming and idealizing your partner, there is no clear feeling inside that you are ready for recognition, or some of the listed questions remain open for you, then maybe it makes sense to wait a little to declare your love to a non-idealized hologram, but to a person whose feelings you are completely sure of.”
What is love?
Many people confuse the state of falling in love, romance and passion with true love, which they may never experience. After all, sooner or later the euphoria passes, giving way to habit and disagreements, and couples break up, believing that everything is gone, and the wrong person just got in the way. Not everyone has the wisdom and patience to overcome the obstacles encountered and preserve relationships dear to their hearts, so that after a while they can experience a truly great feeling.
The nature of love is alive and, like any organism, is capable of growing and evolving, passing through various age stages and obligatory relationship crises. And with her, loving people grow and develop. Without this, it is impossible to reach a spiritual peak and experience true happiness from the opportunity to love sincerely and strongly.
Stages and their characteristics
There are 7 steps that couples in love overcome on the way to a real feeling of love. Each stage is characterized by its own characteristics .
How to forget your first love? Find out about this from our article.
Love
Love at first sight and the candy-bouquet period. The duration of the very first stage of falling in love is usually about a year or a year and a half .
At this time, partners do not notice shortcomings, they are blinded by a strong feeling of love, everything seems wonderful and beautiful to them in the character of their loved one.
The beloved appears in the most unrealistic light when no attention is paid to negative character traits .
Scientists who studied the first period of relationships gave it the name “chemistry of love.” At this time, hormones, oxytocin and endorphin, are actively produced, completely taking over the consciousness of lovers.
Actively produced substances suppress attempts at rational thinking and block the emergence of negative emotions. A person is completely overcome by euphoria in love .
Partners try to spend every free time together, communicate a lot, call each other, and often declare their love . Half of their vocabulary consists of affectionate and tender words addressed to a loved one.
Most often, this stage ends with the registration of marriage, since people “fly on the wings of love” and want to quickly legitimize their relationship in order to indicate their status to society.
What stages does a person in love go through? About this in the video:
Satiation
After marriage and the beginning of life together, a stage of satiety usually comes. The initial intense love begins to subside , hormones no longer rage, and brain function resumes as usual.
Each partner begins to pay more attention to other areas of their life, wants to communicate with friends, and be closely involved in work.
During this period, the first conflicts begin .
Often they are associated with the fact that one of the lovers has already moved to a new stage of love, while the second partner is still at the stage of falling in love.
He wants to spend a lot of time with his loved one and begins to be offended when he no longer encounters such impulses on his part. Living together turns falling in love into something ordinary and familiar , the loved one is always nearby, so satiety arises.
It is during this period that partners begin to discover each other’s shortcomings. This happens not because previously negative character traits were carefully hidden, but because of the resumption of normal brain function, unencumbered by the release of hormones and endorphins.
Most often, the period of satiety takes a very short period of time and is invisible to the spouses themselves . Sometimes it can change places with the first stage of falling in love, especially if newborns appear in the newly-made family during this period.
Disgust
a real difficult test for relationships begins , as a period of disgust comes into its own.
The “rosy” perception of a partner is replaced by a real assessment of his character .
It turns out that the beloved has many shortcomings that begin to lead to irritation and fury.
Cute features no longer seem so funny and interesting, they begin to drive you crazy. During this period, advantages fade into the background and become almost invisible.
Spouses must necessarily go through the stage of disgust in order to achieve a state of true love. Without this stage, the onset of true feeling is impossible.
The duration of the period of disgust is individual for each family, the lucky ones experience unpleasant feelings towards each other for only a few months, and for some it drags on for whole years , sometimes giving way to the above-mentioned stages of the relationship.
The period of disgust is the richest in quarrels, scandals and conflicts. Each partner shows himself from the most unsightly side, expressing a large number of complaints and pointing out the significant shortcomings of his loved one.
With the onset of each new day, it seems that the person with whom you share life is not the one who was needed. It is at this stage that many realize that they no longer want to go through life hand in hand, and this realization is followed by divorce .
Many couples go in circles, constantly going through three stages and not moving on. For this reason, ex-spouses often end up back together and even remarry because they are attracted to each other.
How to overcome the disgust stage in a relationship? Useful tips:
How to forget a loved one after a breakup? Read about it here.
Humility
If the couple managed to overcome general disgust, a more pleasant period begins - humility.
People living together understand that it is impossible to change another person , that he is an accomplished person with his own set of advantages and disadvantages. They try to accept each other.
The partners’ apartment now looks not like a battlefield, where fierce battles take place every day, but like a negotiation room, where conscious dialogues are most often heard and the word “compromise” is regularly heard.
It is at this stage that the spouses begin to go to a psychologist, read smart books, trying to understand each other. Each partner understands that in order to create a harmonious union, first of all, he must work on himself, and only then ask for compromise changes from his beloved.
People begin to change to make living together more comfortable. It is believed that humility and patience are characteristic primarily of women , as they are wiser and more flexible by nature.
Most often, it is the wife who pushes the man to the stage of humility, showing by her example how it is necessary to adapt to each other.
Respect
The stage of humility is followed by respect and selfless service to the partner.
If previously lovers did something nice for each other, expecting the same attitude in return, now good deeds become selfless.
People strive to please only because their significant other is respected because they are precious .
At this stage of movement towards true love, the soul itself strives to please its partner. People truly value each other and are imbued with respect.
Spouses serve each other completely voluntarily , receiving great pleasure from the fact that the other half is happy. Sometimes one of the partners has already moved to the stage of respect, while the other lingers at the previous stage.
Through selfless actions, the spouse who has crossed a new line pushes the beloved to move to the stage of respect.
The first sign of emerging true love is the desire to sincerely and selflessly serve a partner.
Friendship
Friendship replaces the stage of respect. Usually by this period the couple experienced many life difficulties that were solved shoulder to shoulder.
Partners know each other from the roots of their hair to their fingertips; they know each other’s character, habits and temperament .
They get out of conflict situations without noisy showdowns; all they have to do is talk and everything will be resolved peacefully.
This stage can last for years and decades, when the spouses find peace of mind in a joint society.
Most often, friendship comes when children grow up and spouses have more time for joint activities and entertainment.
They can finally devote much more time to each other than before, when small children needed them every minute.
Love
Few reach the very last pinnacle stage, which is called love. Many people break down at the stage of disgust and cannot achieve true feeling. At the stage of love, a couple understands each other perfectly , partners breathe and live in unison.
Shared company gives them pleasure and brings peace. Spouses accept each other completely, with all their strengths and weaknesses.
Hormones no longer play pranks, imperfections no longer irritate, they are smoothed out and outweighed by advantages , which appear more and more clearly.
If people have reached this stage, having overcome all difficulties, having stepped over the stage of disgust, they can boldly declare that they truly love each other.
How does love live? Brilliant psychological cartoon:
“He stopped understanding me!”
Before marriage, you seemed to read each other's thoughts, but now you can quarrel all evening over the color of the ceiling in the living room?
Stop thinking that “he changed too much after the wedding,” the problem is not your partner at all. Remember previous situations where you were able to easily agree with each other.
Most likely, you unanimously chose a restaurant for dinner, a new country to travel, or enthusiastically discussed your favorite TV series or football team.
But all this, even taken together, cannot be compared with the questions that you encountered in your family life. Will you live in a house or an apartment?
How many children will you have? Will the husband support the whole family? Where will your children study? And a thousand other serious issues that can cause a crisis in a relationship.
Disagreements breed more disagreements. There is nothing strange in the fact that after a conflict over the color of the ceiling, the husband will disagree on less significant issues.
If you do nothing, resentments will accumulate and your marriage will seriously crack.
1.2 Path to understanding
Let's start with the fact that you need to work on mutual understanding even before the wedding. By marriage, you confirm your intentions to face “difficult” issues, so it is worth discussing them in advance, so as not to have to deal with the bitterness of divorce later.
And if you are already late with conversations before the wedding, catch up on them now. Set aside time to discuss plans together.
Ask your other half how he/she sees his/her life next to you, your children, your home and everyday life. Also share your vision and compare the responses you receive.
If it is difficult, take a smaller number - at least 1 year. But in general, the crises of family life are not calculated over the years - you may encounter a key problem within six months of the relationship.
Discuss what you have written, especially controversial and inconsistent points. It may turn out that you want to live in a country house, but your loved one dreams of an apartment in the center of the metropolis.
Try to come to a compromise now, because in a few years these differences in views will lead you to loud quarrels, tears, or even divorce.
1. Falling in love
The development of relationships begins with the emergence of attraction. A man is attracted to femininity, beauty
appearance, as well as sexuality, which is expressed in certain parts of the female body
Most men pay attention to a woman's hands, eyes, lips, breasts, legs and buttocks. A woman is subject to visual admiration only in the first seconds
Although this is typical for her when she is in love. She pays attention to laughter, smile, glance. She is attracted to a man's intelligence and sense of humor.
A common feeling among people of different sexes is the desire to be nearby, to highlight the object of attraction among the crowd. The level of attraction lays the foundation for building a strong relationship built on mutual love.
This stage can be called the candy-bouquet period. The hearts of lovers merge into one. Complete mutual understanding and an excess of feelings brings happiness.
Psychology, or rather its representatives, compare this period with complete calm at sea. There are no quarrels, everything is fine.
Adoption
Having overcome the crisis and decided to stay together, the couple moves to a new stage of relationship development - acceptance. What are the distinctive features of the fourth stage of a relationship? Partners have passed many tests and are no longer trying to “crush” their lover under themselves. They learn patience, overcome disagreements more easily and are able to turn a blind eye to their partner’s minor shortcomings.
The couple is increasingly replacing constant scandals and quarrels with dialogues. The lovers are trying to come to an agreement and find a compromise solution. They strive to achieve harmony and comfort by changing themselves, and not their partner, his views on life and habits.
Service
This phase is characterized by the fact that a man and a woman can do something for each other without demanding anything in return.
Moreover, this does not happen as a result of falling in love and the influence of hormones, but due to the presence of a sincere, conscious desire to help the spouse. A person serves his soulmate without expecting gratitude or being reciprocated in kind.
This phase is the fifth of the 7 stages of love. The next level that partners reach is respect.
Necessary steps
Before looking at each phase individually, it should be noted that both partners do not always arrive at a certain stage at the same time. In addition, the time to overcome the entire cycle may vary depending on the characteristics of a particular couple and the relationship between a man and a woman. However, experts say that most families reach the last stage after no less than seven years of marriage. So, there are 7 stages of love:
- Love.
- Addiction.
- Rejection.
- Patience.
- Service.
- Respect.
- True and deep feeling.
Each of these steps is described in detail in the following sections.
Condition caused by hormone activity
Many famous works are devoted to this period, which is present in the relationship of any couple. A person who is in love is in the grip of strong emotions. Certain substances that his brain produces provide a feeling of euphoria. The individual is unable to think rationally and evaluate his partner. All that a person feels during this period is admiration, adoration and the desire to spend as much time as possible next to the other half.
Scientists compare the effect of hormones on the nervous system when falling in love with the effect of drugs. Naturally, such a period passes quickly. Experts say that its duration varies from 12 to 18 months. Sometimes, due to circumstances or the desire of partners to increase the time of falling in love, it is delayed. In this case, people do not start a life together, but limit themselves to infrequent meetings, telephone communication, and correspondence. If the relationship continues to develop, the second phase of the seven stages of love begins. The next section of the article is devoted to a description of this stage.
Love
IgorVetushko / Depositphotos.com
When they talk about falling in love, they mean chemistry, that is, mutual attraction that arises between two people. She bursts into life unexpectedly and appears as if on her own. It cannot be prevented or silenced by force. This is not a conscious choice, but a manifestation of the instinct A Dynamical Evolutionary View of Love. .
When you are in love, you feel that someone needs you, you see that you are valued and admired.
You are ready to devote all your time and energy to your partner, he becomes the best person on earth for you. You brush aside the advice of others, believing that you know better who is right for you. Gradually, these sensations fade away, and for some, returning to reality turns out to be painful.
Signs of relationship degradation
- stagnation, burnout, boredom: you don’t develop yourself, you hardly communicate with your partner;
- disappointed expectations, suffering from past sensations, endorphin starvation;
- pressure on a partner, abuse, violence;
- a feeling of “Groundhog Day”, the monotony of relationships;
- the desire to find fresh impressions in infidelity;
- lack of a vector of movement, lack of understanding of why all this is for, meaninglessness and emptiness.
If you find these signs in your relationship, you need to consult a psychologist. You can simply leave your partner, but it is important to understand that in a new relationship you will again go through all the stages described and will get stuck on the same unlearned life lessons - this is inevitable.
Disgust
At the third stage of the relationship, lovers face serious challenges. What is special about the third stage of relationship development?
Idealized ideas about a partner are replaced by reality. The lovers have “cooled down” enough and are able to soberly evaluate the object of their love. Now his shortcomings are coming to the surface and driving him crazy. Unsolved problems also surface.
Lovers constantly quarrel and make claims against each other. Any little thing can cause a disagreement. The couple has serious doubts about the correctness of their choice. Such thoughts and constant disagreements often lead to the decision to break up.
Key Relationship Stages Couples Go Through: Pexels
Relevance of the problem
Love is a feeling that people have experienced at all times, from ancient times to the present day.
It is spoken about in philosophical and religious sources and in art. Experts in the field of psychological science pay a lot of attention to the study of this phenomenon. Even in ancient times, people noticed that a deep feeling is not born immediately. Ancient texts talk about 7 stages of love. All men and women who are in a relationship go through similar stages. However, in many cases, partners separate without overcoming the difficulties that arose in the process of living together. The breakup occurs before the time when all the steps leading to a real, strong feeling have been completed. Many books and articles have been written about the stages of love, psychology and the features of this phenomenon. Reading such literature allows you to better understand not only your partner, but also yourself.
Friendship
What happens to lovers at the friendship stage? The authors of the book “Love for Life: A Guide for Couples,” psychotherapists Helen Hunt and Harville Hendrix, argue that during this period, partners forget about all confrontations. They have studied each other well and understand that friendship and teamwork will help build strong relationships.
To preserve love, lovers are ready:
- accept the fact that the partner may disagree and have his own point of view;
- respect your partner's point of view;
- compromise and negotiate;
- provide each other with support.
The couple comes to an understanding and learns to trust each other. Lovers respect their partner and appreciate every moment spent together.
Relationship Stages Couples Go Through: Pexels
