4 stages of relations, without which there will be no love and intimacy

Sooner or later, each couple is faced with a crisis. Partners seem to be one of them as replaced. Why this happens? Most likely, they came to the key point when it is necessary to decide whether to be together. What mandatory stages in relations we need to know in order to find real deep feelings?

“I remember our first six months, he looked after me – like no one before him! -recalls 32-year-old Eleanor. – We spent all the time together. And then suddenly it became more interesting for us to separately. We were everyone in our company for a lot of time, in the evenings we could not even have time to talk. And at some point I thought: I definitely should be together?

But then my partner already gave a voice and insisted that we go to a psychologist. He said that this does not happen: everything was fine and suddenly everything deteriorated irrevocably, and he believes that you can return the former proximity. Now we have Renaissance. It seems to me that I love him even more than at the beginning of our path. And I’m scared to imagine how much we could break firewood then ".

This story is a vivid example of how a couple has taken a certain stage in a relationship that can scare partners, if not knowing its existence and even its obligation.

“Like any living system, relations in the pair go through a certain process of development,” the psychotherapist Wann Joyns is convinced. -And often, when partners move from one stage to another, they think that something is not like they are no longer loved. They simply do not understand that their relationship simply switched to another level of development. It is then that couples often turn to psychotherapy. The task of the psychologist is to help them go through this stage and resolve the conflict that creates complexity ".

What kind of relationship they want – normally – to come all couples?

“In relations, autonomy and healthy interdependence become the desired goal. When each person is able to think for himself and satisfy his needs and at the same time satisfy the needs of another, ”explains Wann Joyns. – As John Bowlby believed (author of the theory of affection), we never develop to satisfy our need for a reliable base, a reliable support, to whom we will come when we are bad when we are tired. To the one who would support us and restored our forces. And this is a leading motivation that makes people create and develop a stable relationship ".

Often in adult relationships we complete what we did not finish once in childhood, in relations with significant parental figures. There is a psychological birth of relationships and their development, the same as that of any human baby.

This is how Wann Joyns described his website stages.

1st stage. Relations – idealized fantasy. Search for a partner

The image of the future partner is created in support of fairy tales, he is born from those romantic, ideal stories that we hear in childhood. At this stage, we are looking for a knight and a princess who will fulfill our dreams. This is an idealized partner who is able to satisfy all our needs in our ideas (which is unrealistic).

However, it is this fantasy that helps us enter into relations and marriage. We ourselves behave ideally and show another the best version of ourselves. We really want to like it and therefore carefully hide our no longer the most attractive side for the time being.

2nd stage. Symbiosis. Candy-bouquet period, the first months of life together

Here in a relationship, the first violin is played by romantic love and enthusiasm. At this stage, the fairy tale continues – our partner still wears, if not a halo, then the crown of the princess or armor of the knight. We begin to establish and build relationships according to the model that existed in early childhood with that parental figure that cared for us first.

This is the initial transition to the establishment of communication and the development of attachment with another human being. According to the theory of attachment, this connection can be both reliable and anxious, avoiding and disorganizing.

We want to be next to a partner. And if we are not together, then all our thoughts are about him. We do not notice differences, focus on similarities. It seems to us that we cannot live without this person. But gradually we begin to show what was hidden behind the scenes. For example, the fact that we have our own interests – without the participation of a partner in them.

3rd stage. Separation. Later period of relations

Conflicts and struggle for power begin. At this stage, partners understand that they do not always want to be together, that their interests and needs may not coincide. It was during this period that they ask questions: “Where were my eyes when I chose it? Where did our love go? And with that man I entered into marriage?"Does the partner still loves, who began to spend so much time separately?

Separation and individualization occur. Wann Joyns allocates three shelters for this period when "the honeymoon is over".

1. Differentiation. By analogy with the period when we first begin to separate from the mother. And now we are separated from the partner, and this is alarming.
2. Test in practice. We begin to practice this newly acquired personality, separating from the partner. “This is the stage where we fall in love with the world around us, we begin to interact with it. We are engaged in different things, communicate with other people ".
3. Reunion, rapprochement. If you return to the analogy of the “child and mother”, then during this period the child, breaking away from the mother, loses the feeling of her image and needs her again. He returns to her to "refuel". In this reunion, he again gains love, support, connection. The same thing happens in a relationship with a partner. In pair relations, this means the opportunity for partners to discuss their needs, business. Both learn to simultaneously set the boundaries of their individual “I” and be a reliable support for a partner, help him realize and satisfy his needs.

“The more our need for this dependence and support is satisfied, the more autonomous we learn to feel,” explains Wann Joyins. – The more the partner is responsive, reliable, the more it helps us satisfy our needs, the more freedom we feel. We have the same autonomy – as opposed to that mutual exclusivity in the “honey period”, where we are concentrated only on each other, forgetting about ourselves ”.

It is at this stage that the danger of the gap is great. Partners can decide to “get out of the game” and try to find the perfect partner again, which, as we now understand, does not exist. After all, relations with him will pass the same stages and will inevitably come to the stage of separation and individualization. Sometimes we will repeat the roles that our parents played.

“Partners need to survive during this period and undergo therapy if they do not cope for themselves,” recommends Wann Joyins. – Remember that relations, marriage implies work. Relations-a machine for growing people who can go through all stages and grow, but can get stuck at some stage and stagnate there. But if they manage to work and go through all stages together, then they switch to the next level of mature relations and real proximity ”.

4th stage. Proximity and involvement. Mature relationship

At this stage, partners consistently create a support for reliable attachment.

“Each of the partners needs to feel that the other is available and rather responsive that he will receive the satisfaction of his needs for these relations. At this stage, partners go beyond what they projected on their partner – mom, dad, princess from a children’s fairy tale or knight from their favorite film, and begin to open it again – who is he actually? – says Wann Joyns. – Now they outside this image see a real living person – completely as he is. The one they fell in love with. They gain him again and live a deeper sense of intimacy and affiliation, which more satisfies them than the primary "honey" obsession with others ".

Well, how are conflicts? They will not be anymore? Of course they will. But now partners have the opportunity and the habit of talking to each other, no one leaves, does not hide in resentment and children’s patterns, no one interrupts the relationship. And a feeling of a more strong connection is created.

“Partners reach such a level of mature relations in which conflicts are possible, but relations are maintained. They have deeper love, more trust, more reliable attachment. At the stage of mutual dependence, the idea of ​​perfection is reconciled with the idea of ​​reality and “1+1” is more than 2, ”the expert claims. “When people together find themselves best people than one by one, outside these relations, which are based on the foundation of growth and development, instead of need and need, as before”.

Partners cease to work out their childhood difficulties in which they are stuck on each other. Healthy dependence now contributes to autonomy. Whatever I am – hungry, tired, lonely, irritated – I can always come to my partner and satisfy my needs. And I have more confidence when I go to the outside world.

“These are the necessary stages that are inevitable. And if people want to come to a mature, true love, then they should know about it, ”says Wann Joyns. – Not everyone gives labor to go through these stages. But if people understand that relations are work, then they will have more chances to come to the final rewarding point ".

The article was prepared as part of the PSYCHOLOGies cooperation and the project of the peaks .