The eight stages of love

Relationships go through stages, and to succeed you need different skills in each stage. ILLUSTRATION| JOHN NYAGAH

What you need to know:

  • You’ve never felt so alive, think about them all the time and experience an intense sexual attraction.

  • You don’t notice your partner’s faults, and only see their good side.

  • Because people with commitment issues bail out as their insecurities surface, usually around the end of the second month.

Relationships go through stages, and to succeed you need different skills in each stage.

Like stage one’s becoming attracted to someone. That’s mostly a subconscious process, which unfortunately tends to lead you towards people who feel familiar, rather than those who’ll make you happy.

So you’re likely to fall for people who reflect your previous relationships or upbringing - which perhaps wasn’t all that great. Resulting in endless partners who all let you down in similar ways.  

Avoid that by meeting new possibilities in broad daylight and stone cold sober. Become skilled at small talk and spotting red flags. And only date someone who get a tick in every box.

Stage two starts as you draw closer to your new partner. You’ve never felt so alive, think about them all the time and experience an intense sexual attraction. The saying ‘love is blind’ comes from this stage. You don’t notice your partner’s faults, and only see their good side. Blame your hormones – and remember those amazing feelings later on whenever things get tough!

MAKING PLANS

The third stage begins when you start defining yourselves as a couple, making plans together and introducing one another as boyfriend and girlfriend. It’s now that you must build a solid foundation of trust. Fail, and you’ll never truly be happy together. And your relationship will eventually fall apart.

So start being 100 per cent open and honest with each other as soon as you feel comfortable together. Share whatever you’re thinking and doing, DON’T EVER LIE, and build a deep intimacy with lots of kissing and cuddling. Then you’ll always be able to cope, whatever issues arise down the line.

As you learn more about each other, you enter stage four. And start having doubts. That leads to what’s often called the three month rule: relationships that get past three months will probably last.

INSECURITIES

Because people with commitment issues bail out as their insecurities surface, usually around the end of the second month. If you sense that your partner’s one of them, it’s best to cut your losses and let them go.

However committed you are, you’ll probably also start annoying each other around this time. As all the bad habits you hid from each other in the beginning resurface. Learning to let those things go, and becoming more accepting of each other’s weaknesses is stage five.

Sooner or later you’ll find that some important expectations aren’t being met. That’s stage six. Where you learn how to deal with conflict, so you can work through whatever issues crop up as a team.

It’s an important skill. Because eventually something big’s going to happen that changes everything. It could be losing your job, a death in the family, an infidelity, or even having your first child. Stage seven is learning the problem solving skills you need to cope. So you reach stage eight. You’ll face many more difficulties, of course. But now you know you’ll always fix them - and be together forever.