Index
Most of us spend our lives looking for our better half, someone to fall in love with , who complements us and with whom to spend the rest of our lives; But even in the best relationships, feelings change.
The American psychologist Jed Diamond proposed that couple relationships are made up of 5 phases. He himself postulated this theory about love relationships, after noticing an almost universal pattern in the way lovers’ attitudes change throughout a relationship.
Each relationship goes through 5 different stages over the years, but according to Diamond – who specialized in couples and family therapy for more than 40 years – most relationships stagnate in the third stage and decide to seek a new love. . Only a small percentage manages to get out of it unscathed, to go through a new stage of love.
Below we will detail the 5 stages we go through when we are in a relationship.
Stages of love
Infatuation
At this stage we feel radiant. This is because we are flooded with hormones that generate pleasure and well-being, such as dopamine , oxytocin, serotonin , testosterone and estrogen.
When we fall in love we project all our hopes and dreams on our partner, for example: when will we get married, the number of children we will have, the beautiful house we will live in together, the perfect family we will form, etc.
The stage of infatuation is a dream stage , everything is rosy, we are extremely optimistic , the person we have chosen is perfect and nothing can change that image in our mind. We imagine that this person will satisfy all our needs and our desires, and we are totally sure that we will remain in love forever.
Beginning of the relationship
This is the stage where our love deepens, we decided to unite as a couple and start a new path together.
The moment we decide to want to start a relationship with another person we are creating a union, which we believe will be full of positive feelings (in some cases it is), trust, security, respect and love in the highest state.
In this loving state we learn what the other person likes and dislikes, we change “I” to “we”, and we join our individual lives to begin to develop a life of two.
Disappointment
We reach the most anticipated stage of love relationships: disappointment. Everything seems to be going wrong in this one. Couples begin to feel less secure and unappreciated. All the illusions of perfection have worn off and we begin to see the other with all their enhanced flaws.
It is the stage of heartbreak, which is why most couples get stuck in it and separate , instead of seeing it as an opportunity to grow and better understand the relationship.
For Diamond, people who continue to advance in this stage have the opportunity to be more loving, appreciate their partner more as they are, and fall in love with a real person, not with the projections that were assigned to them in the previous stages.
This stage gives meaning to this popular saying of heartbreak:
He fell in love with its flowers and not with its roots, but in winter he did not know what to do.
Real love
Once the crisis of the third stage is over, we can talk about the construction of a real and lasting love.
This is a learning stage; we learn many things about ourselves, both as a couple and individually. The love that had faded returns with more strength and maturity.
By facing the disappointment phase, we become aware of our relationship and can get to the core of what causes pain and conflict. For Diamond this is a stage of introspection and retrospection, as it is here where we begin to find a link between our past and the way we act with our partner.
Joining forces to change the world
If we can learn to overcome our differences and find true love, we must make it known and raise our voices so that everyone learns that it can be changed; just as we can change ourselves to build a real and lasting love, we think that maybe we can come together to find a real and lasting love in the rest of the world.
Hello Readers, I am Nikki Bella a Psychology student. I have always been concerned about human behavior and the mental processes that lead us to act and think the way we do. My collaboration as an editor in the psychology area of Well Being Pole has allowed me to investigate further and expand my knowledge in the field of mental health; I have also acquired great knowledge about physical health and well-being, two fundamental bases that are directly related and are part of all mental health.