If you’ve ever had the fortune (or misfortune) of being in love, you’ll know that it’s NEVER a smooth ride. Every love has its fair share of ups and downs. One day, it can make you feel like it’s impossible for you to contain your happiness but in the blink of an eye, it can leave you feeling completely broken inside.
As confusing as this sounds and as random as it feels, love can actually be classified into 5 distinct stages. If you want to understand love better, if you want to be less confused about all the different feelings you experience, and if you want to find out if your relationship has completed all 5 stages of love, then read ahead.
Stage 1: Falling in love
1
You meet this new person. You talk for a while but it just doesn’t feel enough. You feel like there’s something more to this random meeting. So you ask them out on a date. One date leads to a few more. And every time you meet, you can’t help but think about how beautiful they look when they smile, you can’t help but be amazed at the way their eyes light up when they’re telling you something about their life, and you can’t help but feel like this person might just be the one for you. Everything changes around us when we fall in love—not physically, but emotionally and spiritually—we see things differently, our temper becomes mild, patience rises and imagination expands. We try to imagine what the person would have done if they were in our place, what they would be doing at the moment or if they would be thinking about us too.
Stage 2: Coming closer as a couple
2
In stage two, your love starts to really grow. You start to feel like the initial excitement, laughs, and romance are gradually evolving into a deeper and even more meaningful connection. This new person has taken over your life. They’re in your thoughts. They’re in your dreams. They’re in your everyday life. And you realize that your life no longer revolves entirely around your own self but it has started to revolve around this new relationship as well. The things you used to do alone now involve them too, even if they are not present in the moment because your mind is always revolving around them. The magical process of thinking about a person and missing them when they are not around you starts in this stage. It does go on in other stages too but is the strongest here, since all the feelings and emotions are new and so is your interest in them. ‘Coming close as a couple’ means evolving as human beings in terms of affection and understanding. This stage teaches us a lot of about love, life, expectations and selfless happiness since our life starts revolving around someone other than us.
Stage 3: Getting disillusioned
3
All the confusion and uncertainty that accompanies love tends to be the main theme of stage 3. This is the stage where one or sometimes both the partners start to feel unsure about what direction their relationship is going to take. They start to question whether they even made the right decisions in the previous two stages. Although it is normal for human beings to be doubtful about things, yet we feel bad for doubting the relationship that we thought was so perfect. We discover each other’s flaws and for some time, our mind unconsciously concentrates on the flaws only, making us even more unpleasant a partner. But that phase is replaced soon if the two people have the heart for it, if they love each other enough to know the differences and respect them because that is the only way relationships thrive this stage; unconditional love, holding on to the good bits and remembering that person you love is more than just their habits.
Sponsored
Stage 4: Working on a true and lasting love
4
Once you pass the hard times of stage three, stage four acts as the much-needed reward. This stage begins once you’ve figured out the bottom cause of all the conflict and pain in your relationship and are now working together to resolve all your issues. The essence of resolving your issues lies in the ability to understand that nobody in this world is perfect. Your partner has lived their entire life with their own share of insecurities, faults and imperfections and so have you, therefore it is in the interests of both of you to accept those insecurities, faults and imperfections and move on to lead a happy life with them. From time to time, trying to make each other feel secure would be the best thing to do, to not only make them feel better about themselves but also to strengthen the relationship. The fourth stage is actually the stage where you fall in love with their imperfections, where you realize that they are not perfect, yet they are perfect for you, that no one else will ever be this perfect for you.
Stage 5: Taking on the world with your love
5
The world is not an easy place to live in. There are times when you get so caught up with all the stress at work, all the negative people who keep bringing you down, all the problems that never seem to end, that you start to lose hope. But when you find and build a true and lasting love with someone, you reach this final stage of happiness, this stage where no amount of negativity and no amount of stress can ever bring you down. Because the only thing that truly matters is the fact that you’ll always have this one amazing person by your side They are the first thing you see in the morning and the last one at night, and that becomes enough for you to remember whenever stress knocks on your door. Life is all about ups and downs and can be pretty rough sometimes, but if you have a hand to hold and a shoulder to lean on all the while, the rough can become easy and the ups and downs both pleasant. It cannot be denied that the power of two is greater than a unit, and when the power of love combines with it, one can only imagine wonders taking place. So when you have that person you think you can take on world with, hold on to them, because you can do great things if you have the perfect amount of love and appreciation with you—that is a fact.