Stages Of Love

We often hear or read about people who just met, loved and confessed intimacy. You cannot help but wonder if their heart is a magnetic button, attracting objects without delay. Is this how quick true love should be determined?

Anyway, I’ve heard cases where couples just met and knew beyond reasonable doubt that they are meant for each other. Maybe this is a chance of ‘love at first sight’ but we should not be carried away about how we met/should meet our spouses; whether you were swept off your feet the first time you set your eyes on him/her or the love developed gradually, it’s what you do with and to the love that determines the kind of relationship you’ll get.

When you finally convince yourself you are now in love, the real story begins, especially if are looking forward to a long-term/life-time relationship (marriage). The journey starts from when you made up your mind to go together. From this point, you begin to experience the different stages or phases of love. This is going to be a really long discussion for us to get to understand what we are doing, where we are in our relationships and how to handle the challenges that surface in each phase.

I was in my office one day, engrossed in my editing job when a young man walked into the news room. He actually came to place an advert for political campaign but decided to come and ask me about the procedure and demands. This was not my job at all but I had to take him where he could get answers to his questions, but before he left, he asked what I was doing in the media house and so I told him about my proof reading or editing stuff and also went ahead to inform him about my passion for relationships and the column, Love & Life, I anchor every Friday.

“What do you do about relationships?” He asked. “I try to give people practical ideas on how to work on their marriage,” I replied and with a sincere, masculine voice, he asked “do you need to work on relationships?” I smiled because I knew, just like many others, he thought you just meet someone you love, get married and live happily ever after. This should explain to you why they get so disappointed when they encounter problems along the way. In most cases, the first thought that knocks on their heart is “I’ve married the wrong person.” This thought is so powerful that the more you dwell on it, the more you see reasons to tag your spouse ‘wrong’ because your mind does nothing but analyse and interpret every action/intention of the other person, even when it was done for your own good.

Once a relationship gets to this point, there is really nothing you can do than seek counsel, discover where it went sour and start to put things right, open up without pretence and patching it up is just like accumulating bombs awaiting explosion which will do you more harm later; a fresh beginning is wise, not a fresh relationship.

The first stage of love is what you go through without much struggles and hope will never end. The only language spoken and heard in this phase is ROMANCE.

Just this week, my brother sent me a joke via e-mail: “A lady sent this text message to her new found love: ‘If you are sleeping, send me your dream, if you are laughing, send me your laugh, if you are crying, send me your tears, if you are eating, send me your food, even if you are using the cash machine, send me the money.’ Then the guy replied, ‘I’m in the toilet.’” Funny, isn’t it? It is mostly at this stage of relationship that you think about nothing but ‘love.’ When you first fall in love, you freely do things for each other without the thought of cost or sacrifice. You cherish each other’s company more than the whole world put together.

I remember when my husband and I, shortly before marriage, needed to travel for an engagement, the journey of approximately one hour by air took us 18 hours by road, simply because we wanted to spend more time together talking. Crazy, Isn’t it? You might be laughing at us now but what about you? Haven’t you found yourself in a situation where saying ‘good night’ was extremely hard? You kept seeing each other off until one person rings a bell to say “can we now part please?” Yes, ideally, that is the way it should be at this stage and anything short of this calls for concern.

A young woman once confided in her dad that the man she wanted to get married to a man who had absolutely no feelings for her and the father answered, “that’s strange, I still remember how it was with me when I met your mom.” The young man in question had so much money that it was difficult for the girl’s family to say ‘no.’ A few days after the wedding, and while on honeymoon, stories came that the bride had died. It was difficult to determine exactly what killed her, but one thing the family knew was that he was never really committed to their daughter.

To say the least, this is just a rare case; the early stage of most relationships has a good pass mark attached to it. Here, couples do not have to work on relationship. Even when they expend energy doing things for each other, they would not consider it work. There is always pleasure in going the extra mile to satisfy or please the other; they feel elated with the opportunity to do something meaningful for one another.

Your spouse seems to be perfect, at least, for you and this makes you to want to spend more time basking in the company of this awesome creature. This is the time when you appear to be deaf to whatever others think is wrong with your relationship; you are ready to denounce anyone who wouldn’t support your idea of love and very willing to cut off communication with relatives and friends who do not get along with your new found love. If the obsessive nature of the ‘in love’ euphoria extended for too long, only a few of us would be able to accomplish anything meaningful in life because this is a time where nothing really means much to us but love. Doesn’t this explain to you why children’s grade drop in school once someone starts telling them about love? Yes, we all love to hear that someone is dying to be with us and this, I tell you, could be a massive distraction for the immature. The second stage of love is where most of us get stuck. This comes so hard that people who cannot manage it go straight to the court room, asking for divorce when they have barely started the marriage. Here, we start to see things for ourselves; he snores, she snaps, he rages, she nags, he’s stingy and she spends unnecessarily. He begins to wonder if her mother did not tell her that it’s wrong to leave dirty dishes in the kitchen, while she misses the fact that her dad never waited for the garden to grow wild before mowing it. You both just cannot help seeing lapses that seem so different from what you have been used to all your life. This, to me, is the real start of life—the place you need all that you have been taught before marriage.

Now, putting it to practice is the real deal, but surprisingly, some know virtually nothing about what is expected of them, let alone the doing.

Our next discussion will bring to you the true experience of the second stage of love and how to actually enjoy it.