Phase 4: Loving
The Loving phase of the Relationship Cycle is associated with the energizing, passionate qualities of the fire element. This is the head-over-heels, mad-about-you experience of mutual infatuation that is so much fun and what we are thinking of when we yearn to be “in love.” In this stage you and your special someone are inseparable, and are recognized by friends and family as a couple. In this chapter you’ll find out how feng shui can help you enhance the longevity of this often short-lived phase by identifying and removing barriers to communication and intimacy.
Phase 5: Uniting
The Uniting stage of a relationship is associated with the stable and nurturing qualities of the earth element. Now you and your love are ready to make a commitment and build a life together, and you either become engaged or decide to live together. In the Uniting chapter, you will look at how feng shui can support a stable and long-lasting partnership filled with peace, joy, and love.
On the other hand,
Philip Van Munching in his book “Actually, it is your parents’ fault” says that for a relationship to be successful it really needs to go through five stages. Attraction, idealized positive transference which I call the honeymoon, reality, commitment, and then hopefully eventually marriage.
The attraction phase is the easiest one and we all go through it. You see somebody across a room, you see them at a bar, you see them out with friends and you find yourself strongly and physically attracted to them. So you embark upon a relationship if they are attracted to you as well.
During the attraction phase, your unconscious is actually playing a part. You may be thinking that you’re just meeting somebody and you’re just learning a little bit about them by talking to them, but your unconscious is picking up a lot, too. You can find traits that you don’t even recognize you’re finding in that other person that will help you keep on an even psychological keel.
The honeymoon phase, which is the second phase of any relationship, is really the key phase because here’s where you build up a good head of steam that will hopefully get you through all the other stages. The real term for its “idealized positive transference.” Idealized, that’s easy – that’s your image of the perfect person for you. Positive, well that’s a very positive image; it’s all good things. Transference: you take that from inside of you and you put it onto the other person. This is when you see the person not for who they are and who you really in your deepest dreams hope they will be.
In the honeymoon phase of a relationship, when you’re coming up with this idealization of the perfect person, you’re drawing a lot on your past. You’re thinking about things that were implanted in you when you were very young, and those are the traits that you’re looking for in a partner. They are all the good traits. If you needed a lot compassion that you didn’t get, you’re looking for a compassionate partner. If you needed understanding, or if you needed patience, whatever it is you needed, that’s what you’re seeing in the other person during the honeymoon period of a relationship.That may not be who they are.
The reality phase comes in two parts. Early reality happens the very first time you say, “There’s something about this person I’m not sure about.” You don’t like the way they laugh. You don’t like how they go out with their friends all the time. It’s the first thing that punctures that wall of idealization that you’ve been building beforehand. The second phase, late reality, is the first time you say, “Can I make it with this person? Are we really cut out to be together?”
If you make it through the “reality” phase and you decide this is the person for you, then you move on to the “commitment” phase. This is when you decide “this is the only person for me. Right now I’m going to forgo everything and everyone else and see if I can make this work,” hopefully with an eye towards something permanent like marriage. This is the phase where you start to unconsciously negotiate. You’re not saying “what are you expected to do, what am I expected to do,” but you start to really futz around with space issues–how much togetherness you’re going to have and what each partner is expected to do within the relationship. That’s when you start to hear the “I need some space”, that’s when that first comes into a relationship.
The thing about the commitment phase is, you’ve finally gotten some distance between you and those idealizations of the person that you’re with, the reality phase has kind of taken care of all of that. So as you’re negotiating within your commitment with somebody, working out who has to do what and also starting to play out things from your past. This person now feels more like family to you, and so the things that you haven’t been able to work out from your childhood, you start unconsciously trying to work out with this new person you’re with.
Understood properly, the commitment phase is your last chance to really see what you getting. You know, you’ve moved away from this picture of the perfect person that you had during the second phase of idealization. And you gone through some reality and so you understand the ways in which you’re not necessarily happy with them. But, now is the time you need to look at both, how you get along with each and other people. But, also how your personalities mesh.
What components of theirs are really working for you? And, what components of your personality might be really working for them and which components are very troubling. One of the ways to do this is to ask a lot of questions both of yourself and of them, certainly by investigating their past and your own. If you can get some idea of how they were raised, and, more importantly, how their previous relationships went, you will have a very good indication of how your relationship with them might go. And if ultimately you find out that you going to have to do a pretty significant amount of changing for the relationship to work out, chances are pretty good you should walk away and walk away quick because the reality is once we at a certain age change is hard.
The marriage phase is the one we all understand:
sign a piece of paper and move in together.
The marriage phase, in many ways, is the most troubling relationship phase of all, because what happens you make a break with the past is you become confused between the past and the present. Your idea of family once you’re married goes from those people back there to this person that I am with. Marriage is the time psychologically when the gloves come off and you find you can play out things with your spouse that you never really played out when you were just starting or living together, etc. Marriage is the time when you really see the other person in the relationship – who they are both consciously and unconsciously.
There is no set time limit for a relationship to run its course. There’s no:
The attraction phase should be ten minutes and idealizationism, a couple of weeks.
You’ve got to use your head and give it time. You have to make sure that you’ve been through each step, because sometimes idealization can last a long time. My co-author had a couple that met while one was living in Syracuse and one was living in New York City. They managed to marry without ever moving in together, and as he says, they’re still idealizing each other, and that’s terrific. For most of us, you have to understand that unless you have that moment where you really question the relationship, unless you’ve had that moment where you negotiate with your partner for boundaries, you’re really not ready to make anything permanent.
Main Differences Issues in Couples
Men and women are TOTALLY different, says
Dr. Gary Smalley in his book “If Only He Knew: What No Woman Can Resist”. The differences (emotional, mental, and physical) are so extreme that without a concentrated effort to understand them, it is nearly impossible to have a happy marriage. A famous psychiatrist once said, “After thirty years of studying women, I ask myself, ‘What is it that they really want?’” If this was his conclusion, just imagine how little we know about our wives.
You may already be aware of some of the differences. Many, however, will come as a complete surprise. Did you know, for instance, that virtually every cell in a man’s body has a chromosome makeup entirely different from those in a woman’s body?
How about this next one? Dr. James Dobson says there is strong evidence indicating the “seat” of the emotions in a man’s brain is wired differently than in a woman’s. By virtue of these two differences, men and women are miles apart emotionally and physically. Let’s examine some of the differences between men and women.
Mental/Emotional Differences:
Women tend to be more personal than men. Women have a deeper interest in people and feelings —building relationships —while men tend to be more preoccupied with practicalities that can be understood through logical deduction. Men tend to be more challenge-and-conquer oriented—competing for dominance —hence, their strong interest in sports such as football and boxing.
Why would a woman be less interested in a boxing match? Because close, loving relationships are usually not developed in the ring! Also, watch what happens during many family vacations. He is challenged by the goal of driving 400 miles a day, while she wants to stop now and then to drink coffee and relax and relate. He thinks that’s a waste of time because it would interfere with his goal.
Men tend to be less desirous and knowledgeable in building intimate relationships, both with God and with others. For example, women are usually the ones who buy marriage books. They are usually the ones who develop the initial interest in knowing God and attending church. When a man realizes his wife is more naturally motivated to nurture relationships, he can relax and accept these tendencies and choose to develop a better marriage and better relationships with his children.
Dr. Cecil Osborne, in his book The Art of Understanding Your Mate, said women become an intimate part of the people they know and the things that surround them; they enter into a kind of “oneness” with their environment. Though a man relates to people and situations, he usually doesn’t allow his identity to become entwined with them. He somehow remains apart. That’s why a woman, viewing her house as an extension of herself, can be hurt when it’s criticized by others.
Women tend to find their identity in close relationships, while men gain their identity through vocations.
Because of a woman’s emotional identity with people and places around her, she needs more time to adjust to change that may affect her relationships. A man can logically deduce the benefits of a change and get “psyched-up” for it in a matter of minutes. Not so with a woman. Since she focuses on immediate consequences of a relocating, for example, she needs time to overcome the initial adjustment before warming up to the advantages of it.
Men tend to express their hostility through physical violence, while women tend to be more verbally expressive.
Physical Differences:
Dr. Paul Popenoe, founder of the American Institute of Family Relations in Los Angeles, dedicated his more productive years to the research of biological differences between the sexes.
Some of his findings are listed below:
Sexual Differences:
These basic differences, which usually surface soon after the wedding, are the source of many conflicts in marriage. From the start, the woman has a greater intuitive awareness of how to develop a loving relationship. Because of her sensitivity, she is initially more considerate of his feelings and enthusiastic about developing a meaningful, multi-level relationship; that is, she knows how to build something more than a sexual marathon; she wants to be a lover, a best friend, a fan, a homemaker, and an appreciated partner.
The man, on the other hand, does not generally have her instinctive awareness of what the relationship should be. He doesn’t know how to encourage and love his wife or treat her in a way that meets her deepest needs.
Since he doesn’t have an understanding of these vital areas through intuition, he must rely solely upon the knowledge and skills he has acquired prior to marriage. Unfortunately, our educational system does not require a training program for a husband-to-be. His only education may be the example he observed in his home. For many of us, that example might have been insufficient. We enter marriage knowing everything about sex and very little about genuine, unselfish love.
I am not saying men are more selfish than women. I’m simply saying that at the outset of a marriage a man is not as equipped to express unselfish love or as desirous of nurturing marriage into a loving and lasting relationship as a woman is.
Coaching Schedule for Couples: Life Partners
1) Target Audience
The Coaching Schedule for Couples has been developed to be worked with:
a). New Couples: i.e., those couples that will start a new life together, sharing their life, patrimony, responsibilities and a present and a future.
b). Formed Couples: those couples that have started their common life prior the program, have shared their life, share a past and pretend to share a future.