Stages in Healthy Relationships

If you have ever wondered what a "Healthy Relationship" looks like, you probably are not alone. Due to our changing society, relationship roles are not as well defined as when our grandparents were beginning their families. Today, we are faced with many more variations in partnering and family constitution than ever before. We have far more families where both parents work and far more females in the workplace. We have single-parent families, same-sex couplings, married heterosexual partners living separately, unmarried live-in heterosexual partners, and (in some cases) even families in which bigamy is practiced.

All of these relationship variations have aspects that are unique and each will change as it grows and develops. If the relationship is a healthy one, each partner will progress through a series of predictable changes AND each will proceed at his/her own pace. Rarely do both partners' development progress at the same pace. Because of this, the nature of a couple's conflicts will reflect this discrepancy.

Each partner's ability to master the tasks of a stage will depend on the emotional skills that s/he brings to the relationship. When a skill is lacking or poorly developed, it will impair the individual's ability to master the current stage and move into subsequent stages.

Now, let's take a closer look at each of these stages. As you read through them, keep in mind that these stages, as presented here, describe two partners who have good emotional skills and who progress through these stages at approximately the same time. This, however, is frequently not the case. One or both partners may become stuck somewhere along the way and need assistance to move on. 

The Stages

The material that follows is adapted from the work of Evelyn Bader and Peter Pearson at the Couples Institute in Menlo Park, California. The names of the stages have been changed (and 2 of their stages consolidated) to make them a little more "user friendly."

Stage One: Attachment/Courting

The first stage in any relationship is attachment and/or courting which leads to the blissful experience of "falling in love." The task of this stage is to create a bond strong enough that the relationship will hold up under the intense conflicts of the next stage as well as subsequent stages. Interpersonal boundaries blur as prospective partners begin a process of intense bonding and merging of their lives and personalities. There is a shift away from other outside relationships and a focus on similarities (rather than differences) -- which helps to establish a sense of "we" and "us."

Stage Two: Dealing with Differences

A partner enters this stage when he/she begins to self-reflect and discover subtle differences in thought and feelings and ideas. As these differences emerge, the task for each partner becomes the establishment of a healthy style of managing conflict. Interpersonal boundaries are re-established and conflict increases as each begins the process of acknowledging and learning to handle their newly emerging differences.

If one partner remains behind in the attachment/courting stage, the differentiating partner will experience pressure from his/her mate to return to a focus on sameness (similarities) -- to stop "rocking the boat." The partner who has entered this stage will fear loosing the relationship if he/she continues to express his/herself more openly and may experience anger that this new expression of self is not supported; the other partner fears abandonment and feels betrayed because his/her partner has stopped obscuring the differences that exist between them. Continuing to express these differences should pull the lagging partner into the next stage unless that individual is at an impasse due to unresolved individual issues.

Stage Three: Identity Formation - Development of Self in the Outside World

This stage begins for a partner when his/her focus shifts away from the relationship to developing his/her identity in the outside world. This partner now asserts his/her independence is asserted by excluding the other. Requests for time spent together are experienced as engulfing; and, negotiation and compromise feel like a loss of self. A support system outside the relationship is more easily developed during this time. There may also be a renewed focus on educational and/or career goals which lead to a blossoming of the individual in the outside world as s/he learns to creatively express him/herself in it. This is accompanied by an increase in self-esteem for that partner.

Stage Four: Balance - Attaining Deeper Levels of Intimacy

There is now a return shift to a greater desire for intimacy and emotional nurturing from the relationship with a increasing balance in movement between the relationship and the outside world (including use of one's extended emotional support system). There is a continually deepening of intimacy within the relationship as partners feel increasing safety in sharing their most private thoughts, feelings, etc. Negotiating skills developed earlier continue to be used but with greater ease. Due to the developing trust that one's needs will get met, there is an increasing capacity to give to one's partner even when inconvenient to do so.

Stuck in the Attachment/Courting Stage?:

In some couples, neither partner moves beyond the first stage. When this happens, the partners will find one of two maladaptations: either the "Happy" Couple or the "Frequent Fighters" (adapted from Bader & Pearson, 1988):

The "Happy" Couples: These couples tend to be VERY anger/conflict avoidant and to function in their relationship in ways that keep any differences from emerging. If differences do emerge, they are accompanied with intense anxiety and fears of abandonment. These couples are inseparable and very dependent on each other for their identities which are developed only in relation to each other. Consequently, any threat of loosing the other triggers intense anxiety and is experienced as a devastating loss of self or as psychic disintegration.

Maintaining the relationship is the primary goal of these couples and is accomplished at the expense of individuality. There is a high level of passivity (looking to the other to make decisions/define experience) and adaptation (excessively meeting the partner's needs at the expense of one's own). Partners in this type of relationship loose more and more of their individual identity over time. There is an intense merging and blurring of interpersonal boundaries with a resulting expectation that they speak for each other. Talking to one is seen (by partners) as being as good as talking to both.

These couples are very good at obscuring their differences. They rush to problem-solving to avoid any conflict between them. They are also very good at using non-verbal communication to silence each other. These partners fear loss of the relationship if the differences surface and come to treatment because they are uncomfortable with the amount of sameness required to maintain the relationship.

"Frequent Fighters": These partners tend to be "anger-habituated" and to use conflict & aggression as a means of maintaining a sense of connectedness -- as well as a way to attain greater emotional distance.  Unlike the "Happy" couples, these partners use anger and conflict to fiercely defend their boundaries and avoid merger. In the early days of courting, these partners carry the belief that they have finally met the "one & only" person who will be able to give them the love they missed during childhood. As reality sets in, each partners' anger and rage (at having their fantasy betrayed) emerges.

Each experiences his/her own needs as taking precedence over any distress felt by their partner with little awareness of the impact their actions have on the other. Complicating this is the unrealistic expectation (that their partner be the "all-giving" parent) is a contradictory (and frequently unconscious) belief that receiving nurturance is not deserved and so it is rejected and pushed away.

These couples do not ask directly for what they need. Instead, partners are expected to know by reading "between the lines" and failures at mind-reading may be responded to with anger and rage.

Even the most benign confrontation is often perceived as a "global attack" and quickly escalates out-of-control as each over-reacts to the other. Often this pattern of using conflict results in violence. Due to these individual's lack of a cohesive sense of self -- even constructive criticism may be perceived as manipulative or rejected because it was "too little, too late." Each sees him/herself as the victim of the other and stays focused on "what you are doing to me".

These couples have very poor negotiation and problem-solving abilities; issues that arise within the relationship are never adequately resolved. In addition, each may harbor resentments and frequently draw in old unfinished business, derailing discussion of the original topic. This is further complicated by their tendency to 1) project disowned parts of self onto their partners and to treat their partners with the same shame-based judgment that they avoid by disowning this aspect of his/herself and 2) draw assumptions about (mind-read) what their partner is thinking and react to that belief as though it were true and without ever checking out its validity.

Moving through the Stages:

In order for a couple to develop a health mature relationship, each partner must master the tasks of each stage. Not doing so will compromise that partner's ability to manage the tasks of later stages. In this sense, it is not uncommon to see a partner who initially appears to be in the Identity Formation stage only to discover that this individual skipped the Dealing with Differences stage and has not mastered the tasks of that stage. This individual's ability to manage the tasks of the Identity Formation stage will also be compromised by not having mastered dealing with differences.

It is also normal for partners to progress through the stages a different rates. Typically, one partner will move into the next stage first and their conflicts will shift to reflect fears generated by that change. The nature of these conflicts will vary depending on each partner's  stage. 

Reference:

Bader, E. & Pearson, P. T. (1988). In quest of the mythical mate: a developmental approach to diagnosis and treatment in couples therapy. New York: Brunner-Mazel. 244-250.