Relationship phases do not exist. A crisis between two people always has a specific source
Does it matter to you in which phase of the relationship couples come to see you? Is it important for diagnostic reasons?
In my professional practice, I try to avoid looking at relationships through the prism of phases – although in fact in my office I often hear that “after all, in this phase of a relationship, a crisis is obvious”.
What are you guided by?
For me, the most important thing is the duration and context of the relationship: how the people met, at what stage of life it happened, how they perceived each other then and what caused the crisis that arose. Pigeonholing, dividing into phases and drawing conclusions on this basis, in my opinion, does not work in therapy. Not only in couples therapy, but also in working with patients. Moving away from “phasing” gives each relationship a chance to write their story more spontaneously, which gives much more room for the therapist to work.
So we describe instead of immediately naming what is happening. And when we put it in a pigeonhole, don’t we feel safer...?
Only theoretically. In fact, we are waiting for crises that are stereotypically related to a given “phase” of the relationship. For example, parents of babies who come to me and say: “We are in a crisis, in this phase of the relationship it is probably the norm” – because they read somewhere that the arrival of a child in the world means that the parents grow apart. So it is obvious that all young parents are going through a crisis in their relationship then, they have no sex, etc. Such thinking is a self-fulfilling prophecy for many couples. They wait and prepare for the moment when things start to go wrong. Meanwhile, after the interview, it appears that they have neither stopped being physically and mentally attracted to each other, nor avoid intercourse, nor are they hostile to each other. There is fatigue and chaos, but there is no crisis. For such couples, it is enough to have a little psychoeducation, to name their negative emotions, and to allow each other to get angry and frustrated from time to time. In such situations, I also go back to the time before the appearance of offspring. I ask if – and possibly about what – they argued before the birth of the child. Did they talk a lot with each other, how do they evaluate communication then and now? The length of the relationship and its history are also very important. What strengthens the relationship are certainly shared values. But in the case of couples who have children, we also talk about the context of this decision. Whether – and possibly for how long – they tried to have children, or whether it was a joint decision. There are many important issues here. Pigeonholing works for people of different genders and ages, women around the menopause often say that they are in such a “phase” that sex is not for them any more... One of my patients during a sexology interview, tired with the topic, finally told me: “Agata, please, enough with the sex already...”, so I asked her why she had come to the sex therapist if she did not want to talk about her sexuality. After a few sessions, we managed to get this sex out of the pigeonhole: “It does not suit a grandma any more”. Sometimes the goal of therapy is not to persuade you to have sex, but to understand why sex is not there, or why it is unsatisfactory or painful.
Another pigeonhole: “... when the child turns 4 – we know that there is a great chance that the man will leave because the toddler has become independent”.
There are many of them at different stages of a relationship. When children move out – the “empty nest syndrome” immediately comes to mind – and parents await the by-the-book sense of sadness. Whereas that’s when you can start spending time together.
So what? Should we forget about the “Psychology of Love” by Bogdan Wojciszke with his stages of a relationship: falling in love, romantic beginning, complete love, compassionate love, empty love and dissolution? Like with the “midlife crisis,” the “closing door syndrome” and the like?
Professor Wojciszke has a huge contribution to the way we work on relations, he shows certain models – his division also helps to conduct comparative scientific research. However, breaking a relationship up into predictable “phases” has one drawback: it can blur what is actually going on in the relationship, what is the actual source of the problem or crisis. It’s easy to shift responsibility onto a “phase”. Meanwhile, a crisis in a relationship is a much deeper phenomenon. It is associated with the individual characteristics of the people in the relationship that need to be worked on rather than some “phases”. If we assume that in the “midlife crisis phase” every man has “lost it”, then we often stop thinking about why this man spends his and his wife’s life savings on a super Porsche. Instead, we will discuss this man’s “midlife crisis” and what it is for a man. It’s just that one man will have such a crisis and another will not. Blaming everything on a “phase in life” is a sort of an escape from the actual problem.
Do you avoid “phasing” relationships because they are also in some sense a self-fulfilling prophecy?
I just see how much importance people attach to it. A couple can pigeonhole themselves in the very first sentence, saying: “We are in this or that phase, so this and that is a problem”. And a definition appears like a lead from a glossy magazine – as if they had done a test in a magazine “What phase is your relationship in?”. And for many new erotic-partner relationships there are no colourful algorithms yet. There are plenty of combinations, arrangements and relations that can lead to a relationship and its continuation: an infinite number of possibilities.
Phases make us lazy and do not force us to look deeper. We start predictable pigeonholing.
I think so. This will to order and arrange gives us a sense of security. People who are attached to such classic models react to change with reluctance and fear.
Maybe because there is so much chaos around?
Chaos is, in my opinion, mainly because there is no understanding of one’s sexuality. There is no sexual education, no one teaches us to talk in emotions, relationships. We try to fit into phases, but the world changes and precursors of new models of living together emerge.
Why is relationship duration more important than the phase?
The relationship duration is an indicator of how well people know each other, to what extent they have real images of each other in this relationship. If people are together for a short time – they had no opportunity to confront each other in different life situations. When they have been together for 10-15 years, they already know well how they behave in the face of the challenges that the relationship brings. They know how they support each other, their emotional capital can be estimated. It is also worth looking at how same-sex couples perceive each other in the context of “phasing”. Since same-sex relationships are not as burdened with expectations – usually distance is kept in family relationships – there is less of this omnipresent good advice. Couples then have much more space to create their environment according to their own rules. There is a chance for freedom – albeit paradoxical in the face of the situation in our country. What we could undoubtedly learn from same-sex couples is communication, which is so good in large part because it is not burdened with unspoken expectations or imaginations. When building relationships, you have to arrange everything according to your needs and expectations, discuss it at the beginning – it pays off in the next stages of the relationship.
Coming back to heteronormative couples: the fact of having a child is a kind of a “phase” after all. We can’t get away from that word.
Of course we can. Let us replace it with the word “change”. Please note that the very word “phase” is “a stage of the process or development of a phenomenon at a particular moment”. This is something that passes after a while. And that’s a trap for me. We say: “Someone goes through a phase, but it will pass”. Yet sometimes we don’t want it to pass, or we want to avoid it. It is worth noting that these phases are not very friendly either. Many couples feel overwhelmed by phasing their relationships, for example by their loved ones or family. They note that it shortens their time to be here and now in this relationship.
Well, but we – conscious 35, 45, 50 plus people – know that the first phase is the high note, which lasts one and a half years, then there is a drop, he/she cheats on us..., we go to therapy, the therapy does not help... What about this is not true?
For example, we do not always start on a high note. People get to know each other via an application, arrange sex dates for two years, function as independent entities – casual style. They seem to have nothing in common except that they watch a film, have dinner and sex twice a week, and sometimes just sex. They know each other very well, because they do not pretend, they are open in conversations and sex. When they agree to make a commitment to each other, it is something other than the “high note”. It cannot be compared to any of the “phases” described. They are in a different place, they know their bodies, they know their sexual needs, they are fairly objective about perceiving flaws. The couple has great potential to create a lasting relationship, they will certainly not have to confront the unrealistic images of themselves that are characteristic of the “high note”. They will not avoid their crises, but those will appear in completely different places than in the case of those couples who tell their story as “love at first sight”. We also have polygamy or polyamory, these relationships also evolve and change, they have their stages that are worth understanding and describing. The time has definitely come to reformulate the way we think about relationships, sexuality and love. There will be fewer and fewer relationships that fit the old framework. Classic long-term relationships want a sexual revolution too. Couples with twenty or thirty years of experience begin to have ideas for being together which are alternative to being a grandmother and a grandfather.
We don’t want to live in the belief that after 25 years of being in a relationship, we will forget what an orgasm tastes like?
More and more people come to the conclusion that they do not like socio-cultural pigeonholing, so let’s just be critical of the reports of scientists who are always very eager to describe and explain everything. There is nothing to be afraid of if we do not fit into any of the described patterns. If we still have great sex after 30 years of marriage, it doesn’t necessarily mean that our partner does not cheat on us.
We have agreed that instead of saying “phase” we say “change”. What will it do for us?
Yes, the relationship becomes different than before, sometimes it is a revolution, but more often it is a process that we can have an insight into, but we are in the process, we go with all the baggage, and we do not just “go through a phase”. To know how a relationship changes, you need to have insight into yourself and your partner, see your needs and shortcomings. Stay close and not be afraid of unexpected crises, they are also part of a good relationship.
Agata Stola, therapist and sexologist from the SPLOT Institute
Author: Krystyna Romanowska
Photo: pexels.com
The text was published on wysokie obcasy.pl on 25 September 2021
