There are five stages of a relationship. For decades, researchers have tried to identify how relationships work, and what makes them work, to help people determine their own relationship success.
The various stages of a relationship have their own characteristics, challenges and risks. By understanding the stages of a relationship, people can try to prepare for, and navigate, these with their partner.
Note: It’s important to remember that there’s no such thing as a ‘normal’ relationship or a ‘normal couple.’ However, the stages of relationships share identifiable experiences and challenges that couples could face.
In a relationship, each person has different traits, beliefs, values, behaviours and thought patterns, and each person is responsible for those.
Stage 1: Courtship (the “honeymoon phase”)
(0-2 years)
The initial stage (courtship or the ‘honeymoon phase’) is the most memorable. During this phase you’re falling in love and the feelings you have for the other person are very strong. In this initial stage, you might tend to spend lots of time with your partner and engage in many activities together.
Because people get too caught up in the strong feelings and emotions for the other person, it’s common for couples to overlook their differences. Instead, they look at what they have in common and avoid conflict to only see the other person’s best qualities.
The courtship stage generally lasts between several months to two years. However, this stage can last up to eight years.
Interestingly, most often, relationships that have gone through this stage are successful. For instance, in a relationship where a woman becomes pregnant early, the couple tends to have a shorter courtship phase. This means that they don’t have as strong a foundation for when conflict arises, leading to a slight imbalance in later stages.
Another example of a shortened courtship stage is when a couple meets each other’s family too early and before they’ve had time to develop space.
Tip: move slowly to get the most out of this phase and market yourselves to each other. Focus on the points mentioned above. For example:
- Put more emphasis on your similarities
- Try to avoid conflict
- Spend time together, just the two of you
- Be curious about each other.
By enjoying each other’s similarities and going through this stage, fully, it becomes easier to progress to the next stage of a relationship and you’ll have learned how to communicate with each other, how to enjoy each other, and how to support each other.
Stage 2: Marriage/living together (without children)
(2-5 years)
Typically, after you’ve been together for a year or two, you’ll notice that things have fallen into a slightly different pattern. You might start to become more aware of what’s going on around you (again) rather than solely on one another. As you progress into the second phase of your relationship, you might also notice that you’re starting to spend more time with friends again, developing mutual friendships, or hanging out with other couples.
During the second stage, it’s not uncommon to experience a decrease in the strong feelings of lust and desire that you may have previously experienced with your partner. As you become more accustomed to one another you will develop greater awareness of each person’s differences and could start to notice more conflict. These feelings are normal. In fact, those initial strong feelings that you may have felt in the early stage is caused by a chemical reaction in your brain and this can’t be maintained forever.
It’s important to keep in mind that conflict is inevitable, and that love is not a feeling, but a behaviour. Truly loving someone can be seen simply as putting their needs before your own, regardless of how you feel at the time. So, this stage is the time to learn to express your differences respectfully and assertively.
Money is typically the first issue of difference. How we handle money is a learnt behaviour from our family, which means that we all have different handling styles. As a couple, you’ll need to explore what works for you.
The choice whether to have children is often a focus of this stage, leading to one of the following:
Stage 3 (a): Couple with children
(5-10 years)
The decision to have children often results in couples trying to fit partnering and parenting into the same amount of time and space. With this decision, it’s completely normal to feel tired and drained. Parenting couples tend to endure a decrease in mutual activities and an increase in care activities and task divisions.
You might also notice that your individual differences could become more evident and that you’re going through increased periods of conflict. Because this is a fatiguing phase in the relationship, there may also be a decrease in your usual sexual activity. While high romantic expectations may be an issue, it’s important to remember that love is a behaviour and feelings are short-term.
Like previous stages, your family origin may be influential in what you perceive to be an appropriate parenting style, fair division of tasks and how you deal with conflict. Because families operate differently, you might clash with your partner on certain beliefs and struggle to communicate with one another.
If you experience this kind of conflict, it’s important to remember that you’ve probably gone through two other relationship stages to get to this point, so you’ve already overcome a lot, made choices and solved problems, together.
Complaining and ‘nagging’ to your partner is not an effective way to get accomplish things. You should learn to communicate with one another in an open, honest and non-judgemental manner. This will help you understand what you need from one another.
Tip: If you find that you’re really struggling, it might be helpful to ask each other how much you learnt about each other during Stage 1. If you didn’t learn much, consciously try and engage in your learnings now. Take the time to slow down, develop curiosity and engage with each other.
Stage 3 (b): Couple without children
Not having children doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t experience the same issues with your partner as a couple with children.
You may or may not be great at communicating or problem solving with your partner. Though, it could be possible that you don’t have as much to communicate about, to work on together or to change for. Without new energy coming into a relationship, it can feel stagnant. Without children, you will need to find other ways to bring energy into your relationship.
One way to do this is by maintaining a healthy balance between your individual interests and the relationship so that you and your partner have more to talk about and learn about each other. Additionally, it’s important that you have things to do and explore, together. As a partnership you should be finding ways to challenge each other in a healthy way.
Stage 4: Stabilising phase
(10-20 years)
For couples with children, during this phase, your children become more independent and less demanding of you. Thus, you might find that you have more time to spend by yourself or with your partner and do activities that aren’t centered around the whole family. During the stablising phase, you might make time to discover new interests or individual challenges.
Some couples may feel that their partner is more of a companion than anything else. The patterns you have of relating to your partner can feel crystalised by this stage and become automatic.
When you reach this stage of a relationship, you may start to question things like:
- What have you learned and
- How have you changed?
This may allow you to explore new hobbies, interests and roles.
If you and your partner are starting to clash, lean into the experiences of the first three stages of your relationship to overcome any challenges. By now, you’ve probably already learnt how to problem solve and reach a resolution together. Remember that a relationship and its roles change over time. Flexibility and acceptance are what make it work.
This can be the quietest stage for couples (with children – at least until they become adolescents). There can be potential tensions because of emerging differences in boundaries.
Tip: Take some time to explore your changing roles, expectations and how you interact with one another. One helpful strategy is to go on a date together and talk about what is different in your relationship and how you’d like to work through it.
5. Later phase
(25+ years)
This stage involves change and adaptation (whether you’ve had children or not). Some of the biggest things you may experience include:
- Your children moving on to live their own lives
- Taking care of, or losing your parents
- Possible tension between empty nest vs freedom
- New starting point for mutual activities
- Creating new goals or plans.
The later phase could be a new start for you and your partner, a time to create new goals or plans. Many couples become more future oriented and find time to explore their individuality again.
In the even later stages of a relationship, some of the common challenges or experiences people face include:
- Coping individually and relationally with loss of work, illusions, health, friends, sex, wealth, etc
- Becoming grandparents
- Dealing with old, painful issues
- Deciding where to live and how to retire.
Remember to rely on each other for support and utilise the strategies that you know work. It’s important to try and be aware of any unhelpful, old patterns and use the problem-solving skills that you’ve developed together. Not all couples reach this stage – so remember it’s an accomplishment.
Final thoughts
While not every couple will reach every stage of a relationship and some couples will come together at different life stages, the lifespan of a relationship model acts as a roadmap based on the typical trends of a long-term relationship. Hopefully this model can assist couples working towards fulfilling a long-term and committed relationship.
Anglicare Southern Queensland provides a range of counselling and social and community services that are designed to improve the mental health and wellbeing of individuals, groups and families. Relationships play a significant role in our daily lives, including our general and emotional wellbeing. If you require more support to navigate your relationship, we provide family and relationship counselling programs. Learn more about them here.