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Posted by: Kim_Hamilton on 10/08/2007 04:25 PM
Updated by: thepinetree on 01/03/2008 09:10 AM
Expires: 01/01/2012 12:00 AM
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The Stages Of Relationships~By Karen Wildwood
It always amazes me the different perceptions that people bring to a relationship. These come from a variety of sources including past relationships, but can most often only be traced to someone’s own vague idea of why they think a certain way, which is a really odd thing, because how in the world are you supposed to figure that out? It’s hard enough figuring out why you think the way you do, let alone trying to get into someone else’s head....
Take the stages of a relationship. Or, in other words, the interpretation or misinterpretation of what is actually going on a relationship.
Everyone has a different take on what is going on in a relationship and what stage of seriousness, read this as commitment, the two of you may be in. For example, some people think that if you’re hanging out and having a good time, then you’re in a relationship. Others think that the relationship only really begins when you go out on an actual date and the hanging out or ‘getting to know you’ phase has no bearing whatsoever on a committed relationship or is even a remote step to something more.
It doesn’t matter if you are a single single or a resingle these types of misunderstandings or misimpressions can have a strange affect on the relationship that you’re in because unless you actually sit down and talk about it, you don’t really know where you are in a relationship, let alone how deeply you think you are into a committed relationship as opposed to what’s going on in the uncharted territory otherwise known as the mind of the other person.
Many people think there are stages or steps in a relationship that lead to the ultimate stage of lifelong partnering also known as marriage. The problem with thinking in terms of those stages is that at sometime you have to sit down and have the ‘commitment talk’ with the person you are going out with which can get you in hot water when you find out that their perception of what’s going on is infinitely different than what you thought was going on.
Recently, it was explained to me during one of ‘those’ conversations – that, if you are like me, you want to avoid at all costs - that there are actually only five stages of a relationship. These consist of dating, seeing each other, boyfriend & girlfriend, engaged and married.
These five stages actually baffled me, especially the boyfriend/girlfriend one which, let’s face it, when you are resingle and old just sounds weird. I never called my boyfriend my boyfriend when I was 24 and I’m certainly not going to begin using that verbiage at a much more mature but unmentionable age. Because, after all a lady never tells you her age and you’re not supposed to ask either.
Besides the word choice it was news to me that I was on the third step toward the alter, with technically only one more to go before taking the plunging leap into another lifelong commitment, when I thought I was well away from that particular place from the first time around. And very thankful about it too, I might add.
Now I’m not so addled in the brain to not realize that, even though I really just wanted to go out for the random dinner with a nice guy, I was heading towards a more committed relationship, but I thought that I wasn’t quite that close to the marital graveyard. Why you might ask was I most ill informed about what was going on? Well, it’s because of the actuality that I have seven steps to that place not five which means that it takes much longer and a lot more old fashioned courting to get there.
My seven steps include hanging out, random dating, serious dating, seeing each other, significant other, engaged and married. The odd thing is that even on my own relationship scale we were past the third step, being halfway in between the serious dating and seeing each other stages, but certainly nowhere close to the engaged step.
You can see how this misunderstanding can cause problems with one of you being closer to the alter than the other and no way to bring the steps closer together except with patience and communication which, come to think of it, isn’t a bad idea in a relationship after all.
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