THERE are five essential stages of love every couple must go through to ultimately experience a satisfying, productive and fun relationship. The first and second stages pass quickly, the third can seem to last an eternity - hell, not heaven - and the fourth and fifth stages come as the fruit of perseverance through stage three.
The five stages of love are what I call:
1. Romance - this stage feels incredible but it doesn't last long, although the irony is those couples who climb through conflict and ascend to stage five reclaim a more mature romance than any new couple could experience.
2. Landing - this is what my wife Sarah calls it. She refused to get engaged to be married until we actually landed; no longer airborne in the fantasy land of romance.
3. Disillusionment - believe it or not, when we reached this stage in married life, I used to think my wife was somehow broken... like, 'what on earth did I get myself into?' Only when we ascended out of disillusionment did she concede she often felt the very same way
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