Content
Psychologist Oksana Shikhova told about the stages of relationships
18.09.2023 18:22
Family psychologists call the issue of relationships between a man and a woman the main subject of advisory assistance on issues of family relationships.
Psychologist Oksana Shikhova told about the stages of relationships.
Pair relationships are the basic subsystem that determines the well-being or disintegration of a family. Only a third of marriages can be called mature and successful.
In a mature marriage, there is room for “double vision,” that is, the ability to maintain romantic, idealized ideas about a partner and love and realistic ideas when faced with the difficulties of life.
Creating harmonious relationships in marriage, maintaining and developing love is like a continuing creative process from the initial symbiosis in creating a couple to a mature relationship through the transition from falling in love to mature love.
Maturity in relationships arises as a result of the accumulation of shared experience, that is, “growing into a couple” and the development of awareness and self-identification of each of the partners, that is, “growing into oneself”.
Three stages of marriage relationship
- Formation of a married couple.
- Formation of a family.
- Mature relationship.
Formation of a married couple
It includes the premarital period, that is, the period before the couple decides to marry, and the premarital period, the period before the conclusion of the marriage union.
Psychologists have long studied how people choose a marriage partner. Today, there are many such theories.
Sigmund Freud, the founder of classical psychoanalysis, says that the decisive factor is the transfer of attraction to the parent of the opposite sex in childhood to socially approved objects.
Here the pattern becomes clear why men choose women who look like their mothers, and women choose men who look like their fathers. According to statistics, there are the most such couples.
There is a theory by Robert Winch about complementary needs. Its main principle is the attraction of opposites and mutual compensation of character flaws.
One way or another, the formation and emergence of relationships begins with sympathy and falling in love. The biochemical components of falling in love - pheromones, endorphins, oxytocin - largely determine such a bright state of general uplift, cheerfulness and attraction to each other.
Further, falling in love during a favorable relationship is transformed into a deeper feeling of love with the decision to marry.
During the premarital period, the task of accumulating experience of shared impressions and experiences is primarily solved and the emotional potential of a future marriage is created.
During this time, the couple often unconsciously designs family life: through the exchange of information about biography, values, life plans, ideas about family and role expectations.
Formation of a family
The next period of marriage is associated with the development of the family system and overcoming developmental crises: the birth and upbringing of children (kindergarten, school, adolescence, entering adulthood), changing jobs, moving or emigrating, betrayal and problems of mutual attraction or misunderstandings in a couple.
The success of overcoming family development crises is connected with how the couple goes through the end-to-end MARRIAGE STAGES.
This process is similar to partner psychological work, where each stage has its own development tasks.
SYMBIOSIS STAGE involves the merging of the lives of two lovers. The main goal of symbiosis is the individuation of the couple.
Often, in the initial stage of symbiosis, partners get stuck.
In symbiosis, the illusion of complete understanding and similarity of thoughts and feelings is created. It is difficult to part with a symbiotic attachment. As a rule, this is especially difficult for those who did not have enough parental warmth and acceptance in childhood.
One of the most severe consequences of such a symbiotic relationship is the blurring of personal boundaries and, as a result, dysfunction of the couple.
Overcoming symbiosis is a difficult task for many, but necessary for the development of mature relationships.
At the DIFFERENTIATION STAGE, partners begin to see each other as real people, and disappointment occurs in connection with some qualities or actions of the partner. Personal interests and personal social desires become important.
There is a need to create a community with the simultaneous presence of individual autonomy.
During the differentiation of the couple, the boundaries of each partner begin to take shape. The emotional distance increases. Favorable passage of differentiation requires awareness.
In cases of unstable self-esteem and large childhood deficits, partners are often incapable of open communication and constructive problem solving.
The duration of the differentiation period varies in different pairs.
In a negative outcome, differentiation can lead to divorce. Often, divorce is the best option for further development, because only a mature partnership can become a guarantee of competent parenting and healthy relationships in a couple.
On STAGES OF TRAINING partners learn the ability to determine the motives of actions during the development of partners outside the family, learn mutual trust and establish a balance between I and WE.
At this stage, the main task is to learn to take and give. Often, it is at this stage that partners consciously decide to turn to a family psychologist.
The final stage is INTERDEPENDENCE AND MUTUAL RESPONSIBILITY. Here the determining parameter of maturity will be how the couple takes care of their personal development and the development of the relationship.
Sometimes divorce can be the next stage in a relationship. Sometimes, to save a relationship, you need to get divorced.
Mature marriage relationships include:
- Love as a complex experience that includes tenderness, erotic desire, identification with another, empathy for the partner's sexual identity, and a mature form of idealization with commitment to the partner and the relationship.
In mature love, partners see the relationship as an opportunity for growth. Each partner wants to become a better person and for the other to become better, while maintaining the integrity of the personality.
- Healthy dependence as a condition for autonomy and self-confidence. The more secure our attachment, the more separate we can be. According to J. Bowlby's attachment theory, there is no such thing as complete independence from others or excessive dependence.
- Empathy to create a safe space and express disagreements, clarify conflict situations.
- Personal-social balance, where a mature personality is able to integrate both sadness about the partner's distance and pride in him and his social successes. At this point, responsibility for the relationship and mutual obligations become a support and give a friendly shade to the relationship.
The security of the partnership, loyalty and a growing sense of maturity in the relationship and love are formed.
- A sense of completion. Gestalt psychologists who studied perception said that we strive for completeness of images. When this happens, we experience a sense of completion and satisfaction, and when it does not, we feel discomfort and dissatisfaction.
If the phenomenon of incompleteness exists in a couple, then interpersonal cycles are constantly interrupted, and conflicts or discrepancies arise between members. If there are no obstacles, then the family functions effectively.
Carl Whitaker describes mature marriage relationships as a stable “psychotherapeutic alliance” in which there is the possibility of psychological regression, a temporary change of roles, when you can be stupid and aggressive, weak and defenseless.
In this case, tolerance towards each other, the ability to accept differences, psychological comfort and a high interest in the social and personal development of the partner and the couple are important.
