Hey there, welcome to this edition of the Shalene Show. Today we're going to talk about relationships and specifically the stages of relationships.

Romantic relationships. And I'm gonna share with you some of the not so pretty

stages and what that looked like for us and how we got through it and where we are today.

I hope this is helpful for you even if you're not married, even if you're not in a relationship at some point you may be.

Not saying you need to be. Let's get that perfectly clear. But if in fact you do find yourself in a romantic relationship or you are in one, I think this episode is going to be super helpful. So let's get to it.

To be clear, there are a ton of marriage books and relationship books that like to break down the stages of relationships into this kind of linear series of stages or a linear path that most relationships follow.

Now I read many of these books and I've lived through not only my relationship but countless friends and family members who have been married and some have end up divorced, some have ended up separated and then got back together.

And the one thing I know for sure is that all relationships are unique because all people are unique. Now you're putting two very unique people together.

That means that the stages of relationships are not all going to be the same and they certainly aren't all going to happen in the same order. It's kind of like grief.

You know, there are certainly considered several stages of grief, but the way in which you go through them is going to be different for each person.

And just as I will share today in terms of the relationship stages, you're going to go through one of these stages and then you're going to go back to a previous stage and then you might skip ahead to a later stage.

Like it's so unique, but I think understanding the stages and understanding what to expect will help you weather the storm or maybe it will help you figure out like I need to get out.

This is going somewhere and it ain't nowhere good. So I'm going to share with you what experts call the stage and I'm going to share with you in some instances how I would rephrase or rename the stage.

And the first stage is the passion or obsession stage. Pretty obvious. This is when we first fall in love with somebody.

Actually, not even in love because we haven't spent enough time with them to even be in love. We don't know enough about them. We haven't been through tough times. We haven't seen the dark side.

We haven't experienced a people and challenge, but in that passion stage, they look perfect to us.

Like we romanticize their flaws. In fact, we don't really see them as flaws. We see these little things that our brain is very quick to dismiss them, wipe them away. And we might have a subconscious conversation with ourselves like that's not a big deal.

That'll work itself out. I'm not worried about that. Or maybe your brain just pushes it down and you don't think about the long term consequences or what that could turn into.

You're infatuated with them. You love the way they smell the way they look. You love the way they talk. They act. They dress everything. You are very sexually attracted to them. Usually in this stage, you just can't get enough of them. You get butterflies when you're around them. That is the passion stage.

I also think it's in that passion stage where you start daydreaming. You start fantasizing like what the relationship could be like. And this might be marriage for you or it might just be being in a committed relationship with them. Maybe it means imagining what your kids would look like.

I don't know, but you start to fantasize about what life could be like on a more permanent or exclusive or long term basis.

The next stage, a lot of experts call the realization stage. I like to call the stage the, are we doing this stage? And again, we're talking about two people. So how you experience that stage can be different depending upon your feelings, your experiences, your background, your past, etc.

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