Hi, This is Wayne Brown from Life Back On Track. 

Welcome back to the podcast. In this one, I'm going to be talking about something that a lot of people experience, but a lot of people don't realise that there's actually a journey on. That is for relationships. For a lot of people, we go out, we meet someone, we like them, we fall in love with them, we have a relationship, and it either works or it doesn't work. 
The problem is, a lot of people don't realise there's an actual journey that we go through a transition, a series of five stages and these are common. Everyone goes through them at different stages. Some people get stuck, and in this broadcast we want to run through the five stages, just so you're aware of what's ahead in a relationship. 

So you might be in a relationship. You might be single and looking for a relationship, so you will notice various stages that are familiar to you, and others you wouldn't have heard of, so let's get into it, Okay? 

The first stage is one that most people are familiar with, and it's called the Honeymoon period, and when we first meet someone, if we saw them in all their glory, with all their faults, their challenges, their things that annoy us, we probably wouldn't hook up with them. So nature does a bit of a sneaky trick on us, it gets us to block out all of those so-called negatives. 

So what we do is, we only see all the good stuff in these people, so we tend to be attracted to them a lot easier. Now, this is actually a trick that nature does to get us to procreate, otherwise, we wouldn't breed and therefore we would die out pretty quickly. So the honeymoon period is where we love spending time with them. We'll talk for hours about all sorts of things, we will spend every waking minute with them, we message them regularly and we almost can't get enough of them. 

We get a real dopamine hit from them, a real endorphin rush. So we feel really good when we're around them and we spend as much of our time with them as we can. Now, the honeymoon period where we have on our rose coloured glasses, where we have our blinkers up, can last anywhere from two months to two years, and in that period it's wonderful. So we tend to really enjoy this. 

The problem is, when this honeymoon period ends, we move into the next stage, and this is what I call the therapeutic power struggle. Now the reason this happens is once the rose coloured glasses come off, or the blinkers come off, when we see them for what they are. We have a couple of different thoughts that go through her head. We want them to be how they were when we first met them, where it was all fun and exciting and nice and enjoyable. And the problem is that they're still being their exact same self. They haven't changed. It's just our perception of them. 

The way we see them, how much we're letting through. So they react, of course. And of course, they see us in our true light and they're wondering why we can't be like we were when we first met them. So we have this struggle, first of all with seeing their truth. And the other thing is, we're now trying to work out where we fit in the relationship their pushing our buttons. They're triggering all sorts of actions, reactions, memories that are getting dredged up. 

We start to have the old arguments. Now, for most people, these arguments are not pleasant. We don't tend to do them in a very respectful way. We don't tend to be very mature about it. In fact, most people are pretty crap at having conflict in a relationship that's healthy. Now, a lot of people in this power struggle, this therapeutic power struggle, this stage can last indefinitely, so people either do a number of different things, they either tough it out and stick with it, and nothing changes. Or they figure they need some help. So they go get some help, they might do couples therapy or couples counseling or something like that, or they might do a course or whatever. 

They work at it, you know, because they both committed to the relationship or they split and they go back and start again because they think there's something wrong with the relationship, and that's not the case. The therapeutic power struggle is one of the wonderful parts of a relationship, if you know how to use it properly. The whole point of their pushing our buttons and triggering things within us is they are opportunities for us to grow if you understand how it works. 

So when they're pushing our buttons rather than reacting, we should be embracing the opportunity to learn more about ourselves, become more complete, more whole, a bit of version of ourselves. If we do, then we become a better version. They become a better version, and as a couple we grow. So it's a really cool part if you understand what's going on.

Now for most people, they tend to give up. They tend to go. "You know what? Something is obviously wrong here. We're gonna just end it and we'll try again." The problem is, all you do is attract someone who's exactly like the other person because you need the lessons that they bring. You need their button pushing, and if you manage to get through this power struggle, you get to a point of stability. 

So the stability stage, Now the stability stage, is where things sort of calm down. Your conflict gets under control. Your starting to figure out your position within the relationship. What your roles out, what's expected of you, what you bring to it. You start to understand how you can fit together as a team. You start to develop a little bit of an attitude of working together, which is always a good thing in a relationship. And if you get to that stage, you'll be with that for a little while and then you'll realise that you know you're actually starting to act like a proper couple. And once you're at this stage, you can move to the fourth stage, and that's the commitment stage. 

This is where you actually get married. So a lot of people they'll meet someone and they'll be in the honeymoon period and they'll go "Wow, I've met someone fantastic. I'm gonna marry them". And then the power struggle kicks in and you wonder why it all turns to poo. So the thing is, you have to get through the power struggle. We have to have a period of stability. Once you have a period of stability, then you can actually commit and get married. And once you're married, your then a proper couple. You're working effectively as a team. You're drawing on each other's strengths. You're helping each other out. You're giving each other support and encouragement. You're keeping each other accountable, and then you move into the final stage, which is the co creation stage. 

This stage is basically we go and create a life together, and you have to be really careful because you can rely too much on each other and you become insular and you cut off the rest of the world and that's not healthy. So you've got to find a balance between being as a partnership, a couple and also two individuals that are operating within the world as a whole. 

You may also go back to one of the earlier stages. He could have you Conflict stage comes back, and that's all part of the evolution. And as you become better at dealing with things, you can move through the power struggle a lot quicker. I know that with my previous marriages, they weren't healthy, and I've actually been married twice prior to this current marriage, and the first one was a fair struggle, second one was a phenomenal struggle. It was very toxic, was very unhealthy for both of us. It didn't achieve a lot during the actual relationship. I stuck it out for some time, and at the end of it I finally got the lessons, realised. 

Now I'm with my current wife and if we got back to the power struggle, if that pops up, it'll that only lasts a few minutes nowadays because I understand it. She's getting to understand it. So therefore, when our conflict comes up, our struggles come up, they're a lot healthier and they actually allow us to grow and develop closeness as a couple, and that's the aim, is that person who is pushing your buttons and really frustrating you and annoying you is actually the person that will help you become the best version of you. 

So they're the five stages of a relationship. Everyone goes through it at different stages, and no one escapes any of it. There's lots of different stages out there. I looked and looked and looked, and this one I found, I added in a bit for the second stage. The lady that developed these five stages, she calls the second one just the power struggle. I call it the therapeutic power struggle, because it's the one where you'll tend to go and do your counseling or your therapy or your work on it together and it is basically thrashing out a lot of your crap from your past so that you can clear stuff out and make yourself whole and complete without anyone else doing it cause that's your responsibility. 

So, you got these five stages? If you've got any questions about this, or you want to go further and or maybe you want to learn how to get through the power struggle, Feel free to send an email to admin@life-on-track.com and we'll send you some information, and help you get through the power struggle a lot easier than you may have done in the past. 

All right, I hope you've enjoyed this. Look after yourself, and here's to a good life.

If you have any questions, you can send an email to admin@life-on-track.com or if you prefer, you can send it snail mail to: PO Box 40, Cannington WA 6987, Australia 

You can listen to the Life Back On Track podcast on your favourite platform by visiting our podcast website. Click HERE to check it out.

You can also listen to my radio show “All About Relationships” which has its own podcast on your favourite platform by clicking HERE Thanks for listening.