There are Five Stages of Love, but Many People Get Stuck at the Third

"Seems he/she wasn’t the one for me" is the phrase we often hear as an explanation from someone who’s just gone through a breakup. Perhaps we’ve even said it to ourselves. Yet many people around you thought you were the perfect couple. Maybe you thought that for a time yourself. Often, many of us are left totally confused as to why true love is gradually worn down to nothing.

We at Bright Side have finally found an answer for this strange and troubling phenomenon. Jed Diamond, a famous psychologist, has reached the conclusion after 40 years of clinical research that the majority of people do in fact find the one true love of their life. But the problem is they can’t keep it together through all five stages of love, most of the time reaching only the third. Let’s take a look at what they are.

Falling in love is the stage when you find yourself living through a cloud of happiness hormones. This is the time when you project all of your desires and hopes onto your partner. Your partner rapidly becomes the ideal person for you; they simply have no flaws of any kind. You believe he or she will always be able to fulfill your every wish, and you believe every word they say. You so believe in the power of true love right now that no skeptical voices can make you stop and think more cautiously.

At this stage, love becomes stronger, and a succession of dates is eventually replaced by moving in together. You get to know each other a lot better, and your presence begins to have an effect on all aspects of your partner’s life. This is a time of unity and joy. At some point, after many months or years, this period may witness the appearance of children, which can only strengthen the bond between you. You feel protected and desired. And you believe that you’ve definitely found the person for you — that your relationship was decided by fate.

This is the period when your hopes begin to be dashed. It’s when you start to get the impression that your feelings may one day dissipate, never to return. That your partner is becoming so totally predictable, and their behavior annoys you in so many ways. You start to feel like you want a break from them or even tell yourself that they’re not the one for you. The further thought occurs that there’s no point in torturing yourself and your partner in a relationship that’s run out of steam.

If you close your eyes and try your hardest to carry on despite your reluctance, you might get through the third stage and come to the following one. Your mind is freed from those illusions which you projected onto your partner in the earlier stages. The person standing in front of you is not the one you imagined being with, but a real person. You accept — and more importantly — understand their shortcomings. Now is the time to heal and to move on to the final stage.

Now that you realize that you’ve learned to overcome your disagreements and found a deep, strong, long-lasting connection, you’ll reach a further liberating conclusion: that the two of you have the power to change something in this world. You’re not just going along together through this life for the sake of it, but you live in a partnership for the sake of a bigger cause. It might be that you work together, write together, create something together — it could be anything. But it’s when you start to function as a whole, having transcended all the previous stages, that you can say with 100% certainty that "this is the person for me."