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When you and your partner have been together for say, two to three years, some of the magic
has worn off, and your partner begins to annoy you. Things you hadn't noticed before begin to
grate on your nerves. You love them, but you wonder where the romance went. You are aware
that you're not always in har-mony with your partner and it disturbs you. You can only change
yourself in a relationship. Put your focus where you have control: on yourself, your behaviour,
and your communication patterns. Changing your partner must never be the goal.

The costs of making a match with someone who shares traits with a parent, start coming into
play. You may not have had some of your basic needs met in childhood, so you try to fix it now.
However, your partner is not a willing team-mate. In fact, you chose him or her, in part, because
he or she recreated the same difficulties you had in childhood.

Stage 4: Unconditional Acceptance

A healthy relationship moves beyond power struggles and control issues to unconditional love
and acceptance. However, during the transition, partners must still confront and resolve issues,
taking risks to make positive change wherever possible and accepting those conditions that
cannot be changed. Differences are approached positively, not as things to brush over, hide or
suppress.

Whenever two people get together, eventually some of the belief systems and personal habits
of one will annoy the other, regardless of how much love there is. In healthy relationships
couples learn how to resolve conflict.

At this stage, each person becomes highly aware of various traits in the other. Some you like
and others you dislike, but you learn to accept the ones that cannot be changed. With good
communication, you can almost always navigate your way to a more fulfilling relationship.

Stage 5: Attachment

The attachment, or commitment, stage is love for the duration. You've passed love of romance
and are entering into real love. This stage of love has to be strong enough to withstand many
problems and distractions. This is the stage of transition. Similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, if
you have not successfully moved through the first four stages of love, inevitably, you will find
yourself re-visiting them before you can happily proceed to the final stage of mature love.

Stage 6: Mature Love

This is the ultimate reward of committed love relationships. In mature love, the relationship
continues to flourish from the processes and corrections put in place to meet the demands of
the power struggle. The partners learn how to balance the requirements of closeness and
separateness, how to create a sexual life that satisfies them both, how to solve problems
effectively together, and how to talk and listen to each other so their differing points of view are
understood and honoured. Understanding and acceptance become the most valuable assets.
They use these new ways of relating to learn more about each other, especially where they
have each been hurt and need help to heal. Finally, both partners know how to give love to
each other, and how to receive the love that has been offered.

You can see how crucial the power struggle is in stimulating couples to do the work that needs
to be done to reach the stage of mature love. But romance and attraction also lend some of
their important elements to this stage of a relationship.