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Stage 1: Attraction
Our choice of mates is guided by unconscious factors that are the same for us all. Our unconscious leads us to a person who offers us the greatest opportunity
to heal our childhood wounds. As the old Chinese saying goes :

“The greatest opportunity brings with it the biggest danger and challenge”.

The person we are most attracted to will very likely share some significant traits or characteristics with the parent who gave us the most trouble in childhood.
If we follow the attraction through to a committed relationship, we will have the same conflict with our mate that we had with our parent. Obviously, we
don't intentionally set ourselves up to have a repeat performance of our childhood unhappiness.

Unconsciously, though, we do choose the patterns that are most familiar to us from our youth. We are now adults and have greater personal strength and a
better chance of standing up for our-selves than we had before. The learning and growing we must do to live in harmony with our partner is exactly the
learning and growing that's required for repairing the damage of the past. That's what we mean when we say that the purpose of love relationships is to
heal childhood wounds.

Stage 2: Romantic Love

Love relationships usually begin with a strong physical and emotional attraction that produces a somewhat altered state of consciousness. Your brain is
saturated with chemicals called endorphins, creating the sensations of intense pleasure that accompany infatuation. The exhilaration and sense of well-being
are similar to feelings produced by vigorous exercise or eating something extremely pleasurable, like chocolate.

In this highly charged emotional state, you are likely to project images, expectations and ideals of the perfect mate onto your partner. These projections often
have little to do with who your partner really is, but it's hard to tell because both of you are on your best behaviour. Overwhelmed with romance and passion,
you are highly responsive to each other.

If all goes well, attraction turns into romance. Everything about them is intensified, while everything about school, family, job, exercise, and so on seems
dull in comparison. Romantic love is a psychological and spiritual experience, but to be in love is to understand that we are also products of our biology.
Much has been written in both fiction and non fiction about falling in love, and about the chemistry of falling in love. The ebb and flow of romantic
love should not be misconstrued as a signal that you are in the wrong relationship. Romantic love is not mature love Eye gazing, obsessing, daydreaming,
and physical desire will change over time into something else. "What it ultimately changes into is up to the two of you, but as an immediate next step what
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it changes into is the power struggle.