This week I started my series on the stages of relationship with the very first stage: the stage of hope, possibility, and potential. Today, I want to continue by talking about the second stage all relationships go through: acceptance.
This is the stage where you’ve seen things in your partner that you’ve never seen before, and now must learn to accept that which you can’t change and find balance in your life.
It’s during the acceptance stage where the percentages change. In stage one, you thought that 99% of your partner was great and 1% might be bad, but now it’s probably about 50-50. That’s the phase when he’s blowing his nose in the shower, she’s clipping her nails and leaving them in the couch when you’re trying to sit down, relax, and watch ESPN! It’s when the two of you sneak out of bed in the morning so the other one doesn’t smell your morning breath, and their smell is a little less pleasant than the perfume and cologne they used to wear.
It’s when we forget to see the whole picture, and get frustrated with the little day-to-day habits that annoy us. It’s when he’s propping his feet up while you watch TV and she stays in her pajamas all day that you begin to wake up and realize there was more not perfect about this person than you noticed in the previous stage—you’re starting to see everything your mama warned you about in the first place!
The problem is, now you’re committed—you find out these flaws and weaknesses of the significant other in your life, and you have to begin moving into a stage where you find yourself trying to balance things. This is where you’re either going to make it or not, and this is where you’ll find yourselves either getting closer to each other or closer to hating each other’s guts!
I submit this to you: what happens next will always boil down to perspective and how you balance your life. This is where we’ll pick up next week as we work toward a conclusion on the three stages of relationships.
Relationship Builder Action Step: Take a step back, breathe, and see him/her as God sees him/her. Try this exercise: write him/her a love letter. Don’t mention a single flaw…instead, share all the things God sees. All the potential, and all that makes him/her unique, special, and the things you fell in love with.
I am so not teh mushy type but I will write this letter, as to whether or not he sees it. Well lets just say I’m not promising anything. Lol
My Husband and I have been married for four years. We have had our share of ups and downs. We come from two very different back grounds. I thank God for helping me to get beyond what I saw as faults. I learned some things about his past hurts from an early age and how he had never really dealt with them. The problem we were having came from us not dealing with our past hurts and rejections in our lives before we got married. God helped us to heal from those hurts so we could know how to communicate what we needed from each other. It is so true about seeing people through God’s eyes. This is how I ask God daily to help me to see my Husband. It really works. It causes you to look beyond the faults and see the need and makes you want to do your part in giving them your best .
The one thing I worry about at this stage is losing the interest of my loved one. Where does the love, the romance, the pursuit go? Can it be sustained? And is tethering it in from the beginning really going to ensure that it “will last”. That rationale only makes sense if we think that “love runs out”. Does it ever run out? Should we ever hold back?