June 11, 2015,
Family, Relationship 
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The challenges for you couples in Stage 4 include expanding your ability to move easily toward and away from each other as the situation requires. You may even want to spend more time together as any lingering threat of being trapped or smothered by the other has now been resolved.
This stage also opens the way for a more adventurous sexual relationship and a willingness to explore wider frontiers with your partner as well as a wish to satisfy requests, even when it may be inconvenient to do so, or when there may be nothing coming back in return.
The real challenge in Stage 4 then is to listen to—and hear—your partner’s perspective without judgment while maintaining your own.
The emotional closeness and sexual intimacy between you may wane at times, but there is now something much greater that binds you. It is real intimacy, based on honesty and trust. It goes far beyond sex, and it binds you together now in a very special way that a period of absence between you cannot and does not weaken.
You think more productively about your differences and disagreements instead of automatically responding aggressively or defensively because you feel that your character is being attacked. Your new attitude may even be accompanied by a renewed closeness and sexual interest in your partner and in this part of your relationship—definitely something worth working toward.
Another Stage 4 challenge is to truly accept each other just as you are.
This may include not just accepting each other’s differences but truly loving them, and a willingness to applaud and celebrate the differences that make each of you unique.
This type of acceptance opens the way for getting even closer to each other, for feeling safe enough to show vulnerability, and for an even deeper connection through intimate and emotional nourishment without any fear of losing oneself.
I will be looking forward to your letters and I will be thankful to receive each frank line shared by you. Which were the Challenges for Couples in Stage 4 for your partner and you?
To the wonder of you,
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