June 6, 2024,
Family, Life, Love, Relationship, Relationship Tips 
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Stage 4 is for recoupling. The relationship between you is now reaching a critical stage as you learn about holding and nurturing your own individuality while holding and nurturing the individuality of your partner.
The challenge in Stage 4 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.
Though there may still be many slip-ups and a sense of going back and forth, this is a time when a different kind of “we-ness” comes into being. It includes a deep respect for the existence of the two distinct “me’s” as you renegotiate who you can now be as a couple.
If you are able to successfully steer your way through the recoupling stage, you will feel much more supported than stifled in your relationship. You will hear fewer statements of “I need…” from your partner and more “I would like…” or “What I want from you is…” statements. This is because by now, you understand that you are not in the relationship because of your unmet needs, but that you are there because you truly want to be, and for no other reason.
When your partner hears a “no” from you in response to a request, it will now more than likely be heard as an expression of who you are, rather than a harsh rejection of who he or she is. Similarly, a “no” from your partner just lets you know that he or she is thinking for him- or herself right now and can’t comply with your request.
Neither of you hears a “no” from the other as a lack of care or desire to fulfill all your requests, but rather a well-considered response to a request that, for whatever reason, the other person cannot fulfill. And you can both accept and respect a “no” as the right each of you has not to do everything your partner asks of you.
Consequently, during this stage, fewer difficult discussions turn into long-lasting battles because of the increased tolerance of and respect for your differences.
Challenges for Couples in Stage 4
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.
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.
To the wonder of you,
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