What Relationship Stage Are You In?

There are a number of stages in all relationships. Do you know where you are right now?

By David Wygant — Written on Oct 17, 2013

Here's a question for you today…

When do you most often say, "I love you?"

For a lot of men, it's usually in the middle of intercourse.

It was a joke I had with friends when I was in my 20s. You'd tell a girl you love her during sex, then after you finished you thought to yourself, "What the fuck did I just say?"

So when is it the right time to say I love you?

It's funny, I was getting my haircut the other day, and the guy was telling me he'd been hanging out with a girl for about a year. He says, "You know, we started saying I love you." I looked at him and said, "You're in the 'I love you' stage of a relationship. You probably say it five, six, seven times a day." He says, "You're right. How do you know?" "I've seen it thousands of times before." I said.

You see, the I love you stage of a relationship is when you say it all the time to a woman. That lasts normally about four to five months. Then all of a sudden, you stop saying it almost completely. There might be the occasional good day, or you might say it when you leave for work in the morning, but you never really go back to the full on "I love you stage."

Relationships all have different stages, and this is just one of them.

Normally, during the "I love you stage" during the first six months of a relationship, you also go through the "rampant humping" stage. You just can't get enough of each other. You literally have sex non-stop. Now comes the waning of the "I love you stage," where you're still deeply in love, but the sex starts to slow down.

Next comes the "reality stage." That's right at months twelve to eighteen where you run into the most crucial phase of any relationship. This is when you start to find out who the other person really is. Now you start to notice the flaws in your partner.

Now you find you're only having sex a couple of times a week. You're only saying I love you a few times a week, and you're starting to get bugged out by bad habits your lover has. This is when the relationship begins!

I always say, a relationship doesn't truly start until year two. That's when you start to discover whether that person can satisfy your needs, wants, and desires. Once the "rampant humping," and "I love you stage" is over, you can see the relationship for what it really is. You start to know the real person you're dating.

I love seeing couples in the "I love you stage" because it's cute and innocent. But you need to embrace every stage of the relationship and work through every one of them. All the stages are different, and they're all as important as each other.

You need to realize every relationship has stages, and it's only when you've made it into the second year that you can truly say whether the relationship is going to work. I'd love to hear your experiences on this.