Before Marriage Comes Dating, Before Dating Comes the Talking Stage: Part 3
If you've made it smoothly through the earlier stages and reached the point where you're thinking, "Isn't this basically a relationship already?", first of all, congratulations.
Dating may be right around the corner, or you may already have crossed into the beginning of a relationship.
If you've been exchanging interest step by step and steadily closing the psychological distance, other kinds of feelings toward each other start to emerge.
From feeling excited and happy when you're together, you start to miss each other, and as you get closer still, you begin to want and expect things from each other.
What does it mean to start wanting things? It also means you can expect something from each other and be let down, and that a feeling of hurt starts to show up.
The appearance of this hurt is a sign that you're getting emotionally closer, but it's also exactly at this stage that this kind of hurt tends to cause the talking stage to collapse, so don't let your guard down.
Honestly, hurt feelings are a hard concept to cover in a short column. The dictionary simply defines the feeling as "a sense of disappointment or regret at something falling short of what you hoped for," but anyone who has ever dated knows it well. Knows how much that feeling of being let down can wear us down in a close relationship.
That's exactly why how you handle these hurt feelings, starting from the talking stage, can shape the relationship to come, and can even decide whether the relationship happens at all.
As I said above, once we begin to get emotionally close to someone, we start to want things from them. On top of that, we've moved past the light exploratory questions like "What movies do you like?" and "Do you drink?" into a stage where more personal stories are exchanged, so thoughts like "I wish they'd pay a bit more attention to me..." or "I wish they'd listen to me a little better..." tend to surface.
These feelings are completely natural, but I'd ask you not to unload all of your negative stories and emotional struggles on the other person at this point. Light venting about a small worry is fine, but it's not yet the stage for sharing deep difficulties. If you pour those things out at this stage, chances are high you'll end up disappointed in the other person, and in the end you'll be the one feeling hurt.
Hurt feelings are powerful enough to be the reason even established couples decide to break up, so I've rarely seen anyone handle them well during the talking stage. There's a great deal to say about how to deal with hurt feelings, but right now we're talking about getting through the talking stage successfully and moving on to a relationship, so let's leave it there for now.
Today we've covered one thing to watch out for in the final stage of the talking stage. Of course, some relationships skip this stage entirely, but in my experience, when people navigate it well, starting and keeping a relationship going tends to be easier too.
As always, the most important point is this: whatever stage you're at, you need to be someone who can consider the other person's position. Please remember this throughout the whole talking stage. Does it seem like the other person perceives the talking stage as moving more slowly than you do? Then match their pace.
When these steps go well, you'll be drawn to each other psychologically in a natural way, and physical attraction follows naturally too. How you spend this exciting phase and what kind of relationship you open the door to is up to you. Take a moment to ask yourself whether you've been steering this process well so far. If you still don't quite know how to handle the talking stage, you may not be ready yet.
