This second stage begins when one partner pulls back to routine
ways. The withdrawal may be neutral, not angry; but the person who is
left feels abandoned and betrayed. When she (it is almost always the
woman who stays connected longer) objects, he may feel controlled and
withdraw further; she may then be both frightened and furious,
insistently asking that the person she had gotten to know reemerge. In
response, he may build his shell thicker, and so the sequence
grows.
This nightmarish cycle makes caricatures of the two partners. The
great potential of the Expansive Stage, when men and women shared "male"
and "female" attributes, dissolves into cruel stereotypes. Each partner
feels trapped and betrayed not only by the other but also by himself or
herself. More than anything, people wish to remain the person they were
in the Expansive Stage, the person they had striven to be through years
of dreaming and preparing. Now they feel immensely let down by their own
failures. They blame both self and other, and a mood of accusation
permeates the relationship.
Just as the Expansive Stage brings us closer to our ego ideal, so
the Contraction Stage confronts us with our greatest fears and our
poorest self-image. During this stage, distinctive, repetitive struggles
form and consolidate. They seem to define the whole relationship. The
struggles are so distressing that the couple may draw someone, like a
child or parent, or something, like alcohol or excessive work, into the
relationship to buffer the conflict. These patterns become integral parts
of the couple's moments together-and recur throughout the life of the
couple. They become as familiar and distinctive as the implicit promises
of expansion. Couples grow very accustomed to the predictable experiences
of contraction.
Even though it is a difficult stage, contraction is essential.
Unless partners can bring their wounds and uncertainties into the
relationship, they will feel neither real nor whole, and the vigilance
required to protect themselves will make them guarded and superficial. In
contraction, critical themes from the partners' past enter the couple's
experience, further deepening their character. Contraction, then, is not
a "negative" stage; it is as necessary as the others. We confront
ourselves honestly in contraction's harsh light, telling the truth about
our limitations and those of our partner. The insights must be folded
into the relationship. Couples who endure contraction will look back on
it as a time when they were tested and triumphed.
RESOLUTION
To survive, couples must climb out of the Stage of Contraction
without entirely excluding its messages. They must at least partially
reconcile the first two stages. This is the task of the third stage, the
Stage of Resolution.
This is a stage of compromise, negotiation, accommodation, and
integration. The partners struggle to be reasonable and maintain
perspective, to affirm complexity and to handle difficult situations with
competence and maturity. In contrast to the intense, narrow focus on one
another that characterized the first two stages, the couple now opens up
more to family and community. Having a child, for example, may serve as a
bridge of common concern to repair long-strained relationships with
parents; it may become a rite of passage into a more durable
adulthood.
The early desire for fusion in the Expansive Stage gives way to
close, bitter struggles in the Stage of Contraction. Paradoxically, the
blaming and rejection may eventually lead to a sense of perspective. For
example, a statement uttered in close, angry combat, like "I'm not at all
like you," may usher in a realization of genuine difference: "We really
are different." With this realization comes alienation, then at least
tolerance and possibly acceptance, followed by a flood of relief.
For a moment the struggle seems over. What had seemed mean in one's
partner now seems tolerable. Relief follows, and renewed optimism often
comes in its wake. At this point the couple frequently moves forward into
"another Expansive Stage; but just as quickly, they can be thrown back
into contraction, with each partner feeling disappointed, as if the whole
experience had been an illusion.
This moment of increased perspective represents a foray into
resolution. The accumulation of these moments of realization, from
contraction into resolution, put the couple past a threshold that
consolidates their growth. The forays overwhelm the experience of
contraction-which comes to seem like a crabby, limited view. The couple
moves forward.
Couples try to hold onto their new perspective and the optimism
that follows, but they invariably fail. The progress of expansion,
contraction, and resolution is a spiral through time: stages cascade one
after the other. The character of the couple, as distinguished from the
character of the individual partners, is shaped more by the overall
cycles than by any single stage. Cycles can be precipitated by a wide
number of crises and events.
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