Do you feel like your partner is a different person from the person you met and fell in love with? Did she use to sit and watch ESPN with you for hours and now she can’t even stand for you to watch it. Did he use to go shopping with you at the mall and now he refuses to go into one store with you.

Many couples experience this change in their partner, but it is likely not because your partner has become a different person or that you are not in love anymore. It is because most relationships have different stages that couples go through. When you first meet and start a relationship with someone you are likely in the honeymoon stage. In this stage most couples can’t keep their hands off each other, they see little or no flaws in their partner, and feel their love is perfect. Most people during this stage of a relationship hide the parts of themselves they feel might be rejected by their partner. So for example if she knows that you love sports she may fear being rejected if she expresses her detest towards sports.

After the honeymoon stage couples start to show more parts of themselves even the parts their partners do not like. As the façade start to come down the couple is left with two real and flawed humans in an imperfect relationship that will take work to maintain. So the bottom line here is: Your partner likely did not try to tick you into a relationship with them it is just a common stage of most relationships. If you are out of the honeymoon stage in your relationship and you can accept your partner for the flawed person they are you a likely on your way to building a health relationship.

Jennifer Wilmoth, LAMFT
jwilmoth@ GROWcounseling.com