Episode 81: How Couples Grow Together Into "First Love" With Tom Habib [The Amiel Show] -

This episode is for people in relatively healthy relationships who are wondering: what else is possible for us?

Couples go through stages of growth. Over the past several decades, a new stage has broadly emerged that was barely visible before. Its features include:

Balance between giving and receiving
Successful patterns for managing tasks, sharing responsibilities, and practicing reciprocity
A shared narrative about the relationship
Reflection and introspection
Reasonable capacity to regulate nervous systems before and during conflict

Sounds pretty good, huh?

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It is. If your relationship looks like this, it means you’ve grown more as a couple than most couples alive today and 99.99% of couples in human history.

Millions of people are buying books and attending workshops to achieve what you experience.

This week’s guest, Tom Habib, calls this the “Relational Stage.”

It’s quite healthy.

However, once you’ve spent substantial time here, you realize that some important stuff is missing:

Your partner doesn’t fully appreciate what you do or who you are. When you’re honest with yourself, you realize that the inverse is true.
You miss the intensity and frequency of romance in your relationship’s past, and this distracts you from the love and person in front of you
On some level, you fear you have chosen the wrong partner. Otherwise, why aren’t things as great as they used to be?

This is an amazing opportunity: to grow, as a couple, into the next stage of relationship, which Dr. Habib calls “First Love.” It is the first time you are both present with each other to actually love the other person in their entirety. Rather than being distracted by the mirage of an ideal partner, you feel gratitude for the person you are with today.

In our conversation, Dr. Habib briefly walks through the five stages in his integral Couples Line of Development. Then we focus like a laser beam on the transition from the Relational stage to First Love.

Are you up for the challenge?

Highlights

5:00 When Tom viewed marriage as a “bourgeois conspiracy by the Church”
11:00 The five stages of the couples line
13:00 Pre-trans fallacy
26:30 What if you treated your partner like a great neighbor?
39:00 A practice to do at home with your partner
51:00 Most couples in therapy are trying to get to the Relational stage
53:00 “Pixie dust” helps you wake up and grow up
1:05:30 How your kids are affected
1:08:30 Thanksgiving with your parents when you’re at First Love

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