Stages of Love: The Romantic Stages and the Universal Stages

The stages of love fascinate us. We seek for this magical elixir of Love and want to know how to get “there” on the fastest and most direct route. Then, once we find it, we want to remain in “it” forever. We can, of course, remain in love and it’s the “how” we must understand. Yet, before we can understand the how of love, before we can recognize the different stages of love, we must first understand what kind of Love we’re talking about as well as how the stages of love differ between the various types of love.

So first, what is love? For our purposes here, we’ll define love as a complete unconditional embrace, a total acceptance of what is. Sometimes that’s embrace and acceptance of a person, sometimes it’s embracing ourselves, sometimes it’s embracing and accepting a life situation or even life itself – as it is.

Yes, love, and our relationship to it, impacts every area of life. On the Path of Soul Love we call that Love “360 degrees”. So while there is love of ourselves, love of a beloved, familial love, friendship love, romantic love, love our lives, love of our planet, and love of our neighbors – our focus here will be on two of the most commonly explored forms of love: Universal Love and Romantic Love. 

We’ll break down our exploration of the stages of love for both universal and romantic love. As we do that we’ll see that the two types of love, as with all forms of love, are ultimately one and the same. Yet, our exploration of the different stages of each type of love will help us recognize why we so often misunderstand relationships and their love dynamics, and why our search for sustained love through romance can feel so elusive for so many. 

Finally, we’ll see that if we put our attention on true Universal love we’ll never want for or seek for love again. It will be here with us always. In that, our romance will blossom (even if we’re single). Miracles will start to happen. We’ll be healthier and happier. 

So let’s start our exploration by considering the beginning stages of love romantically. 

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The beginning stages of love – Romantic 

Nearly every adult human being seeks romantic love at one point or another. For many, their search for deeper and deeper romantic love continues day in and day out throughout their lives. The reason we so tenaciously seek romantic relationships is because these kinds of relationships – and the experiences of closeness, intimacy, and pleasure they create – bring us as near to the verge of true Universal love and unity that we can get to in human form. 

So, how does romantic love start? What are the beginning stages of love in dating and romantic connections?

It all starts with a “noticing”. We see someone across a room, or we read a particularly resonant dating profile, and our heart flutters. Romantic love forms, lives, breathes, and expands in our hearts. So if you feel your heart jump at the sight or words of a seemingly random stranger you might just be at the beginning of the journey of romantic love. 

In that noticing, the next early stage of romantic love is attraction. This attraction rooted in love has a drawing effect. It pulls you toward the person, or the person towards you. Love innately has this magnetic quality at its core. In many cases, you’re feeling the initial sparks of love before you “know” anything about each other. You may not have even spoken to each other yet, but the flame of love may have been ignited.

As the attraction draws you together – and, just to note, this attraction of love differs greatly from pure sexual attraction. Sexual attraction alone does not have the capacity to sustain a relationship over time. So we’ll stay focused on the love attraction that when coupled with a sexual attraction can create a long term sustainable partnership or marriage. 

If and when love attraction draws you together and you get to know one another, you’ll find a developing feeling of fondness for the other. This fondness, as a stage of love, arrives accompanied by a warmth that fills the heart. It can feel like a melting open that allows love to begin to flow between you. In this warmth and fondness stage, everything tends to look and feel good in your new connection.

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The “wondering” stage of romantic love 

After fondness grows in you, next, for deep love to truly ignite, we must “call the question”. We must begin to wonder, to consider, “can I fully love this person?” We make ourselves willing to see all of the less than ideal qualities of the one we’re beginning to love. 

In order for true love to actually fully develop we must see and accept the parts of the other that we find more difficult to embrace, more difficult to love. When we can authentically see the good, the bad, and the ugly in another, and we still feel our heart open wide, this is good news for the progression of love. When we can say, “Yes I fully accept XYZ about and don’t need to change anything about this part of you,” we are on our way to a deeper love. To move through and beyond the “wondering” stage we want to be able to say, “I can love you fully, and relate with you consciously, despite these difficult qualities.” That’s the path to sustainable love. 

And, not everyone is a fit. We will meet some that we become quite fond of, and yet, when we look at the whole picture, we may see that we cannot love this person fully, exactly as they are. In that authentic acknowledgment, we can let this person go. This authentic truthtelling and letting go ironically is also love, universal love. 

Before we move on let’s summarize the beginning stages of love. They are:  

1. Noticing 
2. Attraction 
3. Fondness 
4. Wondering 

We realize we can accept someone as they are, we can move to the deeper stages of being in love.

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Stages of being in love

As we realize we’re falling in love, we cross the bridge from Wondering to Acceptance. In the Acceptance stage of love, as we described above, we have questioned, wondered, considered, and then realized that yes, we can see the aspects of our potential partner that we wish were different and we’ve come to sense that we have the capacity to love them as is. We are not loving them for who they can become, or for their potential, we’re loving them for who they are now. 

As we consider the next stage of love it’s also important to say that we will continue being invited to wonder and consider throughout our love journey. As we get to know our love interest better and better, we will hopefully continue to say yes to loving this person. In other words, as the relationship deepens, we need to continue being authentic about our inspiration and capacity to love fully. 

Moving on from, and in parallel to, the Acceptance stage of love, we begin to feel a greater sense of safety to open more deeply and reveal more and more of our true self. In this Opening stage of love, we allow ourselves to be seen in our own good, bad, and ugly. We take the risk, rooted in our own self love, to allow ourselves to be fully known. This allows the other, who we are beginning to love, the opportunity to deepen their love of us through their own Wondering and Accepting. If we hide who we are for fear of not being loved, we stifle the progression of the stages of love.  

As love continues to deepen and expand, we move into the Intimacy phase of love. In this stage we continue to reveal more and more about ourselves such that ideally we stand “naked” physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually before one another. This intimacy stage of love calls us to explore and share all of the different types of intimacy with each other. Physical or sexual loving, emotional loving, and spiritual loving all begin to merge here. 

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The deepest stages

From here, as we stand fully revealed with one another, to the best of our abilities, we move into a complete embrace of one another. We embrace each other’s personality and soul. We embrace each other like and dark, conscious and unconscious, successes and failures, perfections and imperfections, mistakes and accomplishments. At this deep stage of love, we say yes to it all.

This doesn’t mean we won’t have challenges together in our love, it simply means that we don’t reject or blame each other. We don’t try to change the other, or ourselves, to sustain our love. We keep saying yes. Or as we said in the wondering phase, we may realize that we can’t go deeper in love with this person. And, then love becomes setting each other free. Staying together or separating, when we walk the path of soul love, it is all still love, as long as we interact authentically. 

Ultimately, as we deepen and deepen together in love we move closer and closer to divine unconditional love, the final stage of love. This stage is rarely reached in human form, even by those deeply committed to love. Yet, the continued journey towards this depth and immensity of love is well worth the speed bumps, detours, and road blocks, even complete failures you might encounter along the way.

The path of love will always reveal our barriers to love so that we may dissolve and dismantle them one by one, leaving us in a never ending ocean of love. 

And, this is where the stages of romantic love and universal love meet. 

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Universal stages 

When we contrast Universal love and romantic love we begin to realize that romantic love is simply a narrowed view of Universal love. Our romantic love focuses solely on another person, or in the case of a polyamorous relationship, a few select people. Universal love calls us to love all, everything, in a way that lies at the heart of so many spiritual traditions. Some will say that Universal unconditional love is enlightenment itself. 

So, in Universal love we walk through stages of love similar to the romantic stages, but we walk these stages in relation to all people and all circumstances in our lives. We walk the path of love with Life itself. For many, this is the deepest spiritual journey one could choose to undertake.   

With Universal love, we see the beginning stages of romantic love merge into a single stage that we might call Relating or Relationship. In the Relating stage of Universal Love we simply notice what our relationship is to something. We notice if we are drawn toward or repelled by something or someone in our lives. This noticing directly differs from the noticing in the romantic stages because the romantic love starts with a spark of attraction or even love already happening. On the path of Universal love, we may actually start with resistance or rejection. 

If we desire or intend to live a life of unconditional love, then we must practice noticing the places where we resist or reject people or circumstances. We see this rejection and resistance as the absence of love. Therefore by inference it invites us onto the most powerful journey of love. 

This Relating stage of Universal love, noticing and interacting with our resistance, leads us to questioning or Fear stage of Universal love. It’s been said that we always rest in either fear or love. Considering that perspective, it means that our fears stand in the way of our love. So on the path to Universal love, we must meet, greet, get to know, and eventually release our fears so that we may open our hearts to the deeper unconditional divine love. 

As we meet and transcend our fears we move into the stage of Trust. In trust, we can surrender our need to control life and others. This in turn allows us to open to the wisdom of Love that always wants to guide us, always wants to bring us blessings, even when they don’t look as we might expect. This stage of Opening and Surrendering requires us to give up the resistances we noticed in the first universal stage of love. That explicit dropping of resistance automatically moves us to the Acceptance and Embracing stage of Universal Love. It develops in the exactly the same ways that we explored o in the romantic love stages. 

Finally, of course, our journey through the Universal stages of love culminates, we might even say climaxes, in Unconditional Divine Love. That absolute Love serves to unite us – within, between, and beyond – in a combined experience of Love, Joy, Peace, Passion, Freedom, and Beauty – the most exquisite qualities of love we all seek.

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We’ve only begun to scratch the surface here on this immense topic of love and its stages. Learning to love fully is a lifelong process. And romantic relationship offer us a powerful laboratory and playground for discovery. Walking the stages of love, romantically, universally, or otherwise won’t always be easy. It’s guaranteed to be a rocky and difficult path at times and yet the rewards abound. The rewards are beyond description.

True Love realized brings a flow to our lives that makes miracles seem normal. 

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Since 2006, highly conscious men and women, with a commitment to extraordinary relationships, have chosen Ecstatic Intimacy to find and cultivate Soul Partnerships from their bedrooms to their boardrooms. Ecstatic Intimacy believes in coveted relationships, for all. 

You too, are invited…