How Long Should The Honeymoon Phase Last?

New relationships almost always start off great. You get along with the other person, and very little seems to go wrong. You are excited about them and the two of you as a couple. Thoughts about what the future might bring are like fairytales and it seems like a dream. As time goes by, and this phase fades the reality of the challenges of building a lasting relationship set in. Often the transition from honeymoon phase into your first trial marks the end of the relationship. This is why 3 to 12 month relationships are so common. People stay together while it’s easy, and once faced with the small challenges of life with another person they just quit. How to get through that is another subject. I want to talk about how long the honeymoon phase should last.
I hear from people all the time that are in very new relationships and they are already having major issues. I have a friend that met a new girl and about 3 weeks later he was mad at her for a disagreement that they had about something very small. My challenged him to consider what that meant. If they were fighting now, when the relationship was new, then what did the next year bring? Relationships have a certain path of evolution that they all go through to some extent. The honeymoon is nearly perfect. There are little to no disagreements and certainly no fights. It’s all butterflies and rainbows. Then you go through the reality phase where you start acting like yourself. You stop putting your best foot forward all the time and your individual quirks and pet peeves come out. Your new boyfriend kept his shoes on out of formality before. Now, with the increased comfort level, he has started to take his shoes off and put his stinky socks on your nice clean coffee table. You hate that. To have a lasting relationship, you must work through this phase into the long term growth phase.
When the honeymoon phase is too short, the relationship is doomed to fail. If two people are so different that they start to irritate each other quickly after they meet, the odds of coming to a sustainable balance are slim. If you can’t get along when you are both on your best behavior, what’s going to happen when you let your hair down??? It’s tempting to stay in a relationship thinking that you haven’t given it a fair chance. You don’t have to be worried about what’s fair when it comes to love. The expression is “all is fair in love and war.” Do what is right for you to find the right relationship for you regardless of what’s fair. Likely, You are wasting valuable time with the wrong person and keeping yourself from the right one.
So what’s a reasonable time? (The longer the better obviously.) My personal feeling is about 9-12 months. Yes, a year is a reasonable expectation for things to be great nearly all the time. It’s a very small percentage of time if you are looking at it as a percentage of time in a lifelong love. If you are 3 months into a new relationship, and you are fighting with your man about time with his friends, paying attention to you, affection level, anything related to sex, communication, yours or his ex, kids, etc; I say cut your losses. (Disagreements that come up but are quickly and calmly discussed and resolved don’t count. I’m talking about yelling, ignoring each other, talking crap or cursing, crying, storming out, etc, etc, etc.) You deserve more than that and should accept nothing less.

Then read my “A Woman’s Worth Blog”

http://cavemenformodernwomen.blogspot.com/2008/12/whats-womans-worth.html