what are main stages of intimacy?

According to Robert. Sternberg's triadic theory of love (Brehm, Miller, Perlman, & Campbell, 2002, p. 19), essentially, commitment is primarily cognitive, intimacy is emotional, and passion is motivational. The major stages of intimacy, which we can describe as a more satisfactory reference template, are roughly categorized as the establishment, development, and maturity stages.

In the establishment stage, intimacy is marked first by a mutual fall in love, then by the ability to find a common focus in the external world, and finally by choice to build an ordinary life; in the development stage, on the one hand, intimacy is consolidated, and ideally the two parties become each other's mentor, parent, counselor, and friend; on the other hand, with each other's support and recognition, they have their own or shared careers.

At the same time, a significant number of couples complete the birth of their children. This is the most challenging stage of intimacy. When it comes to the maturity stage, which can also be called the ultimate stage of intimacy, the first prerequisite is to realize the complete release of the children. The two parties return to the two-person world of intimacy. As they grow older, they eventually embark on the path of old married couples, helping each other taking care of each other, and bringing the intimacy to a successful conclusion.

The main stages of an intimate relationship as mentioned above is a relatively idealized universal situation, while in the real scene, each intimate relationship is full of infinitely rich personalized characteristics, flavors, and variations, both strong commonality of the times, but also have their different twists and turns of interpretation, worthy of our continuous exploration.