The third stage of love has a double-barreled name: Acceptance and Commitment. It comes to members of a couple slowly, one at a time. The realization and acceptance of one's imperfections, propensities, and limitations seems to help couples turn the corner from the Anger and Resentment phase to this stage. It is not an overnight epiphany that leads people to lean a bit closer together, but something might happen that helps a recalcitrant marriage partner to realize that their spouse has excellent qualities that are either hard to come by elsewhere, or that far outweigh the negative features that have been in such sharp focus in previous months or years.
So, he picks his teeth at the table. By now, he knows that you don't like it and will probably comment on it. But he also knows that you're on his side and are not trying to be mean spirited when you tell him that it turns your stomach to see him do that.
She realizes that when her husband launches into a list of instructions and solutions in response to her expression of a feeling, that this is his way to express protectiveness and care for her.
During this phase, couples seem to settle into a more predictable way of relating. Some couples become more companionate within this higher level of commitment. They don't automatically think of revenge or divorce when they are annoyed at their partner. They accept that relationships and people are not perfect, but that by focusing on the good qualities and negotiating more difficult elements of behavior, there is a good and comfortable fit. For some, it is a fantastic fit and the relief of coming to this conclusion is almost visible. Since they are not putting forth so much energy to contend with one another any more, they can relax and enjoy each other for qualities that may have been previously obscured because of their criticisms of one another.
There is another type of commitment and acceptance that is less satisfying but probably more common. Individuals who find it difficult to be emotionally engaged at a deep level with another person will often use bickering and irritability to maintain a degree of emotional distance from their partner so they do not feel threatened or vulnerable. Such individuals are often married to a partner who can't tolerate high degrees of emotional intimacy either, even though they complain about their partner's beligerant or distant behavior. Both spouses have predictable ways of avoiding physical and/or emotional intimacy with one another: abuse, rescuing, affairs, apathy, and polyamory, to name a few common patterns. Other couples' ways of relating may be quite cerebral, foregoing physical affection or tenderness. The begging and pleading of a partner who wants more demonstrates a reciprocal response to the withholding partner. Even this distancer-persuer dynamic, as unsatisfying as it is, can be accepted as the way life will be, and can mark the behavior of couples over the course of their marriage.
Couples come to marriage with explicit and implicit expectations. These are tested and strengthened over the first few years of life together. By the Acceptance and Commitment stage, the emotional marital contract has been worked out or accepted as "as good as it gets."
Explicit expectations may be agreements about who will work, who will raise children if there are any, and who is going to be responsible for what household responsibilities. These may cause disagreement, but are generally open to discussion one way or the other. It is the implicit expectations that contribute to the uproar in the Anger and Resentment stage, and that finally are somehow managed satisfactorily by the time the couple reaches the Acceptance and Commitment stage.
Implicit expectations involve things such as what Paul Rosenblatt of the University of Minnesota calls shadow realities. These are issues that if openly addressed, could undermine the functionality of the relationship. An example is the unspoken expectation that one partner will behave in a dependent and helpless way so as not to show up the other partner. Or that one partner will be a caretaker for the other and will not place any demand for his or her needs to be met by the care receiver. There is considerable positioning and one-upsmanship that occurs as couples go through the process of working out these implicit marital contracts without discussing them overtly. Those couples, in which one partner has succumbed to the pressure of the other spouse to conform to some expectation or behavioral pattern, have arrived at the Acceptance and Commitment stage.
Still others recognize that their marriage might not be a case of immortal lovers, but it is a good-enough marriage that meets the majority of their needs. They will often settle into the predictability of a devitalized marriage without the interest or willingness to improve it. Such marriages can be quite stable for years.
nb: marital stability does not equal marital satisfaction.
So the love relationship continues to move on through time. Research reveals that about every seven years or so, the relationship is renegotiated on some level or in some area, in order to accommodate the growth and experience of each partner. Growing pains would be a good way to describe these little upheavals. For some, personal growth and variation can be like a mudslide, catapaulting the relationship into the sea.But for those whose marriages are satisfying, and who are able to be flexible and accommodating, the marriage sails on to newer levels of understanding and shared intimacy.
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