I have to be honest with you all; Joshua and I are not your usually engaged couple. We are engaged and cohabitating which makes for an interesting life right now. Not only are we adjusting to being engaged and all the pressures that come along with that but we are also adjusting to living together for the first time. I know it is not advisable for couples to cohabitate before marriage but we are truly committed and on our way to marriage, so why not get ahead start on the living adjustments? So far it has been a wild ride and I have loved every moment of it. Not only are we not your typical engaged couple we are certainly also not your most conventional couple either. We tend to do things by the beat of our own drum which makes our lives very exciting and fun. Nevertheless, sometimes the excitement and fun can get the best of me and I find myself in these up and down power struggles with him. Lately I've been feeling down on myself, as if I have failed him and myself and am not being the best future wife to him. But then I remember that no one is perfect and every day we are learning and growing. Courtney told me the other day that every movement is an opportunity to turn your life around. I love that saying. It's my new motto. In my quest to continually improve myself and my relationship I stumbled across the 5 stages of a relationship.
The five stages are:
1. Attraction
2. Power Struggle
3. Cooperation
4. Synergy
5. Completion
Joshua and I are most definitely in the 2nd stage right about now. As you can see from the title of my blog we have had our share of them. One has to wonder why we keep having them and why we can’t seem to avoid them. Trust me, if there was some way to stop them I would in a heartbeat and sometimes I wish there was some magical pill I could take to make them stop. The first stage of our relationship, attraction, was certainly fun and exciting, why must we go through the second stage? Is it truly necessary? I wish there was a way we could skip over it, but alas, it is truly unavoidable, almost predictable and ongoing. It’s like the gross medicine one must take in order to get better. So as couples we have power struggles to get better and their true purpose then is to build trust because without trust we cannot grow and mature as a couple.
I have come to the realization that as Joshua and I continue in our commitment to one another and as we journey through the different stages of life, marriage, parenthood, etc; we will have recurring power struggles. This is the case because each time we increase the level of commitment in our relationship more trust is required and when more trust is required we will temporarily ( hopefully) revisit our trusted friend of the “power struggle.” It is the act of the power struggle- this process that helps us build trust in one another. Through this all what becomes are touch stone however, is the reason why we have come together and that is our LOVE.
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Up in the Clouds
A Blog dedicated to the ups and downs of being a not so typicaly engaged couple.
Diana and Joshua
Up in the Clouds
A Journey Through A Year In The Life of My Engagement
There are days that I wondered if there was something wrong with me because I found myself fighting with my fiancé over the simplest to deepest of issues almost on a daily basis. When I inquired about how my other girlfriends had weathered their engagement I got some consolation in realizing that the fighting is a normal process and that over time it will subside if both partners are willing to evolve and change as time goes by. This is a blog dedicated to the ups and downs of being engaged and how it can all seem so serious when you are in the thick of it but once removed, even for just a minute, from the fighting it all seems so funny especially when you focus on what is truly important to the two of you; and that is that you have found one another and have decided to make one of the most amazing commitments to each other, and that is a miracle.
