The Four Stages of Importance in a Relationship
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- —
A ranking model that separates what is necessary in a relationship from what is important. Stage one is admiration — seeing someone impressive from near or far. Necessary, but not important. Stage two is connection and chemistry, which is slightly more important because it is mutual, but still only necessary. Stage three is commitment: both people actually saying yes, not 'I'd like to see you Friday at 11.' Stage four is compatibility — whether you want the same kind of life and whether your values and definitions line up. The mechanism is that people misprice the early stages: treating stage two as the be-all and end-all is how someone spends a lifetime accepting poor treatment because the time together feels amazing. Love does not conquer all; two people saying yes does not make a long-term relationship.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Stage 1 — Admiration
Recognise admiration for what it is: seeing someone up close or from afar and finding them impressive and attractive. It is the entry point and it is necessary, but on the scale of importance it ranks lowest.
Watch out Admiration is what dating apps and first dates optimise for, which is why it gets overweighted.
- 2
Stage 2 — Connection and chemistry
Check whether the feeling is mutual: do you feel connected to each other and is there chemistry? This ranks higher than admiration precisely because it stops being one-directional. It is still necessary rather than important.
Watch out Many people have ruined their lives over chemistry with someone who was a terrible partner.
- 3
Stage 3 — Commitment
Establish whether both of you are actually saying yes to each other. Wanting to see you on Friday at 11 is not the same as saying yes to a relationship. Without commitment you cannot progress to the stage that determines whether it lasts.
Pro tip Name the distinction out loud — availability is not commitment.
Watch out People routinely treat a situation as totally important while still only at stage two.
- 4
Stage 4 — Compatibility
Test whether you both want to live the same kind of life and whether your values line up. Compatibility failures show up as one wanting to stay home watching movies while the other travels constantly, or as two different definitions of loyalty — one meaning no sex with others, the other meaning no emotional cheating in texts.
Pro tip Two people can both say they value kindness and hold entirely different standards for what kindness means — test the standard, not the label.
Watch out Without compatibility, admiration, connection and commitment can all be present and both people still end up miserable.
- 5
Price each stage correctly
Audit where you currently are and how much weight you are giving it. You lose your value in dating when you stop paying attention to the appropriate level of importance at different stages — martyring yourself in service of a stage-two connection is the classic failure.
In the wild
The guest role-plays the person defending a stage-two relationship: you don't understand, when we're together it's so good, they're so there for me, the sex is amazing, the chemistry is amazing, we have such amazing conversations. The friend asks what the problem is. The answer: I haven't heard from them in two weeks. His diagnosis is that the person has miscalculated the value of stage two. Because they treat connection as the whole thing, their value becomes free rather than earned, perceived challenge disappears, respect follows, and they lose real value as a result.
→ A named diagnosis — mispriced stage two — replacing the vague sense that something is wrong.
He describes a couple with admiration, connection and commitment all in place who are still miserable. The cause is a compatibility gap in definitions: one person's idea of loyalty is that you don't have sex with anyone else; the other's is that you don't emotionally cheat in the texts you send. Both have said yes to each other in good faith, and both hold their own definition as obvious. The mismatch is not a betrayal, it is an untested assumption — which is exactly why compatibility has to be examined rather than presumed.
→ Value definitions surfaced explicitly instead of discovered through resentment.
Common mistakes
Treating chemistry as the finish line
Taking stage two as the be-all and end-all — the thing you martyr yourself for — makes you the person who accepts years of poor treatment because every time you meet it's amazing. The connection being real does not make it sufficient.
Mistaking availability for commitment
'I'd like to see you this Friday at 11:00' is not a yes to a relationship. People stall at stage three for years while behaving as though the relationship carries total importance, which prevents compatibility from ever being tested.
Assuming love conquers all
Two people saying yes to each other doesn't make for a long-term relationship. Without compatibility, the lack will surface in ways that make both people miserable regardless of how genuine the admiration, chemistry and commitment are.
From the transcript
“in any relationship, you have to go through four for in terms of importance, you have to go through four stages”
“Two people saying yes to each other doesn't doesn't make for a long-term relationship.”
“compatibility is do we both want to live the same kind of life and and do our values line up?”
From the episode
7 Lessons I'm Taking Into 2023 - Season 4 Wrapped
Season 4 Wrapped