Daphne Rose Kingma, a therapist and author of A Lifetime of Love, believes that intimate relationships are "chalices of love." Although we often wish that our interpersonal connections could be stable, steady, or settled, they are always changing. Kingma believes that the soul shifts "our relationship focus from form to content, from rigidity to flexibility, from containment to expansiveness, from our emotional needs to real love." Kingma presents the seven stages of intimate relationship as "a spiritual invitation to expand our hearts."

While many people today are opting to stay with traditional marriages, others are pioneering alternative ways of living and loving which include triangle relationships, marriage clones, same-sex marriages, going solo, emotional spouses, cross-generational mating, sacred circles of friends, and intentional communities. She welcomes all of these options as vehicles for raising our consciousness and for achieving a greater capacity for love.