At the stage of First Love this couple can integrate or loop back into aspects of the Roles Stage in their current process without fear of losing themselves or their identity. This can be seen in assigned duties where they can temporarily work in a hierarchical configuration. This helps avoid conflict other less developed couples would experience. In their sexual relationship, where maintaining the polarity between the masculine and the feminine (Deida, 1995) is combined with aspects of power (Schnarch, 2009), the couple is able to maintain a vibrant sexual encounter. David Daeda describes how the healthy masculine can open up a woman into her full femininity. A man in a relationship at the lower Relational Stage of development for example, occasionally moves too far and too quickly away from his power learned at the Roles Stage of development. Rather than bringing forth power and including “equality is…often overvalued so that differences tend to get flattened, marginalized or drained of vitality” (Masters, 2012). In this instance we are referring to Daedas’ masculine and feminine polarity. The diminishment of male power in the relational stage I have found sometimes correlates with problems in sexual performance. It appears that in an effort to become more mutual and equal, he rejects and thus fails to integrate masculine power to the detriment of himself and his lover. Transcending without including masculine energy precludes a fully charged dyadic sexual polarity, David Deida and David Schnarch independently concluded.
I still might not know what in the heck I am talking about, but my lightbulb insight was something like "Money is Evil" at Green is just like "Gender Roles are Evil" at Green, and I do know what causes people to become so uncomfortable that they must transcend "Gender Roles are Evil." It's one thing to have an ineffective meeting with your political action group at the community center; it's another thing to have an ineffective meeting with your SO in the bedroom.
Looking at this article it definitely looks like it might correspond roughly to the stages of SD.
About the gender roles thing, so if I am understanding it rightly, it would be something like:
Blue - Rigid Gender Roles that Everyone Must Follow
Orange - Has a strong polarized gender feeling but does it in their own individual way
Green - Fitting into gender roles is preventing everyone being equal in the relationship/society, let's get rid of them
Yellow - Able to regain strong sense of one's own gender role without being threatened by other's gender expressions either inside or outside the relationship, coming to a dynamic within the relationship where each person is comfortable in themselves and yet also flexible, can understand where all the previous levels' ideas of how gender works in relationships is coming from
Right, and the boundary between Yellow and Turquoise would be what Deida refers to as Ecstatic Sexual Union. In Ecstatic Sexual Union or Transcendent Sex, sex serves the same purpose as psychedelic drugs or deep meditation towards expanding consciousness. You literally trip out during tantric sex in a way that allows you to not just consciously choose to bring the masculine or feminine energy at Yellow, but channel and become one with it. Going from "These are all in me." to more like "Wow, I am in all these."
I think it may be the case that any transition from Yellow to Turquoise must involve some core physiological functions. For instance, Vicki Robins experience with allowing herself to become dependent on only eating very locally caused her to feel the connection. Religious fasting can obviously serve the same purpose.