Since the 21st century, human activities such as the rapid expansion of metropolitan area have posed a threat to the sustainable development of regional social-ecological system. The analysis of the operation mechanism of regional social-ecological system based on the perspective of dynamic evolution has attracted much attention. From two different scales of region and city, combined with the adaptation cycle theory and Pressure-State-Response (PSR) framework, this study analyzes the interactive adaptation cycle stages of 10 urban social-ecological systems in Nanjing metropolitan area and Nanjing metropolitan area in last 20 years, as well as the differential stress response mechanism of each stage system. This study decomposes the social-ecological system into social subsystem and ecological subsystem, and identifies the stage of the system through the change characteristics of social subsystem, ecological subsystem and social-ecological system adaptability. The results show that from 2000 to 2019, the whole social-ecological system of Nanjing metropolitan area has experienced three adaptation cycles, the time of adaptation cycle increases in turn, the overall adaptability of the system showed an upward trend, and the rising stage of adaptability exceeds 80% of the whole stage, which indicate that the overall development of Nanjing metropolitan area has been good in the past two decades. The interactive adaptability of social-ecological system is gradually rising in a cycle. However, during this period, the adaptability of the ecosystem subsystem has declined for many times, resulting in the instability of the whole system, which is also the main reason for the system entering the release phase. At the same time, in the past years, the social subsystem and ecological subsystem of the metropolitan area have not been coordinated. At present, metropolitan areas are in the rapid growth stage of a new round of adaptation cycle. The trend of rapid growth will last for some time, and then the growth rate will slow down and enter the stage of long-term stable development. At the urban level, the development of the ten cities in the metropolitan area also has the characteristics of adaptive cycle, but the development stages of urban social-ecological system are different. The adaptability of ecological subsystems in almost all cities fluctuated greatly, which caused a long-term negative impact on cities. Due to the sacrifice of ecological and environmental benefits in pursuit of rapid social and economic growth, the disharmony between the development of ecological subsystem and social subsystem in most cities is very obvious. Summarizing the development characteristics of 10 cities in Nanjing metropolitan area in the past 20 years, they can be divided into four types:stable growth type, fluctuating growth type, unbalanced development type and ecological crisis type. In the future, differentiated social-ecological systems governance strategies need to be adopted to ensure the overall optimal development of the metropolitan area.