The Milstein approximation with step size $Δt>0$ of the solution $(X, Y)$ to a two-by-two system of linear stochastic differential equations is considered. It is proved that when the solution of the underlying model is exponentially stable or exponentially blowing up at infinite time, these behaviours are preserved at the level of the Milstein approximate solution $\{(X_n, Y_n)\}$ in both the mean-square and almost-sure senses, provided sufficiently small step size $Δt$. This result is based on sharp estimates, from both above and below, of the discrete Lyapunov exponent. This type of sharp estimate for approximate solutions to stochastic differential equations seems to be first studied in this work. In particular, the proposed method covers the setting for linear stochastic differential equations as well as the $θ$-Milstein scheme's setting.