Relationships & Knapp’s model
The relationship I will be discussing is the intimate relationship I previously had with person of the opposite sex or in other words, my ex-girlfriend. It is a past relationship wherein the girl and I had built an intimate relationship based on friendship and companionship. I had met this girl during my first years at university and although we didn’t instantly click we built our relationship on friendship. She was great to be around and I could feel like I was myself. We could always make one another laugh and we were extremely compatible in terms of intimacy and what we expected from the other person. I especially liked how kind and open she was to my vulnerabilities –she made me feel like everything would be ok and at the same time, I always felt excited to be around her. But we both had probably too many weaknesses and insecurities because the relationship came to a somewhat abrupt end. It seemed as if it would be just another argument that would eventually smooth itself out, however before we were fully aware at what had happened, we had broken up and were no longer a couple.
According to Knapp’s 10 Stages of Relationship Development, I can go through this past relationship of mine and examine where my relation had its weaknesses and what stages my ex-girlfriend and I went through during the course of our relationship.
The first half of the relationship moved toward the bonding stage. Initiation would have been our meeting one another during a particularly boring lecture and agreeing to meet later that weekend at an apartment party and experimentation would have been the time from the party until a few weeks later during which time we met a few times under the guise of “studying” or grabbing a bite to eat, or simply talking about who we knew, what we thought of the class and what our plans were for the coming weekend. Intensification began when we started to kiss one another and go home together after late drunken nights and intensified immensely when we realized we appreciated one another’s company outside class or the pretext of being drunk. We had fun during the integration stage of our relationship, finding silliness in the way our clothes swapped closets and how often, our toothbrushes were left at the other’s apartment. I had even given her the keys to my apartment and she the keys to hers so that we could come pick up things we might have left behind the night before and found we needed the next morning. In college, bonding is about this stage as well, always reluctant to move deeper into a relationship since both parties are always expecting “someone better” to come along. At least that’s what I believed.
Processing your request, Please wait....
