Knapp's Relationship Model

     The Knapp's Relationship Model is a model that depicts the developments of relationships as a ten stage-process broken down into two phases, the coming together phase and the coming apart phase. Within the coming together phase there are 5 stages, the initiating, experimenting, intensifying, integrating, and bonding. The coming apart phase also consists of 5 stages which are, differentiating, circumscribing, stagnating, avoiding, and terminating. 

    

   

     The relationship I will be talking about is a friend I made in class about 2 years ago. She was on crunches so would sit in the front of the class everyday and so would I so we got to talking in class. It did help that this class was a very collaborative class, so the professor encouraged us to talk to our classmates. I am not sure how long we were in our initiating phase but maybe 1.5 months. I think once we had determined that we had a strong connection we started moving to the experimenting phase. In this we started walking to our cars together after class because we parked in the same area. This allowed us to make more than small talk and share more details about our lives. Once we hit the intensifying stage is when we shared social medias and started hanging out outside of class. I think this helped us stay friends in the long run because after we didn't have that class we didn't see much of each other. Being able to still communicate with each other without having to physically hang out was very good for our friendship and still keeping that strong connection. It was nice to feel like I still had a friend when I wasn't seeing them as much. We were also the same major so it allowed us to talk about the classes we were taking the next term to see if we could manage the same classes. This last spring term we both were in the same class so it was nice to reconnect with her beyond the social media aspect again. Without social media I do not think I would have stayed friends with her or been able to keep the same connection we had when we were seeing each other in person a lot.