Knapp's Relational Model

                                          

Hello and welcome back to the weekly post on Callie's Connections. Knapp's Relational Model describes how relationships grow and die, using 10 different stages categorized under two stages called "Knapp's relationship escalation model" and "Knapp's relationship termination model". This model can be used to analyze romantic and platonic relationships. Today I would like to analyze the relationship between me and my boyfriend. 

My boyfriend and I met during our Freshman year of college at Oregon State. We were introduced through mutual friends and initiated our relationship by talking casually about classes and how we chose Oregon State for college. The initiation stage lasted for a few weeks or so, while we were hanging out in larger friend groups and talking about surface level things. 

We finally entered the stage of experimenting the first time we spent time together alone. The levels of conversation got much deeper, leading us to reveal very large parts of our personal lives, relating experiences with each other. Both of us were so thrilled with the conversation and the connection we were sharing, that we stayed up talking until around 3AM in the morning, with neither of us being bored. This time together being so successful caused us to find more times in the next week that we could hangout. 

I can identify the intensification stage as being around my birthday, which occurred about a month after our first time being alone together. We had started to become closer emotionally and physically, being more comfortable in each other's presence. When my birthday came around, I received presents and acts of service from my boyfriend that were very much catered to my personal interests and hobbies; meaning he had gotten to know me extremely personally as I had gotten to know him. This was a huge gesture to me from him and I felt myself beginning to form a loving connection to him. 

Here is a super interesting study from Harvard about how Love affects our Brains: https://hms.harvard.edu/news-events/publications-archive/brain/love-brain

Shortly after my birthday, we planned a few more dates where I received flowers from him for no particular reason and enjoyed my time with him no matter what we were doing. This stage was the integration stage and around this time we made things official as boyfriend/girlfriend. Ever since then we have been doing relational maintenance, making sure we work for each other and commit to each other everyday. 

Communicated online played a huge role in our relationship over summers because we live in different states, meaning we are not able to see each other in person very often. Texting and communicating through social media helped us to stay connected and provide each other with funny entertainment while being so far away. Technology has proven to be a good thing for our relationship overall because it helps us show that we are thinking of one another each day even when we cannot be together physically.