Question

Describe your relationship in terms of Knapp’s Stages of Coming Together/Apart. How did you move from one stage to another? Where are you now? What tells you this?

Answer 1

According to Knapp, rate of movement through stages are:

1. Potentially rapid when time is short (for example a summer fling)
2. Potentially facilitated when proximity is high.
3. Generally faster during the early stages.
4. Based on individual needs.
5. Slower if only one person wants to move to a different stage.
6. Rapid in deterioration if one party commits a violation.

Movement is generally systematic and sequential. This does not suggest that the process is linear or unchangeable; the phenomena is never at rest and is continually in flux. My realtionship with my partner generally followed the same pattern. Each stage contains important presumptions for the next. Movement may be forward. Having great levels of intimacy is considered moving forward. Movement could also be backward. Backward movement represents any movement away from the bonding stage. This could happen and it is unpredictible, it entirely depends on the partners. Movement is always to a new state. Usually people in a relationship go through the same stages more than once, but they can never truly go back to the way things were. Right now i am in the stage of bonding. I can tell this since we have developed the utmost closeness and are committing to each other in front of friends and family in a connection which can't be broken easily.