Stages of Relationships

Like we learned in class this week, relationships are always beginning or ending. I'm going to use a past girlfriend to analyze Knapp's relationship model. We met through a mutual friend which was the initial stage of our relationship. We met a couple of other time, I kind of tried to test the limits on what jokes I could get away with and gauge what topics we had in common, which led to me getting her phone number. We kept seeing each other for a couple months, continued to get to know each other and finally decided to make stuff official, entering the true bonding/relational maintenance phase.

Relational maintenance for use came pretty naturally. A lot of it was just spending time together. We moved in together, so it was super easy to feel close. We also did a lot of stuff together like concerts, 5ks, volleyball tournaments, etc. Volleyball was especially fun, since I only lived about two blocks from Lake Michigan (it has a surprising amount of beaches) It also helped that we ended up going to the same college before I ended up transferring to Oregon State. We kept this up for about 2 years.

Volleyball is definitely one of the best relationship builders 

(especially if you're competitive).

After about 2 and a half years, we started to drift apart. I did an internship with Morgan Stanley that required me to travel a lot. The fact that I wasn't at our place in Chicago created a rift between us at first. It ended up getting to the point that I ended up working so much that I limited our relationship (circumscribing). Things gradually began to slow down and we weren't able to spend as much time together. We never really avoided each other, but it just wasn't the same. We ended up mutually deciding to end things when I had to move back to Nashville and we both started to work. 

I definitely still have my regrets about this. I find myself wondering a lot how I could have done things differently, or how I could have at least extended our relationship. It's interesting looking back on it through the Knapp's model lens and kind of seeing how stuff went down. Learning experience I guess...

On to social media... Overall, I don't think that it had that great of an effect on our relationship. It was definitely nice to be able to keep in touch, and it's still nice to reach out at times, but it never had a direct effect on anything. Even if it did, we both ended up being so engrossed with works and our own personal lives to check. Even now, I'm terrible at checking social media... Sometimes it feels like people need to reach out to me by carrier pigeon. 

Way more likely to check for pigeon mail than
I am to check my snapchat.