Mark Knapp's Ten Stages Of Interpersonal Communication

My advice to you for a successful relationship is to be open and honest with each other about how you feel. It starts by identifying barriers to effective interpersonal communication. In fact, being open and honest with your significant other is very important in not creating problems later on the relationship. When you are honest you build trust. According to Pope (2007) the article states “When you’re suppressing communication and feelings during conflict with your husband, it’s doing something very negative to your physiology, and in the long term it will affect

Effective communication is one of the most important things to maintain a happy relationship. Communication will help to create a better atmosphere and to know what are the interests, thoughts and feelings of your loved one. All romantic relationships need a lot of communications from both sides. The main factor is interpersonal communication, which couples are able to overlap environments and create a relationship. We reviewed the movie “The Breakup” and have found the concepts of Integrating, differentiating, and terminating. This movie shows how ineffective communication can dissolve a relationship. The lack of communication is the main factor why Brooke and Gary break up. This couple tends to rely on other people instead

Communication is a part of our everyday life, which leaves a great deal of room for errors and problems to arise. One communication problem that a lot of people face in college and throughout their lives are bad first dates. Due to the extreme frequency that bad dates occur in society, my group decided to discuss it for our communication problem. The group was composed of Jacqueline Kaplan, Zach Barclay, James Prell, and myself. Our main points throughout the presentation were listening, body language, invasive communication, and self-disclosure, which seen to be the main components to dating. Many of these topics were covered in our book Interpersonal communication: Everyday Encounters by Julia Wood.

“Men and women can't be friends, because sex always gets in the way”, is the main theme of the movie “When Harry met Sally”. The script is a good example of the interpersonal communication ten stage model by Mark Knapp. This developmental model entails the stages of a relationship from it’s infancy to an ending. In the movie we can clearly identify all ten stages of this model.

Explain why effective communication is important in developing positive relationships with children, young people and adults.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize feelings and judge which feelings are appropriate for a given situation.

In Knapp’s Stages of Relational Development, he explains how relationships grow and last and not only that, but how they end as well. There are ten different stages involved in this particular relationship development; in the first stage, also known as the coming together stage, there are five different key parts which are initiating, experimenting, intensifying, integrating and bonding. In the other stage, also known as the coming apart stage, there are also five different key parts such as differentiating, circumscribing, stagnating, avoiding and terminating. There is also a central unit in the middle known as the relational maintenance stage which involves key components from both the coming together stage and the coming apart stage which are integrating, boding, differentiating and circumscribing.

It is often said that all good things come to an end. Relationships come and go, and some mean more than others. In fact, there was even a relationship model developed by a communication researcher by the name of Mark Knapp. In his model, he goes through what seems to be presented as a smooth step transition from each stage in which a relationship eventually evolves into. As I studied this up then down ladder model, I began to realize that I ought to build up some strong calf muscles, because my relationship sure has climbed up and down a few flights of stairs. Mark Knapp believes that relationships go through multiple stages, the uphill stages being initiation, experimenting, intensifying, integrating, bonding, then relational maintenance. On the flip side, Knapp believes the descending stages to be differentiating, circumscribing, avoiding, and eventually, termination.

Although many books have been written about communication and connection in relationships, there has been a book that addresses precisely this wonderful process as has James C. Petersen in his book: Why Don’t We Listen Better? And it is precisely the way in which the parts he divided the book that takes the reader to a better understanding of what the personal relationships connections through communications are concerned.

According to Knapp’s model of Relational Development, he described the stages in which a relationship goes within the make up and break up steps of coming together and coming apart. This blog will discuss each stage with examples.

When I first met my client, Jackie Hart, she was in the hospital with a broken hip. She lives alone in a senior apartment complex and she has no family. She was transferred to a nursing home for six weeks of rehab after her hip surgery. Jackie was adamant that she was going to return home after her stay in the nursing home. I got Jackie set up with Comfort Keepers so that once she returned home they would provide a bath aide 3x a week, light housekeeping aide 2x a week, and an aide to transport Jackie to the grocery store 1x a week. Comfort Keepers also set Jackie up with a toilet extender, shower seat, and walker. Jackie is to meet with registered dietician Kim Letts to go over proper nutritional needs to help her gain her strength

Just as self concept seemed a vicious circle, where this affects that and that effects this; relational development is the same. Relational development can alter our lives and our communication, while communication issues can alter our relational development and our lives. The relational perspective is a pragmatic one and focuses on the continuance of communication processes through relationships. (Rogers, 2004.) Relationships go through a series of stages. The initial and first encounter to a relationship is called the initiating stage. While in this stage, two people attempt to create favorably impressionable first impressions. In this stage you will look for cues about the other person’s personality, attitude, beliefs, and values so that you can progress the relationship. If the relationship continues and impressions are favorable than the two people move to the second stage, also known as the experimenting stage. In this stage people reveal themselves further but not completely since the stage is still a precarious one. If a common ground and understanding of each other is obtained then the relationship moves to the next stage, the intensifying stage. In this stage shared experiences becomes common and self disclosure is open. The next stage is the integrating stage, this is where the individuals usually become a couple. They have shared interests and attitudes, and sometimes talk or act alike. The other individual becomes like your other half. If things go awry than relationships often shift to the circumscribing stage. This is when couples start to self disclose less and less to the other person. Then comes the stagnating stage. At this point there is no communication and no activity between the two people. Sometimes there is an

Petersen, J. C. (2007). Why don't we listen better? Communicating and connecting in relationships. Lincoln City, Oregon: Petersen Publications.

Mark Knapp developed a theoretical model to which identifies the stages of interpersonal relationships which explains how relationships begin and grow, as well as how they deteriorate and end. This model defines ten separate stages of relational development under three different interrelating categories; Coming Together, Relational Maintenance, and Coming Apart. An analysis of a personal relationship through the use of Knapp’s stages of relational development leads to a better understanding of that relationship and our role within it. In this essay I will be analyzing a personal relationship of my own using Knapp’s stages as a guide. However, these stages are subjective to each individual’s unique situation. Therefore, I will only be examining my relationship in the “coming together” stages. Furthermore, it is possible to pass over or amalgamate stages, as these stages are closer to a guide rather than set rules. For this analysis I will be breaking the “coming together” stages into initiating, experimentation and intensifying, integration, and bonding.

The second half of the relational model is called the “coming apart” stages, which consists of: differentiating, circumscribing, stagnating, avoiding, and lastly terminating. During the differentiating stage the relationship will start to be more individual, it will start to fade and the bond will be broken. After that comes the circumscribing stage during which the individuals won’t communicate because of the fear of starting an argument. The stage where relationships never improve or continue is called stagnating. After this point the individuals enter the avoiding stage, where the avoid any physical contact