Knapp's Relational Model

 

Throughout the last four years the friendship/relationship I had with my ex-boyfriend went through every step of Knapp's Relational Model, not just once but twice. Our initiation phase occurred when we met our sophomore year of high school. We shared a friend group but went to different schools, so we only saw each other when we were all together on the weekends. The experimenting phase started off with him asking me to prom junior year. We then decided to hangout by ourselves, and things began to intensify. We never officially became a couple and bonded in that way as our schedules and lives started to differentiate. I was focusing on volleyball, and he was focusing on baseball, so things just started to die off. We were stagnant and there was no growth towards a relationship. Soon we stopped hanging out with just each other and only communicated when we were with the friend group.

It started up again when I was driving home from Atlanta one night with some friend's senior year of high school and I had to use the restroom so bad. What are the odds that we were passing his neighborhood? So, I called him hoping he would let me use his restroom. Thankfully he answered and let me in. When I was leaving, he asked if he could take me on a date and I said yes of course. We started going out to eat and hanging out a lot more after school by ourselves. It began intensifying when he asked me to come to his games, hangout with him and his friends and vice versa. We then integrated and I was a part of his family, and he was a part of mine. We bonded so closely that our families had family traditions together, we went on vacations with each other's families, he even met my biological father with me. When we went to college, we were long distance as I went to Boston, and he went to South Carolina. It was fine and we were making things work until the summer going into senior year of college. We made plans to move out together senior year since I was going to be working and doing school remote since I was no longer playing volleyball, and he didn't want to live with a roommate anymore. Then one day he told me he didn't want to live with me as he needed to focus on baseball due to transferring to a D1 school. I was tired of being long distance as we were for the majority of our relationship, and he didn't want to take that next step. The circumscribing stage was in full affect when he started focusing solely on baseball again, and I found myself working and focusing on school. There was no longer any growth as he was only worried about growing in his baseball career. Soon there were conversations that we avoided having and we barely hung out due to his busy schedule. It just didn't feel the same as everything changed, so I broke up with him.