Mark Knapp's Model Analysis

Mark Knapp has a model that breaks the rise and fall of relationships into 10 stages, contained into the two broad phases of “coming together “and “coming apart.” Since my mom and I are family, stages like initiating, experimenting, intensifying, and integrating are things that naturally happened as a child. When I felt myself bonding my mom, was when I was six years and we would do everything together and I enjoyed her company. The next stage would be differentiating. I believed that happened when in my early teen years, when I wanted to hang out with my friends more and just try to be away from my mom because I wanted to do my own thing. After differentiating would be circumscribing, which is the stage I believe we are at now, this stage is when both parties lose interest and …show more content…
During this past week, I did not reveal any important information to my mom because I think there are more risk than benefits when opening up to my mom. For example, on Saturday I told my mom that I’ve been stressed out about school and work and have been thinking about taking a break. She says to me “so you’re a quitter now that’s what we do? Come on I knew you were lazy but I didn’t know you were a quitter” it seemed to me as if I made a negative impression on her, which is a risk to self-disclosing. Because I did not get the support I wanted from my mom, I always choose an alternative to self-disclosure which is silence. I keep my personal information to myself. I do not tell her what my day has been like, how school going, or what is even happened at work. The reason for my lack of self-disclosure has to do a lot with the relational stage that we are at. Since I believe we are in the circumscribing stage, I lost any interest to speak to her about anything. I see it as my life, my privacy, and my space, as does