Stages of coming together and apart - we can all relate

"Teaching Interpersonal Communication" by Elizabeth Natalle outlines the original text of some fundamental interpersonal theories. In class we divided up the theories and each used Train Smart ideas to teach the our classmates. I chose to teach Knapp's Stages of Coming Together and Coming Apart, mainly because this is one of the interpersonal ideas that best appeals to me. I consider it to be foundational and adaptable to all manner of relationships. It can also helpful within those relationships to understand the stage and the behavior generally associated with it.

In class I decided to begin by demonstrating to my classmates how adaptable this theory is, surveying them to find out who had been in a relationship, who had been in a relationship that ended and who was still in a relationship. Obviously they all raised their hands for all of them - that's because this theory is so adaptable to every relationship.

I varied the visual-field and overviewed the main points with a powerpoint, being sure to use a pretty design to make it worthwhile to look at. I also had my classmates reflect on each stage to identify specific relationships that characterized each stage. I had them pair up and act out a different stage to involve, not tell. This was fun and also had them thinking deeply about each stage.

Just as an overview, here are the stages outlined by Knapp:

• Initiating
• Experimenting
• Intensifying
• Integrating
• Bonding
• Differentiating
• Circumscribing
• Stagnating
• Avoiding
• Terminating

I can't draw it out here on the computer screen but I visualize these as a pyramid - moving up the stages of coming together all the way to bonding and then coming down the other side to terminating.

A few points to note: You can have characteristics of many stages but you are characterized by the most dominant behavior and also that there are no good and bad stages here - coming together can be bad just as coming apart can be good.