How Do You Know if You’re in Love?

What is Love? Baby, Don’t Hurt Meeeee!

What is Love – Haddaway

Source: Haddaway – What Is Love [Official] | CoconutMusicGermany

Taking an Interpersonal Approach

In the late 20th century, Prof. Mark L. Knapp created Knapp’s Relational Development Model. Knapp’s model boils relationships down into ten stages within the categories Coming Together and Coming Apart.

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Knapp’s Relational Development Model

Source: Knapp’s Staircase Model | Samuel Ellis

Knapp demonstrated the process of “coming together” begins with initiation and continues through experimentation until you reach a point of intensification.

As the level of your relationship intensifies, walls begin to fall and courtship ensues. It is a process of mutually revealing more personal information and striving to impress one another.

Intensification leads to integration, the stage in which Knapp theorized individuals begin “falling in-love” before finally bonding.

Once the bond has been established, the relationship is officially honored and recognized, often through marriage.

While Knapp’s Relational Development model is a wonderful demonstration of how strangers evolve into friends and eventually lovers, it still leaves us to marvel at what in-love – or “intensification” – truly means.