When Harry Met Sally Essay

Words: 1130
Pages: 5

March 3, 2014
CMST 210: Paper 3
In the movie When Harry Met Sally, there are many examples that illustrate Knapp’s ten developmental stages of romantic relationship; initiating, experimenting, intensifying, integrating, bonding, differentiating, circumscribing, stagnating, avoiding, and terminating. Not only do Harry and Sally demonstrate what couples go through in the phases of coming together and pulling apart, they also show that romantic relationships don’t just develop overnight. They evolve throughout a period of time, and transition through the stages of relationship formation, not necessarily in order either. In my paper, I will be talking about how this couple demonstrates the concept of each of Knapp’s
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I see several examples of integrating as well in the movie, such as when Harry and Sally call each other every night before they go to bed, and make a daily ritual of it. They begin to talk to their other friends about one another, and claim that they are best friends. In the scene at the dugout where Harry says to
Jesse that “it’s different with Sally”, and goes on to explain that he can tell her anything and always get a new perspective on things; this very well showed that their relationship had moved from just close friends, to best friends that everyone sees as a pair. Seeing as Harry can talk to

Sally about anything, and get a woman’s point of view, demonstrates the concept of content and relational messages. Harry means the same thing either way, but in the circumstances that he’s with Sally, he opens up and talks about his feelings a bit differently. We can also during the intensifying and integrating stages of their relationship, that their breadth and depth become wider, making their social penetration model very large. For example, their breadth is wide, because they can talk about many different topics, like topics on relationships, depression, goals in life. Their depth is deep because they can go into detail, and self­disclose about those topics, like Sally discloses about her depression to Harry.
Some examples of the last coming together stage, bonding, would be