RAM Model for Relationships
The Relationship Attachment Model (RAM) (Van Epp, 1997) represents five relational bonds that help build connections in a relationship.
The five bonding categories are: Know, Trust, Rely, Commit, and Touch.
When you and your partner are high in a bonding area, it indicates high attachment or intimacy. The bonding scales can be visualized in this way:
As this model functions a bit differently for married couples versus premarital couples, it is important to note that prior to marriage no bonding dynamic to the right should be elevated higher than the one preceding it.
That means that:
- you do not trust someone more than you know them
- you do not rely on them more than you trust them
- you do not commit to them more than you can rely on them
- and your physical relationship should not exceed your level of commitment.
This results in touch becoming the last step in building a strong and healthy foundation for a relationship through knowing, trusting, relying, and committing to someone first.
After marriage, the bonding measures remain dynamic; they move up and down through natural changes in the marriage and length of time of the relationship.
To know your partner requires frequent and open communication. You are aware of what they are doing and feeling in their day-to-day life. You know their thoughts and preferences, their dreams, and goals.
To truly know your partner and to be known requires both of you to practice self-disclosure.
To trust your partner means that (through your experiences with them) you have confidence they will behave in the positive ways you have come to know them.
Trust can also grow as you show appreciation for each other and practice forgiveness and repair when trust is broken.
When we rely on our partner, we are able to depend on them to be there for us.
Both partners try to meet each other's personal, emotional, and physical needs (Van Epp, 1997).
Although partners cannot meet all of each other's needs, when the relationship is healthy, each partner is willing to try to help the other in whatever way they can.
When the relationship is committed, each partner carries the other in their thoughts and actions, even when they are not together.
Each is devoted to improving themself and the relationship as a way to strengthen the whole couple. Van Epp describes it as the degree to which you belong to your partner (1997).
Touch is the final bonding dynamic. It is an intimacy that covers both non-sexual and sexual physical touch, and both are essential to building closeness in a relationship, at appropriate times.
This Relationship Attachment model can help you to moderate and assess the progress of your relationship. When one area of bonding increases, the next can be increased. Similarly, when one goes down others can be impacted negatively also.
If you are in a relationship, do a quick assessment of where each slider would be for you.
Do any areas need to be adjusted?
Are any higher than the one before it?
This can show you areas that you need to strengthen and develop or areas you need to scale back in your relationship to reach optimum success and satisfaction.