5 Strategies to Help You Cultivate a Deeper Connection with your Partner
Deep emotional and intimate connection is built on deep knowing.
The crux of a solid relationship is knowing your partner’s inner world and what’s going on in their life. This is known as a love map.
Having a rich love map means learning and staying up to date with your partner's life experiences: their stories, excitements, stresses, and strains. Without these, we don't really know our partner.
Couples that have a detailed, rich knowledge of each other are better equipped to deal with stressors from outside and conflict within their relationship. They keep their love maps up to date and can talk to their partners about what they are thinking and feeling.
Nicole and Ron
As we grow, our beliefs, values, and expectations change. If we never tell our partner how we've changed, there's no way for them to know. While they can observe our behaviour, they might interpret it differently.
Nicole: It's like he's closed the door on me. I used to try to open the door and connect, I hoped maybe this time he would listen. Over time I learned he just doesn't listen, so I closed the door.
It feels like there's so much distance between us and what I have to say doesn’t matter. I've just started living my own life, but deep down I feel ashamed.
Nicole and Ron were so disengaged when they came to see me. They wanted to talk about major issues in their relationship, but we couldn't start there. I sensed that if we talked about major issues without re-establishing their knowing of each other, or even an openness to knowing each other, they were going to run up against that closed door.
Our treatment started with them getting to know each other’s inner worlds again. I gave suggestions using relationship science, and they made up some of their own ways to enrich their love maps. They used these 5 tools to build their love maps:
The Love Map Game
Open-Ended Questions
Share Who You Are
Board Games
Reading Books Together
The Love Map Game
The Love Map Game is from The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert by John Gottman and Nan Silver.
In it, couples are asked about each other. For example:
Name my two closest friends
What is my favourite TV show?
Which sports teams do I support?
As you play, you collect or reinforce details of each other’s lives. These are things that we can sometimes tune out and disregard, but they matter.
Open-Ended Questions
The need to be understood or acknowledged is at the crux of connection. When we take time to ask thoughtful questions, not just, “How was your day?” We get better answers.
Open-ended questions start with “What,” “How come,” or “Help me understand,” to get your partner to speak more about their inner world. The Gottmans have an app for these, or you can use a search engine to look for “open-ended questions.”
When I introduced this exercise to Nicole and Ron, I could see Ron’s skepticism. I explained that the goal is to listen to your partner, to know their inner world, even if you disagree. These open-ended questions established a path for him to get to know her again, to communicate with no wrong answers or feelings of conflict.
Share Who You Are
The exercise Who Am I from The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work takes couples through their triumphs and strivings, injuries emotional and physical, how they healed, how they respond to emotions, their life mission, and the person they want to become.
Nicole and Ron looked at this exercise and suggested a date where they could share Who Am I in a more organic setting over a meal with wine. They both agreed to share five stories about their childhoods and five dreams for the future. They also agreed not to comment about anything shared but dedicate their attention to getting to know each other.
Board Games
Ron and Nicole used board games that spoke to their personalities and played one game each week to get to know each other.
Ron purchased games that appealed to his dry wit. He thought that if he and Nicole could play, she would have a better sense of his inner world. Nicole picked games that were more feeling-oriented such as table topics and empathy card games.
They found that this informal way of building love maps enhanced their bond. Ron safely expressed his thoughts, feelings, and playful disposition. Nicole felt connected to Ron in a new way by accepting his humour, and the more she did, the more he opened to her empathetic side.
Reading (or Listening to) Books Together
Ron and Nicole listened to a podcast where they heard Lori and Chris Harder reading Secrets of a Millionaire Mind together in bed.
They downloaded audiobooks, listened to them together, and discussed them. They both reported they would not have chosen the other person’s book on their own, but they did enjoy the content and it provoked good conversations.
Choosing Your Own Path
There are many ways to create love maps.
What helped Ron and Nicole was starting out with some of the evidence-based strategies and following them, then as they became familiar with the skills, they used the guides more loosely and adapted them to their unique relationship.
The key is being accepting, open minded, and curious about your partner – getting to know and understand their inner world without judgement.
This blog is not meant to be a substitute for couples therapy or relationship counselling. This should not be construed as specific advice. See a relationship therapist in your area to address your specific problems.