29. 5 Ways to Build Love Maps
The crux of a solid relationship
What’s a Love Map?
In this episode we are discussing LOVE MAPS.
It is knowing your partner’s inner world and having mental space for their experience and what is going on in their life.
We are going to get to know more about these love maps and why they are a foundational part of relationship success.
We look at three evidence based strategies for building love maps and two strategies thought up by my couples.
We discuss interventions from the Gottman Method and the Book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work : A practical guide from the country's foremost relationship expert by John Gottman and Nan Silver. We specifically look at the chapter on Principle 1 Enhancing Love Maps and the exercises on pages 52-60.
Relationship Psych Episodes Discussed in This Episode Are:
In the previous episode, how to get him to finally listen to you we hear the stories of five women and their emotional reactions to not being heard.
Episode 26 emotional intimacy: a simple strategy that builds connection
episode 16 The communication mistake that is preventing you from being heard and how to fix it
This podcast is for informational purposes only. Seek a couples therapist in your area for specific advice to help your unique problems.
Transcription (this is a close transcription. It may not be 100% accurate.)
5 Ways to Build Love Maps
The crux of a solid relationship
In this episode we are discussing LOVE MAPS. What is a love map anyway?
It is knowing your partner’s inner world and having mental space for their experience and what is going on in their life.
We are going to get to know more about these love maps and why they are a foundational part of relationship success. After we understand love maps lets talk about 5 ways to build them.
Love Map- like I said they are knowing your partner’s inner world. This is not a 1 and done. They need To be updated as your partner grows and changes. Having a rich lovemap means gathering and collecting and stay up to date about the information in your partner's life, the stories, the excitements, the stresses, and the strains. We keep up with each others major life events and their history we know how they like the kitchen to be cleaned, their favorite salad dressing, their favorite TV shows, their best friends, and their secret wishes and desires. Without these kinds of things we don't really know our partner. Deep emotional an intimate connection is belt and deep knowing. Couples that have a detailed rich knowing of each other are more equipped to deal with stressors outside of their relationship and conflict inside their relationship. Couples that thrive usually have a protected relationship because their inner lovemap is so strong. They keep them up to date and they can talk to their partners about what they are thinking and feeling and these relationships are more solid unable to weather difficult storms. When we think about feeling heard and understood it's not just in the context of difficult conversations that we want to be known, it's also in the day-to-day things just a knowing of who we are.
In the previous episode, how to get him to finally listen to you we hear the stories of five women and their emotional reactions to not being heard. In the story of Nicole we hear the following
Nicole: it's like he's closed the door on me. I used to try to open the door and connect with him, it was like I would get my hopes up and that maybe this time he would listen. Overtime I learned he just doesn't listen to me, and so I closed the door. The door's been closed for a really long time and I don't even know how to open it anymore. It just feels like there's so much distance between us and I don't even feel like what I have to say matters. I've just started living my own life, but deep down its like small shame in me. I have started to wonder if there is something wrong with me.
Nicole used to have a strong love map with her partner Ron. As conflict happened in their lives, and after she had a major illness, they lose the connection in their relationship. They stopped having a deep knowing of each other. Nicole feels like Ron doesn't know her like he's closed the door. This happens when they are in conflict he just walks away, but she feels like he doesn't even want to know her at all. How she feels is the most is when she was going through her illness he never asked how she was feeling. She was struck that strangers and other people she knew well took great interest in how she was feeling and how she was doing but he never seemed to ask. Laying in her bed alone and in pain in the days she would wonder what's wrong with me that he doesn't seem to care.
Ron and Nicole 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 had the sense right away that if we talked about their major issues without having a knowing of each other, or even an openness to knowing each other, or positives in their relationship that they were going to have a really difficult time working through anything. Rather than starting in the hard places of their relationship, our treatment started out with them just getting to know each others in our worlds again. Well I gave them interventions to use based on the gottman method and relationship science, they interesting we came up with their own interventions . I thought this was awesome because it showed an inner knowing of them in their relationship and how they use their love Maps and knowledge of each other to get to know each other even better . In this episode I'm going to describe some of the things that I suggested and some of the things that they came up with. Will start out with the things that I suggested .
5 Ways to Build Love Maps
1. the first way to build love Maps the I suggested was from the Gottman method the lovemap game . If you've ever heard of the book the seven principles for making marriage work : practical guide from the country's foremost relationship expert by John Gottman and Nan Silver there is a game on pages 52 53 54 55 and 56. In this game you have to get to know different things about each other and I'll give you a sample of some of the questions you get to score it so there's a slight edge of competition although it's not the competition that matters and you don't want to get hooked in there but just to create a little bit more fun so here are some of the things that they suggest getting to know for example number one name my 2 closest friends, number 10 who is my favorite relative, #21 what kind of president would I like best, #29 was my favorite getaway places, #38 who is my least favorite , 41 what is my favorite TV show , 42 which side of the bed do I prefer,, 60 which sports team is my favorite? What you'll notice is these are just little things small details of each others lives that we get to know about each other. These are things that we can tune out and disregard but they matter. For example I know that during the football season my partner is busy on Sundays Ann it's not a day that I should ask for anything . I also know that there are certain football teams where I am more likely to have my partner engage with me and other football teams that he is going to be more busy . Because I know his inner world I know that he loves the Seattle Seahawks. Well I know very little about football , and you would never catch me spending my entire day on a Sunday watching football, I respect that that is something he loves and takes great delight and joy in. Well I could never wrap my head around doing this for myself I give him Sundays to watch football especially if the Seattle Seahawks is on. This is how I demonstrate knowing his inner world and I hope that in turn he pays attention to some of the small details in me and allows me to do the things that are important to me even though he doesn't see the value.
Many of my couples find that they do feel connected, intimacy, pleasure , and just genuinely good time by asking questions that you would ask on a first date . It's important to continue to update these kinds of questions as our lives change so that we can grow together.
2. Ask Open Ended Questions
As you heard me talk about an episode 26 of relationships like the podcast titled emotional intimacy: a simple strategy that builds connection, we talk about using questions to create knowing.
The need to be got, known, seen, or acknowledged by our partner is at the crux of connection. When we take time to ask thoughtful questions, not just, “How was your day?” We will get different answers. The goal is to really listen to your partner, to know their inner world, even if you disagree. Questions provide a prompt and a topic that paves the path for how to open up.
If you want to know more about your partner ask different questions period we get in the monotony I've asked him the same questions every day so we get the same answers everyday people. people are often amazed how I get their partner to open up , they ask what I did and think it's some sort of magic. I tell them the secret sauce is that I remain neutral, validating, and ask questions. Questions are available everywhere , hit the search engine and type in things like 50 great first date questions and you're going to get a lot of information . If we go back to the Gottmans they have a great app called card decks. this app contains a number of different prompts and card decks to help couples have conversations. There's one love Maps which we just went over and there's another one called open ended questions , another one is also called opportunity, date night , well there's a lot of them on there that you could used to build love Maps. If you were to head into open ended questions card deck you're going to see that there's a number of questions that don't require a yes or no answer. Rather their questions that start with what, how come, help me understand , to elicit more information to get your partner to speak more about their experience .
I introduced the card deck in my office to Nicole and Ron. They were physically present in my office, and I had them actual cards. I could see ron's face kind of twinge and it was as if he was looking at me thinking I'm really paying you $250 to look at a card deck. I can see the skepticism all over him. I'm OK with that. Within about 20 minutes Ron could see that this was worthwhile. His takeaway from the end of the session was that couples therapy isn't always about hashing things out and looking at what is wrong, brother you can gain a lot of connection by looking at what is right. He explained that it was much easier to talk to Nicole when he wasn't in trouble or felt like he was doing something wrong. To our surprise he expressed that when Nicole was sick part of the reason he stayed away from her is because he felt so powerless and like he couldn't do anything, that he couldn't help her. He explained that the card decks paved a path for him to get to know her and that felt better , finally he wasn't doing something wrong and he wasn't in trouble .
3. Share who you are
As we change and as we grow our beliefs, values, and expectations change as we go through different things in life. Because we are always changing in our own mind it's important that we come to some sort of coherent narrative about that so we can share it with our partner. But we never tell our partner how we've changed or what we're thinking, there's no way they're going to know on their own. While they can observe our behavior they might interpret it to mean something different than what it actually means.
Again, in the book 7 principles for making a marriage work, there's an exercise that described that is called who am I . This is a great exercise . It takes couples through their triumphs and strivings, personal injuries emotional and physical, and their healings, how they respond to emotions now and their family of origins, their internal mission an legacy which basically outlines their life statement and if they were to die or what it would read on their headstone, and who is the person they want to become.
Nicole and Ron looked at this exercise in the book and didn't like it. Rather Ron explained that he wanted this to feel a little bit more natural now that they had to hang up some things. He suggested that he was going to come up with a date where he and Nicole could enjoy a glass of wine over a meal they enjoyed and share more about their childhoods. They both agreed that they would come up with at least five stories about their childhoods and share them with each other . They also agreed that in addition they would come prepared with five dreams for the future and they would share those with each other. They also agreed that they weren't going to comment, disagree, or argue about anything shared rather they were going to dedicate their attention to getting to know who their partner was that day.
I shared this story with you to help you understand that although there is a template or guide, you can modify it to fit your relationship just like Nicole and Ron did. What helped them was starting out with some of the guided activities and following them , but as they became familiar with the skills it was easier to use the guides more loosely in a way that adopted for their unique relationship.
The next two strategies are things that Nicole and Ron did and came up with on their own. Ron had a really sarcastic , dry, an at times inappropriate humor. This is one of ron's best and worst qualities Nicole would share. At times Ron could be the life of the party and have them both howling with laughter , but one of these comments at an inappropriate time, or while racial protests were going on in early 2020, these could be the spark of a major fight. Although Ron didn't actually mean to hurt or insult people, at times he did. What was important to him was that Nicole was open minded to his sense of humor, if he was open minded to making sure he used it appropriately and in the company of appropriate people. One of ron's suggestions for him and Nicole to update their inner worlds were to use some games that might be slightly less appropriate.
4. games that you can buy that increase the sense of knowing somebody.
Ron was tired of the therapy games and decided to try to create his own games and build them more into his real life and things that he enjoyed. Ron and Nicole agreed to each purchase 2 board games with a focus on getting to know each other and play one game each week. They had to modify the rules to make them two player
Ron’s two games fit his personality.. Ron purchased a game he had played at many parties, Cards Against Humanity. Ron thought this was a great idea because it matched his dry wit, and often inappropriate humor. He also purchased dirty minds. He thought that if he and Nicole could play she would have a greater sense of his in her world and he could have a better sense of hers when it came to these.
Nicole on the other hand, did not purchase games that matched dry whit and humor, she picked games that were more feeling oriented or proper. She picked table topics and the empathy card games.
With COVID stopping their typical date nights, they found a new normal of dates, occasionally playing with other couples online or in a park. They both found that this informal way of getting to know each other really enhanced their bond.
While not all of these games are for everybody, Ron found this was a way allowed him to safely express his thoughts and feelings, and playful disposition. Nicole felt connected to Ron in a new way by turning towards his humor and accepting it in him, and the more she did the more he opened to her empathetic side.
5. Listening (or reading) books together and discussing them
Ron and Nicole explained they listened to a podcast where they heard Lori and Chris Harder Reading Secrets of A Millionaire Mind Together in Bed, and asked if I thought this would increase love maps. I agreed it likely would.
Ron and Nicole were going to drive across Canada on a COVID summer vacation. They both agreed to download an audiobook that fit their personality that they would listen to and discuss together.
Ron chose, true to his personality, the subtle art of not giving a f*uck by Mark Manson. Nicole chose Hold Me Tight By Sue Johnson. When they got back from their trip, they reported their results to me. 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.
In combination with the books they whipped out the Gottman Card Deck and used open ended questions to deepen their knowledge about the other person’s experience.
There are so many ways to create love maps. You can do it with evidence based strategies like those provided by John Gottman and Nan Silver in the Book 7 principles for making a marriage work, or you can be creative and generate ideas that fit more for your unique relationship.
They key is being accepting, open minded, and curious about your partner. Getting to know them without judgement. Truly getting to know and understand their inner world. If you need help with how to communicate check out episode 16 on Relationship Psych- The Podcast The communication mistake that is preventing you from being heard and how to fix it.
This podcast is for informational purposes only. Seek a couples therapist in your area for specific advice to help your unique problems.