Music. Welcome to Mr. and Mrs. Therapy, the podcast that empowers you to transform life's challenges into opportunities for personal growth and healthier relationships. We're your hosts, Tim and Ruth Olson, licensed marriage and family therapists and trauma experts. As experienced therapists with backgrounds in addressing trauma and mental health disorders, we believe there is hope and there certainly is healing.
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us today. We're going to be discussing building a strong love map for your partner. And the basic idea for this is trying to explore your partner's inner world and understand more of who they are at a deeper level. And one of the things is sometimes people can be married for many years.
And don't get me wrong, you learn a lot about your partner. But also, if you don't take the time to really sit down and explore more deeply with them, there's lots of different things that you could be missing or not understanding about what they like, about what they don't like, about what their goals and desires are.
And so that's what today's episode is going to be focusing on, is diving deeper into those areas and giving you strategies on how you can use this love map to your advantage in your relationship. So love maps come from the work of Dr. John Gottman. And we've used him and talked about him in the past. But think of a love map as an emotional blueprint for your partner's inner world or their inner life. The events, the dreams, the fears, their experiences, and details that make them who they are.
When a couple's love maps are strong, they're better at weathering stress, conflict, and even trauma. because they truly know each other and they can help navigate through the stresses of life. And so as you're working through big challenges, like healing the personal trauma or dealing with changes in the family, having that solid love map means you already have a deep well of understanding and empathy to be able to draw from when things get tough.
So Gottman defines love maps as a part of your brain where you store the relevant information about your partner's world. That can be anything from your partner's favorite snack, what's their biggest fear right now, and who is their best friend at work. And so once you understand more of their inner world, it can help you have more of a GPS to navigate around them and understand in this moment what's an appropriate or an inappropriate way to interact with my partner.
And it's important that you update these love maps quite regularly, because like you give the example of using it as a GPS. I don't know about you guys, but where we are from, there is construction going on all the time. So there are always roadblocks and detours and things that were happening. And thankfully, the GPS we were using was really up to date. And it would give us traffic times and different detours that we needed to take. And it's the same thing as a couple.
It's important to keep that updated. Maybe you don't know your partner's new hobby or something they're excited about recently. Or maybe they started worrying about a health issue that you haven't asked about. These small gaps in knowledge over time can lead to bigger feelings of disconnection. And it's not just about having the information and the facts. It's about really tuning in.
And the details might seem small, but they add up to create that sense that we get each other and we're on the same page. So it's important to know the facts, but it's also important to know how they feel about them. And I do think those small things, they do end up tending to make up a larger portion of your life, because those are things that are happening all the time.
And there's big events and things like that that happen, but most of the time those are things that are relatively few and far between, versus all these little things and these little nuanced pieces of information about your partner. Those are things and experiences that you can have on a much more frequent basis, and then that can help to create a lasting connection.
And I do think a part of this can be very uncomfortable for people, because when you're thinking about doing this love map, you are working at diving into deeper levels of intimacy with your partner. And in past episodes, we've talked about vulnerability and how it can be scary because you're revealing more of yourself to your partner. But this is a little bit of a part of the bargain where it's like, okay, if I reveal more of myself, I could get hurt more.
But also if I reveal more of myself, I could have a more deep and loving and profound connection with my partner. So let's jump into a little bit more information about why Gottman's love maps are so helpful. So for one, couples who have strong love maps are more resilient in conflict. They also bounce back faster from disagreements because they can empathize more with each other.
And this is actually a very interesting thing where the people who you're more connected to, it's far more difficult for you to demonize them or when you do get angry with them, you're more likely to be able to give them a pass because you feel more strong feelings of connection for them. But the more distant and disconnected you feel, the more likely you are to be harsh or blunt and not care as much about their perspective.
So the other thing that helps out with love mapping is that the more often you do it, just like you're saying we're trying to keep it up to date, you're practicing vulnerability. And as you practice vulnerability more with your partner, and especially when these go well, it builds more trust with your partner. So it actually becomes easier for you to share more information.
And if you think about people who've been married for a long time, the natural thought is, well, they will just know each other on a very deep basis, but that's not necessarily true. Because a lot of times people do keep that inner world very secret, and they only let people see what they want them to see, or they let them see the mask of how they want to portray themselves.
And a lot of that can come from your own insecurity. It could be because maybe your partner doesn't respond well when you try to be vulnerable with them.
But whatever the reason is, when you hold back like that, it's preventing this deeper level of connection versus if you are regularly working to share your inner world it can create a much deeper connection and it helps to build deeper levels of trust but in order to build that trust you do have to risk you have to say something vulnerable to your partner that they wouldn't know unless you shared it and that they might not react good to that but then the upside is when they react
good again you feel more intimate connection with them. Right? It allows you to genuinely show up for each other. And another thing is that when you know your partner's fears and hopes and triggers, you can avoid unintentionally stepping on these emotional landmines. Or if you do, you'll understand what just happened. And you can address and resolve the conflict with empathy rather than confusion. Because you know you just hit one of their landmines.
We all have touchy areas or things that we know, okay, I really shouldn't joke about this with my partner. Or if I make light of this situation, or I'm sarcastic here, they often get upset. And so you can have the perspective of, well, they're just too sensitive, or they need to just get over it. I should be able to joke in this manner. But why do that? A better route might be to figure out what those are. And I'm not saying avoid them and never talk about the situation.
Maybe it's something that you have to talk about. Maybe finance is a tricky subject for you. So it's not something that we can avoid that altogether, but it's something you can navigate better and you can know, okay, maybe blaming in this situation or making a joke how they came in with all this credit card debt isn't helpful.
So we still have to address that issue, but we can address it with a clear view of where not to go, where do we have to take detours, or what roads can I take that I'll get more green lights and be able to talk about it in a way that's healthy for them and for you.
Because I know that for me there have been times where if I haven't been really paying attention Tim will get upset about something or respond to something and I just have this look of total confusion which I know can be upsetting to you and that for a long time was one of our landmines that we would run into again and again because then when I would give this confused face it led us back into a cycle of a conflict that we would normally have,
rather than being able to see the map and knowing it, and knowing when I hit a button or I stepped on a landmine, and immediately being able to understand what happened and then resolving it, rather than creating a whole other conflict in addition to the conflict of the thing I stepped on by being confused and unaware, and And then we're now layering conflict on conflict.
And so in Gottman's work, he talks about having well-developed love maps often correlates with lower levels of anxiety or depression within the relationship because the partners feel seen and heard and respected and supported. And this sense of safety, which is so important in relationships, can help each person without constantly worrying about having these misunderstandings at home. So let's jump into some examples of how you can build love maps. So one is just a daily check-in.
And that can be something as simple as sitting down with each other for 10 minutes at the end of the day and just asking open-ended questions like, what was the best part of your day? Or is there anything stressing you out right now? In the past, we've also talked about the daily dialogue, which is three questions. What did you appreciate? What didn't you appreciate? And how can I help you?
Those are a little more direct questions. But just sitting down and having an open forum where they could just pick topics they want to talk about and it doesn't have to be specifically about the relationship. is a little bit more open-ended, and so then it can go down some different avenues. Another thing you can do is take interest in each other's worlds. So the first part of this is, like we talked about before, making sure your love maps are up to date.
But then as you know them, you can meet their needs. So say it's their birthday or Christmas, and now you know what their updated new favorite color is, because I know that over our course of marriage, my favorite color has changed several times.
Whereas Tim's when we first started our relationship both of our favorite colors were red and since then his has changed to blue but mine has changed to pink to teal to right now I'm going between mauve or gold but as you know what their favorite color is when you give them a gift and it's in their favorite color they're more likely to feel seen and heard but another example is if your spouse started a new hobby and they like painting, then start asking questions and get curious.
So taking that interest in each other's worlds. And even if you're not a painter, being encouraging to them, but also being interested in what they're doing. So I covered kind of two points, the tracking changes piece of it and taking interest in each other's world. Because as you track changes, you are taking interest in their world.
Maybe their best friend just moved to another city, and that changes who they text or who they talk to on a daily basis, a solid love map will include updating that piece of your partner's social puzzle so that you can ask, hey, have you heard from so-and-so lately, knowing that maybe they don't have that same daily connection that they used to have. But as you are tracking these changes, you're updating your love map.
So the last one is deeper emotional exploration. So during calm moments, not necessarily in the midst of a conflict or some tension in the relationship, you might want to sit down and just share some of the emotions or worries or concerns that you might have been experiencing but haven't had the time to talk about or maybe even were worried about sharing with your partner. So an example might be, I've been worried about job security lately.
It's been making me feel anxious when we talk about finances. And so this is getting on to a deeper issue that's not necessarily an issue between the two of you. But it's an issue that you're currently struggling with internally. Man, I have anxiety about finances. I'm worried about this. And letting your partner know helps them to get into that deeper world with you where they have a deeper understanding of you. But then it also opens you up to the possibility of support.
Oh, I didn't know you were worried about finances and job insecurity. Why don't we make sure we sit down and work on your resume and make sure that that's all up to date? And what about if we save up some more money and we have some more money in the bank so that if something does happen, that we'll have an emergency fund. And so that way we'd have more time to find a job if one of us lost a job or something along those lines.
But if you just keep holding that anxiety or that fear or worry in, you're barring your partner from, again, knowing you on that deeper level, but then also being able to bring in the possibility of assistance. And I think a strong love map means that as your partner brings up this feeling of being anxious when they talk about finances, you already know some backstory because you've kept your love map up to date.
You know what they've been through in the past, like maybe a previous layoff that left these lasting fears for them. And so being able to navigate this current worry about job security and the anxiety about finances can be better navigated because you have that previous information from what they've experienced and how really that's still affecting them. So as we look at this love map analogy, your partner continues to change over
time. As you both switch jobs, you lose loved ones, you discover new passions, new hobbies, new excitements, you meet new people and develop new friendships. If your love map just stays static, you can inadvertently lose track of who they're becoming. So you have to think of it as a living document that you both are constantly working on and updating. And the more you practice, the easier it gets to ask meaningful questions and store that information.
And I think this is part of what you hear when people become empty nesters, because along the way, they've been so focused on raising children that they've lost their way with each other. They don't really know each other. They've been living life parallel, but haven't really stayed connected. And so when the children leave, they feel like they don't really have a good love map. They don't really know who that person is. And so they've gotten lost and they've lost track of each other.
So we hope that that has given you some good information about what love maps are and how to build love maps. And in the next episode, we're going to talk more about that. We're going to talk about how to strengthen your love map, as well as common pitfalls and how to avoid them. So tune into the next episode as we continue this idea on love maps. Have a great day. And remember, your mind is a powerful thing. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Mr. and Mrs.
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