Last week I outlined the 6 indicators in a relationship leading toward divorce from John Gottman’s book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. This week, let’s explore Principle 1: Enhance Your Love Maps.
They are:
- a harsh start up to a discussion
- what he calls the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse – criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling
- flooding, being overwhelmed by negativity
- a person’s body language
- failed repair attempts and
- bad memories – when history gets rewritten for the worse. But more importantly for Gottman, and certainly for me, are the indicators that marriages will work. They will not only survive but will thrive.
How to Enhance Your Love Maps
For the next few weeks, I’ll explore one of his seven principles starting today with Principle #1 Enhance Your Love Maps. Remember his earlier statement that satisfying marriages are built on friendship – the mutual respect for and enjoyment of each other’s company. He defines a love map as being intimately familiar with your partner’s world. Obviously if you don’t know your partner very well, how can you really love them? His point being, the more you know and understand your partner, the easier it is to stay connected when major life changes occur, for example, having a baby, or a new job, illness, aging parents, moving to a new home, city, country, retirement , or just the passage of time – you get the picture.
Exercises in Enhancing Your Love Maps
To get a sense of the quality of one’s current love map, he lists 20 statements that partners would indicate as being true or false; for example, I can tell you some of my partner’s life dreams. 10 or more true answers indicate a pretty strong love map; less than 10 means you might want to learn more about your partner. He then goes on to outline three exercises geared toward enhancing one’s “love map” – the knowledge and understanding of one’s partner.
Exercise 1:
The love map 20 questions game. Partners randomly choose 20 numbers between 1 and 60 and then match the numbers to the 60 questions and have a go. For example, a favorite number of mine is 4 – the matching question is: name one of your partner’s hobbies. That would be an easy one for me, but some of the questions are certainly harder than others. There is a scoring mechanism to indicate the winner but the purpose of the game is not so much on winning as it being a fun way to learn more about one’s partner.
Exercise 2:
Asking open-ended questions, that is, a question that can’t be answered by yes or no. Again as an example, using question #4: How do you think your life would have been different if you lived 100 years ago? That could be an interesting one! Mind you I was living 100 years ago (almost) so easy for me. lol
Exercise 3:
Who am I? The challenge here is to answer the questions in the five different areas as candidly as possible and then share with your partner. A bit heavier sledding here. Again using the number 4.
- My triumphs and strivings – Question 4. Did your parents show that they loved you? How? Was affection readily expressed in your family? If not, what are the effects and implications of this for your marriage?
- Injuries and healing – What difficult events or periods have you gone through? #4. How did you gird and protect yourself against this ever happening again?
- My emotional world – #4. What differences exist between you and your spouse in the area of expressing emotion? What is behind these differences? What are the implications of these differences for you?
- My mission and legacy – #4. What legacy would you like to leave when you die?
And finally
- Who I want to become – #4. What demons in yourself have you had to fight? Or still have to fight?
Gottman ends this chapter by saying: “For all of their power, love maps are only a first step. Happily married couples don’t “just” know each other. They build on and enhance this knowledge in many important ways. For starters, they use their love maps to express not only their understanding of each other but their fondness and admiration as well – my second principle.”
Next week I’ll take a look at Principle #2 – Nurture your fondness and admiration.
