How to stay emotionally connected as a couple
Have you ever wondered why some couples manage to grow closer over time, while others grow apart? Becoming distant and moving away from each other is an issue that I see time and time again whilst working with couples in clinical practice. So, how can you maintain and further develop closeness with your partner? For the answers, I am going to turn to relationships expert, Dr John Gottman. According to Gottman, the couples who are most likely to enjoy a lasting emotional connection are the ones who build and continually update detailed “love maps”.
Before I explain exactly what a ‘love map’ is and how you can start doing this today, I want to preface this by saying that all relationships take work, yet in our romantic ones we can tend to forget this. We can forget that we need to make time and space for them, to nurture and invest in them. To really be in them.
Often the difference between closeness and distance is about little changes; tiny daily adjustments that you can make. So, let’s discover a small tweak you can start to apply to work towards growing together, rather than apart.
What is a ‘love map’?
Gottman defines a love map as the “part of your brain where you store all the relevant information about your partner’s life”. Essentially, love maps are about knowing your partner’s inner world, in detail and constantly updating that knowledge. None of us can assume that because we knew what the map looked like five years ago, it still looks that way today.
This means taking a genuine interest in your partner; really tuning into them and their individual preferences, quirks, fears, dreams and stress triggers. For all of us, pressures, setbacks, wins and opportunities are always shifting. Thus, getting to know your partner needs to be seen as a life long process. Maintaining good knowledge of who your partner is fosters a stronger emotional connection between you and the stronger this connection is, the more rewarding, profound and satisfying your relationship will be.
Why do they matter?
So why are love maps so important? According to research, couples that are in the habit of keeping up to date with each other’s inner worlds are better equipped to manage the rollercoaster of life. Take, for example, the birth of a first child. This can be a very testing time for any relationship. Studies have shown that for 67% of couples, parenthood coincided with a significant dip in marital satisfaction. The other 33% of couples however, reported either an increase in or stability of satisfaction. So what was the difference in these two groups? The satisfied couples displayed a greater awareness of their partners in comparison to the dissatisfied couples. Essentially, the glue that holds a partnership together, particularly in trying times, is the habit of staying up to date with each other’s emotions and experiences. That is, each other’s love maps.
Gottman explains, “the experience of parenthood is so profound that your whole notion of who you are and what you value gets reshuffled. Staying on top of how their significant other is changing enables couples to go through the transformation to parenthood together, without losing sight of each other or their marriage.”
He continues that “having a baby is just one life event that can cause couples to lose their way without a detailed love map. A job shift, a move, illness, retirement or even just the passage of time can have the same effect. But the more you know and understand about each other, the easier it is to keep connected as life swirls around you.”
How do you know if this is you?
As I stated, this is a skill that all relationships need to develop, but you might be in dire need of a love map work up if you’ve started to notice that you only know very basic, superficial details about each other’s likes, dislikes, hopes and dreams. I’ll give you some examples:
Your hubby loves a certain type of music but you’re not aware of what musicians he loves the most.
Your wife has found a new circle of friends, but you’re not sure what she does with them or what their names are.
Your partner is having some major issues with a colleague at work, but you’re a little blurry on the details.
What do relationship ‘masters’ look like?
Gottman refers to couples who have really healthy, close and loving relationship as ‘masters’. This is what being a master of love maps looks like:
You’re aware of your partner’s short AND long-term career goals, as well as how they are feeling about their current role these days.
You are able to surprise your partner with the food they enjoy, because you’re aware of some of their current favourite dishes.
You know about the greatest periods of stress or trauma in your partners life and you understand how these experiences impact on their current relationships.
More than this, masters are able to sustain real personal insight, ensuring that their conversations extend beyond the superficial and into the meaningful. Gottman suggests thinking about questions to ask your partner, such as: “How are you feeling about parenthood these days?” or “What’s the hardest thing about work at the moment?” Also, ensure that you’re up to date with the present cast of characters in your partner’s world and that you’re aware of what your partners is excited about, or proud of and what their current worries or pressure points are.
If you’re already in this category (go you guys!) then Gottman recommends deepening that knowledge even more by the act of journaling. He even suggests some possible writing prompts that you can then share with one another:
What life experiences would you like to have (which haven’t taken place yet?)
How was affection expressed in your family when you were growing up? How do you think this effects your relationship today
What demons in yourself have you overcome? What ones are you still fighting?
Get started now.
The Gottman’s have developed a free app which helps you to start asking each other questions again. It involves a series of open-ended questions to help rebuild your connection and allows you to start updating your psychological road maps.
**You can download their “Card Decks” app and simply click on the “Love Maps” icon to access these helpful questions**
The whole idea is that you do this together, see it as a fun game to play (the key word here is fun, this is not a competition!!!) and see how many of the questions you know the answer to. As to the ones you don’t, this is an exciting opportunity to learn something new about your partner.
Here are some examples of the questions you will find:
“What personal improvements does your partner want to make in his or her life?”
“What is your partners greatest fear?”
“Which people does your partner most admire in the world? Name two.”
So, get downloading, because this is a great first step in rebuilding that lost connection and for those of you that are already have a pretty great one, it’s a wonderful little tool to help you keep updating and discovering new parts of your partner.
As Gottman reminds us: “Without a [detailed] love map, you can’t really know your spouse. And if you don’t really know someone, how can you truly love them?”.
