Love Maps

I read a couple more chapters of John Gottman’s book, The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work, this week and I have learned so much.

In this video, Dr. Gottman talks about what is lacking from many failed marriages:

The last line of this video is frustrating because it gets cut off right when he is about to tell us what we can do to fix our relationships. Luckily, the book and resources I have found give a lot of information about that.

As Dr. Gottman pointed out. These couples had nothing. They didn’t have strong love maps or fondness and admiration for each other.

The chapters I read are about enhancing what Gottman calls “love maps,” a “term for the part of your brain where you store all the relevant information about your partner’s life” (Gottman, p. 54). Gottman has found out that having a detailed love map is a good indicator of a strong marriage.

How well do you know your spouse? What is going on in their life currently? Who irritates your spouse the most? Who is your spouse’s best friend? What are your partner's dreams and aspirations?

How well you know the answers to these questions depends on the strength of your love map.

Another important principle that Gottman teaches is that it is important to nurture your fondness and admiration for your spouse.

Every relationship starts out with fondness and admiration, but as we get bogged down by life, it is easy to forget to nurture our fondness. As we go through trials with our spouse, it is easy to see the negative and to start casting our partner in a negative light.

Whether we have a weak or strong love map and whether we have mostly positive or negative thoughts about our spouse, I think it is important to be intentional about strengthening these things. How can we do that?

Luckily, The Gottman Institute has many resources, many of them free, that we can use to help strengthen our relationships.

I found this wonderful (free!) app that is created just for this purpose.

It can be found here: https://www.gottman.com/couples/apps/

This app has different sections with “cards” to help you strengthen your relationship in different ways. I downloaded it and I have already gotten so much out of it.

To help enhance your love maps, the “love maps” section and “open-ended questions” section have many cards to help you get conversations started so you can get to know your spouse better.

The “give appreciation” section gives you activities to do to help foster fondness and admiration in your marriage.

Check out the app, set aside time to get to know your spouse more, and see how much it can help your relationship grow!