Enhancing our Love Maps

What is a love map?

We all know what a road map is and why we would need to use one? What is a love map? its when emotionally intelligent couples are very familiar with each other's world. Dr. John M. Gottman Ph. D calls this richly detailed love map. Dr. John M. Gottman Ph.D in his book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work he says "Couples who have detailed love maps of each other's world are far better prepared to cope with stressful events and conflict."(Gottman, 2015, pg 54)

 How to Enhance our Love Maps?

Valentines day is this week and a great time to remind ourselves of how to Enhance our Love maps with our spouse. Dr. Gottman says "Getting to know your spouse better and sharing your inner self with your partner is an ongoing process. In fact, it's a lifelong process." (Gottman, 2015, Pg 66) In Chapter Four of this book he gives us exercises, games to do/play with our spouse.  I was so moved by this chapter that I started to take the quiz and had to share it via a live with my Facebook world.

 

Nurturing Your Fondness and Admiration!

 One Way I have insisted in my own marriage to Nurture our Fondness and Admiration for one another is frequent date nights without children. As much as I love doing things with my whole family I really do love the quality time with just my husband. I also have instituted after bed time for my children time for him and I to talk and catch up from the craziness of our days. Our topic of conversations can be about his worries as people retire from his company of what they expect from him and what changes that means to us as a family, to my frustrations of the day home with the children and to help them be the best we can teach them to be. I started this because I was feeling very neglected and last place in his world. The dates happen maybe once a month which is more than it used since having our children. The time at night wasn't happening at all because we were just so tired after busy days doing what is required of us in our roles of this family. Even the time at night doesn't happen every night because some nights we are still just to tired to do so we still do it a couple times a week which is huge to me. When we first met we started out as friends and became super inseparable people were kind of calling us a nickname of our two names combined like Paulerlee. My husband is my male best friend because I also have a few female BFF's and he is the love of my life, and my forever companion. I realized there were changes needed to continue to help us feel this way about each other always wanting to be with each other.
In Chapter 5 in Dr. Gottman's book covers this topic. "Fondness and admiration are two of the most crucial elements in a rewarding and long lasting romance." (Gottman, 2015, pg 69). He also says that "fondness and admiration are antidotes for contempt."(Gottman, 2015, pg 71). He also has exercises to do with our spouses as well. He goes on to say "The better in touch you are with your deep seated positive feelings for each other, the less likely that you will act with contempt toward your spouse when you have a difference of opinion."(Gottman, 2015, pg 74).


 In H. Wallace Goddard's Book Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage this quote really stood out to me "Consider setting your mind and heart to act lovingly toward your partner. Stretch yourself to do that longer than you have in the past whether an hour, a day, a week or a month. Make up your mind to see your partner positively and to act kindly." (Goddard, 2009. pg 53).

Sometime we get so frustrated we forget to act kindly towards our spouse because we believe they will just stick by us through thick and thin. Well after last weeks post after being abused I don't blame people for leaving their spouse but understanding them is the best and we can do that by becoming experts in how to work on our relationship with them rather than retreating and finding a new set of troubles in a new/different relationship.

In Conclusion

I started reading this book almost a month ago because I wanted to help myself become a better mom. But as I was reading one of the Habits Dr. Meg Meeker talks about in this book ties greatly into our class and this weeks topic. She breaks down each habit in this book into ways we can make the habit stick. Dr. Meeker is a pediatrician but she says that Habit 7 can be used in any relationship. Habit 7 is Give and Get Love in Healthy Ways  she says there are four ways for this to happen 1 is to take calculated risks, don't take loved ones so personally, learn to read loved ones, and let them read you and express love even when you don't feel like it. I particularly think one and three really applied here. She says "Taking charge in our love relationships means that many times we will "go first." We will be the ones to tell loved ones how we fee, we will apologize first, and we will let them know what we need." (Meeker, 2011, pg 142). What better way to Nurture our Fondness and Admiration for one another is this. When we are seeking to learn to read one another and let them read us she says "The best way to express love is to figure out what, specifically, makes a loved one feel loved." (Meeker, 2011, pg 145 para #2). She goes to to say "We need to do some investigative work. We need to watch them and see what makes them feel good about their relationships with us." (Meeker, 2011, pg 145, para #3).

One way to make what Dr. Meeker says happen is to read The Five Love Languages as a couple discuss it and take the quiz and find your love language and then take action to implement it in our lives.

References

 Goddard, H. W. (2009). Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage. Cedar Hills: Joymap.
Gottman, J. M., & Silver, N. (2015). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. New York: Harmony Books.
Meeker,Meg. (2011). The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers Reclaiming Our Passion, Purpose and Sanity, New York: Ballantine Books.