Enhancing Love Maps (week 6)

A few months ago I had a full blown melt down. Things have been crazy in our family life the past couple years and we (my husband and I) have been in crisis mode. Of course my hubby was the one I chose to melt down on. It seems like we always go to the one who loves us no matter what, that we feel safest with to let them have it. I informed him that he did not know me at all and had no idea how I was feeling or thinking. I said the unthinkable, "We aren't even friends anymore." Of course he is my best friend but something felt like it was missing.

It was easy to fall into a routine and just assume we knew what was going on with the other. After being married for 26 years one might think you know everything about each other. But people change and evolve. We have hopes and dreams and worries and fears. We question things we used to be so sure about. If we aren't constantly asking open ended questions of our loved one, striving to know and staying deeply connected, we can drift apart. Even when we live in the same house, eat meals together each day and sleep in the same bed each night. 

The solution is to start your marriage with a detailed love map. This is advice from Dr. John Gottman. He says a love map is the term he uses for the part of the brain that stores relevant info about your loved ones life. Having a detailed love map means we are intimately familiar with our partners world. I feel like hubs and I started out that way. Heck that's how we have weathered 8 kids and 26 years together! But what I was telling him that day of my emotional melt down was we needed to enhance our love map. I hadn't read John Gottman's book yet but thats exactly what our marriage needed and what I was wanting. I needed to feel like we understand each other, where we are now, today, intimately. I wanted to feel that we were emotionally reconnected. We have made a few adjustments, such as, going to bed at the same time and having heartfelt talks each night before going to sleep. We are now greeting each other warmly when he walks in the door from work instead of me slamming him with all the yucky stuff that has happened during my day. We now enjoy catching up while we fix dinner together.