Love Maps: Week 6

After reading the title of the first principle, “Enhance Your Love Maps,” in Gottman’s book, I was intrigued.  What is a love map?  A love map is the area of the brain where you store the relevant information about your spouse.  It reminds me of intentional living.  We make room in our brains for important information about our spouses for us to refer to in the future.  This information helps us to really get to know our spouses on a deeper level and by doing so we come to really love the true them.  According to Gottman, it is with this knowledge that we will have the strength to withstand the storms that may come to our marriages.  I can see how this would be true.  If we are intentionally trying to learn about our spouse, find out how their day went, and keep up with likes and dislikes, it can only serve to help us when trials arise and keep the connection we have alive.

Working on our love maps requires some sacrifice on our parts.  We have to be willing to invest the time and effort it will take to get to know another person on a deep level.  Marriage can be a series of negotiations over who sleeps on what side of the bed, who pays the bills, who takes care of the trash, who plans date night, what cereal are we going to buy, how are we dividing up household chores, and other tasks that a marriage will face. As we work together to negotiate, having a love map helps us to understand the other person better and see where they are coming from.  It will keep the negotiations on a more stable level instead of turning them into a more difficult challenge.  Goddard stated that “marriage is God’s finishing school.”  As we work through our trials and challenges in marriage, we learn to look for the good instead of the irritations.

I really liked this quote from our readings this week,

“Avoid ‘ceaseless pinpricking.’ Don’t be too critical of each other’s faults. Recognize that none of us is perfect. We all have a long way to go to become as Christlike as our leaders have urged us to become.

“ ‘Ceaseless pinpricking,’ as President Spencer W. Kimball called it, can deflate almost any marriage. … Generally each of us is painfully aware of our weaknesses, and we don’t need frequent reminders. Few people have ever changed for the better as a result of constant criticism or nagging. If we are not careful, some of what we offer as constructive criticism is actually destructive”

                    - Elder Joe J. Christensen

This is a great reminder to look for the good and try to work through the irritations. It gives us the opportunity to work on our love maps.  I know I struggle at times to share the more detailed information about my life and my world.  My husband and I have been married for almost 23 years.  There have been years where I did not share some of my more personal thoughts and feelings, mostly because I felt embarrassed by them.  I could feel the distance between us and I did not like how it felt.  I have personally been working harder to be more open and willing to share my struggles and dreams.  It has made a huge difference in how I view my husband and how I view my marriage.  I do still feel embarrassed to share some of my feelings, but I do it anyway and it is becoming easier.  I can see how the use of a love map can greatly enhance a marriage for the better.  Does it mean that all the work is done?  No, it will be an ongoing process to always discover something new about our spouse.

References

Gottman, J. M. (2015) The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.  Harmony Books. New York, NY.

Goddard, H. W. (2009) Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage: Eternal Doctrines that Change Relationships. Joymap Publishing. Cedar Hills, UT.