Episode 158: Build And Update Your Love Map
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Introduction
Hey, hello there. Welcome back to the show. You’re listening to podcast episode number 158. Build and maintain a love map.
I’m so excited to be wrapping up this month of episodes on relationships. How has it been for you? Have you enjoyed the last few episodes, focusing on your romantic relationship? We’ve talked about 15 of the lessons that Dave and I have learned during our 15 years of marriage.
We talked about sex and intimacy and orgasms. Did you miss that episode? You may want to go back and listen, if you did. We talked about reducing friction in your relationship with a few intentional practices that you can implement right away.
And in today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about building and maintaining a love map. And I’m going to explain more about what that looks like in just a minute.
Sponsor: COCONU
Now, all of these episodes, including today’s have been sponsored by Coconu, which is a USDA, organic, all natural, personal lubricant. It’s my very favorite. From the way the company was started, a husband and wife who were looking for a body friendly, organic sustainable solution to add a little bit of that smell in the bedroom without sacrificing their values of sustainability and intentionality and making sure that the things they put in and on their body were made of amazing, healthy body friendly ingredients.
When they couldn’t find something on the market, they set out to create their own. And Coconu was born.
I’ve talked about the three different varieties that Coconu has available. There’s a water-based formula. That’s perfect if you’re using any type of latex protection, there’s the traditional coconut oil based gives you that silky smooth feeling, never sticky, never tacky. It never has any sort of a weird residue. And then there’s also a CBD infuse that can add a little bit of extra enhancement, or it can help you relax a little bit. If you find yourself tensing up sometimes in intimate situations.
Everything about the company–from the way they share education and information online and social media to their totally organic, all natural formulation to even the totally plastic free packaging that’s made in the U S with sugar cane–Coconu was founded on the idea that couples should be able to find products to live healthier, happier lives, both inside and outside the bedroom.
If you haven’t yet, given it a try, I encourage you to check it out. You can use the link in my show notes and use the code LIVEFREE for 15% off your entire order. We’re coming up on the holiday season and some Coconu oil would make a perfect, flirty and fun stocking stuffer for you and your partner.
Again, that code is LIVEFREE for 15% off.
Now let’s head into this episode with a quick segment called Pause for a Poem.
Pause For A Poem
Bring me your pain, love. Spread
it out like fine rugs, silk sashes,
warm eggs, cinnamon
and cloves in burlap sacks. Show me
the detail, the intricate embroidery
on the collar, tiny shell buttons,
the hem stitched the way you were taught,
pricking just a thread, almost invisible.
Unclasp it like jewels, the gold
still hot from your body. Empty
your basket of figs. Spill your wine.
That hard nugget of pain, I would suck it,
cradling it on my tongue like the slick
seed of pomegranate. I would lift it
tenderly, as a great animal might
carry a small one in the private
cave of the mouth.
– Basket of Figs by Ellen Bass
Such beautiful words. The imagery of inviting someone. I imagine this to be my partner, to bring me his pain, to spread it all out, to empty your basket of figs, spill your wine. Let me hold it for you. Let me be here with you. The intimacy of that, the idea that we can be there for another so fully is a perfect introduction to the idea of building and maintaining our love maps.
Building and Maintaining Love Maps
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Now the phrase Love Map is from the Gottman Institute on relationships. One of the more significant and widely used theories created by the research of the Gottman Institute is the idea of a sound relationship house. This is from Dr. John Gottman’s book, the seven principles for making marriage work.
Now these seven principles are all connected to each other. The walls of the house. There’s all these things that go on inside it. The very first level though, level one, the base, the foundation of the sound relationship house is the love map. And the love map is simply this knowing the little things about your partner’s inner and outer life creates a strong foundation for your friendship and intimacy.
Do any of you remember the days before our phones had maps on them that updated automatically by satellite, the days when cars or GPS systems were either implemented in the car itself, or you had like this separate Garmin and it would tell you where to go? You know, the little voice would talk to you like a Google map does on your phone.
Now, these maps, however, weren’t updated automatically. They were like software that needed to be updated with little disc. And I remember, when I was a teenager, that my dad, once every year or two would buy the little updated map and he’d take out the old map and he’d put in the new little map into the GPS system that was like stuck under the windshield in the car so that when we got in the car for our road trip or to head down to the lake or up to the mountains, that the roads would be updated accordingly.
It helped with the new road work and where things had been changed and moved and all of that, it also helped with where the gas stations were and where the grocery stores were. And, you know, you could search on an old Garmin the way that you now can with this instant update system on our phones, it just, didn’t used to be automatic.
You used to have to actually go buy the updated map and replace it, of course. It would be historically accurate for paper maps as well that an original map would be drawn and then as new things were added and new cities were built and old cities were abandoned, and earthquakes and floods and tornadoes changed the landscape and the topography maps would be updated as technology increased and we were able to see a little bit differently.
Maybe we got some satellites up there and we could see that where the pieces that people had been counting off in their map making was not entirely accurate. And so things have gone back and changed over time.
How many of you had a map growing up that had the USSR as one of the countries or that had Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia on the map? Of course those divisions and countries and the makeup of our world, even though the actual topography and land itself may not have changed dramatically, the dividing lines, and the ways that things are organized politically have changed a lot, even since I was alive.
Any of us would think it is silly to assume that a map would stay constant over time. We, you know, in talking about this, listening to me even just mentioned this you’d think of course, things are going to change. New roads are going to be built. Old roads are going to be abandoned. New gas stations will pop up. They’re going to add a McDonald’s and a Subway at every single exit across the entire country.
You also probably can recognize how important it is when you’re trying to get somewhere. When you’re on a journey, when you’re on a road trip, that you have an accurate map that you’ve updated to know where you’re actually going. That if you take the wrong road and just keep driving that way, assuming that things are the same as they used to be, that you might not end up where you expect.
Now, how does this apply to our relationship? Well, when I was 22, I was a missionary for the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints, living in Buenos Aires, Argentina. And in one of the final conferences that I went to with, you know, huge gathering of hundreds of evangelical missionaries. Our president of the area–the mission president–gave a talk, a presentation about marriage, which I thought was a really interesting topic because we were all young. We were all focused on, you know, preaching and serving the people in Argentina.
Our current focus was definitely not supposed to be romantic relationships. However, the piece of advice that this mission president shared in that conference is something that I have remembered for now, almost 20 years. He said that the most important thing that you can do in a romantic relationship in a marriage is to learn to love your partner and then to love them, and then to learn to love them and then to love them, and then to learn to love them and then to love them.
At the time I remember thinking he’s being a little redundant. He said that same sentence three times in a row. I didn’t really understand. And it wasn’t until I got married and thought that I knew so much about this person who I had fallen in love with and wanted to spend the rest of my life with. And I had learned to love him so well.
And then we changed. Our life changed. The season of our life changes. Our circumstances changed. And I remembered this advice that you need to learn, to love them and love them, and then learn to love them again so that you can love them, just like your Garmin map system and our ever-updating Google maps, our partner and our relationship is ever changing.
I know I, myself am ever-changing and the idea that we can and are invited to and have the opportunity to willingly and intentionally update those maps as we go along is really important and exciting.
The Gottman Institute talks about the idea of a love map as your understanding of your partner’s life.
How well do you know your partner? Not the person that you married five years ago or 10 years ago or 35 years ago, but the person that you’re married to today. How well do you know their hopes and dreams? How well do you know the ins and outs of their life?
Do you know what projects they’re working on in the office or in their business? Do you know one of the hobbies that they’ve been thinking about taking up and aren’t really sure about how to begin? Do you know what keeps them up at night? What they’re worried about? Do you know if they had an extra thousand dollars sitting around what they might want to do with it, how they would want to use it or save it or spend it or share it.
According to John Gottman’s research, one of the most important factors in a couple staying together and staying happy together in the longterm is what’s called marital friendship. It’s the idea that these couples know each other well and that they like each other.
When you choose to spend your life with someone in a sustained long-term relationship, you’re handing over a map of yourself, of your past, your present and your future. And you are receiving the same from your partner. It includes who you are now, who you will be, who you hope to be. It includes your fears and your desires, your dreams. It’s an important task and responsibility for members of the relationship to continue to add details and make adjustments to that map as necessary.
One of the best ways to make these updates is to ask thoughtful and open-ended questions to have these conversations where you’re able to talk about each other more than just the logistics of daily living and the kids and the bills and the mortgage and the car that needs to be repaired and the dog that needs to be walked.
What about the idea that you had that you’ve been excited about? What about the memory that you had of your childhood that’s been making you smile or making you sad? If you feel like your operating system of your partner might be a little bit out of date, like it’s been a while since you sort of got in there to discover what they’re loving right now, how to better love them, whether that’s the things that they’re interested in right now, if their hobbies have shifted and changed over time.
Whether it has to do with their hopes and dreams and goals, the big things that they’re anticipating for the future, or the small things that happen throughout their day that you might not know about, one of the best ways to update our love maps with our partner is to simply ask questions.
And to that end, I have pulled some questions from the Gottman Institute website that they recommend for this love map update.
I’ve created a simple PDF. That’s a free download. You can go to the show notes at livefreecreative.co/podcast. Look for this episode, number 158, and you can download the simple one page of questions. I’m going to read them to you here, but if it’s easier for you to just print it off so that you have them available, you can sit down, make some time this week or this weekend to have a conversation with your partner and find out, maybe some of these you think you can answer right away. Maybe some of them, you can’t. It’s a good way to have a little conversation starter and see how you’re doing as far as understanding and knowing each other. Now they’re not super deep questions.
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Let me read them for you. And I want you to think as I’m reading them, if you could answer it right now, or if you actually, maybe you do need to have a little sit-down chat to update your love map.
1. Name your partners two closest friends.
2. What does your partner value most in a friendship?
3. Nam one of your partner’s current hobbies.
4. What stresses your partner out right now? (Maybe it’s you asking these questions? 🙂 )
5. Describe in detail what your partner did today or yesterday? (I love that question because it just gets to the minutia of our everyday lives. But that’s what we’re living. If we don’t know about the little things happening in our everyday lives, then it’s definitely going to be harder to care about the big things. The little things are what make up the life.
6. What is your partner’s fondest unrealized dream?
7. What is one of your partner’s greatest fears or disaster scenarios?
8. What is your partner’s favorite way to spend an evening? (Maybe what your partner loved to do three years ago, their favorite pastime a few years ago, has changed. Maybe that’s different. Now, maybe the things you loved to do for fun three years ago have changed. Maybe they’re different now. See how this update is really helpful?)
9. What is one of your partner’s favorite ways to be soothed? I think that is such an interesting question, because it feels quite intimate, quite personal.
10. Name a household task that your partner dislikes.
11. What is your partner’s ideal weekend?
12. Would you know what to pack for your partner for a weekend? (Hm. I was talking to my older sister on the phone a couple of days ago and I read her those questions and we talked through them and she said, I think that I know most of them, but there’s a couple that I kind of would need to check in and find out about. I thought it was interesting. She mentioned that one of her husband’s unrealized dreams was realized in the last couple years. And she said that was sort of our big, our big dream. And I don’t really know if there’s another one or what else we’re looking forward to.
And I think, I mean that how awesome, right? To have a big unrealized dream that is realized and have a dream come true. And is there something now more something that you’re looking forward to or something that’s maybe not a specific like box check, but an ongoing practice or an ongoing ideal for your lifestyle, your family culture, the hopes and dreams that you have individually, as well as collective.)
Just as I was preparing for this episode as well, Dave and I went on a date night and we used the drive time. We went to see the indigo girls live. They were in Charlottesville, Virginia, and it was so fun. We saw them in concert, in the same venue, pre COVID. And so this felt like a fun, full circle to be back to experience, live music again, it was really wonderful.
And we used the drive. It’s about an hour drive. We used the drive time to update our own love maps, and I pulled some of the questions from this. Sheet and pose them to Dave and learned a little bit more about the things that he’s excited about right now about the projects he’s working on at the office about his day to day activities when we’re not together, when he’s at the office or at the gym, or when I’m at the office and he’s with the kids.
There is a closeness that comes with that marital friendship with knowing each other well and not having known each other. Because you want spent a lot of time together, but knowing each other well, right now, I know that life gets complicated. That relationships get complicated, both from the inside and from the outside and building and updating your love maps of each other can help keep things in their relationship more simple because you’re on the same page. Literally, you can see each other clearly.
And when we see each other, clearly we’re much more likely to love each other. Well, when Dave and I were first dating, at some point, I had asked him about one of his favorite foods. And I don’t know if it was because we, maybe you were at the fair or if he had just had a corn dog recently, he told me that he really liked corn dogs and you know, corn dogs are great, right?
I mean, he wasn’t wrong that corn dogs are amazing, but when his birthday rolled around his 27th birthday, I threw him a corn dog party. I had zeroed in that he said he loved corn dogs and taken it to the extreme. We had all different kinds of corndogs and dips and of course drinks and a chocolate cake. The corn dog party has gone down in history in our relationship.
It was fun. And it, you know, it’s nice to have a theme. And it was also interesting to note that a couple of weeks after the party. I asked Dave if he wanted to go get a corn dog and he was like, no, you know, I’m, I think I might be over corn dogs. Like I might be done with those now. I don’t know if it was the party that sort of pushed him over the edge or if, you know, he had loved corndogs. He just had liked him and they’d popped into his head when I initially asked him that question.
We also kind of joke about the same thing that happened when Dave was himself on a mission. He was a missionary in Romania. And sometime, you know, in the months before he left, his mom had asked him about what candy he liked. And he said, Wait for it, Baby Ruth. I don’t know who answers the question, which is your favorite candy bar with the answer Baby Ruth. But. There it is. Dave answered he loved Baby Ruth candy.
So for the entirety of his two year mission, every time his sweet mother sent him a package, she included baby Ruth candy bars, whether they were many bars or big bars, she always tossed in some Baby Ruth, which is such a generous and wonderful way to celebrate him.
And he simply didn’t ever update her that he had moved on from Baby Ruth candy bar.
It’s okay for us to change. It’s okay for us to grow and to make new decisions and to update our preferences. I think I’ve mentioned in the show a couple of weeks ago that we were about five or six years into our marriage when casually one night at dinner, Dave mentioned that he didn’t really like berries. He didn’t like berry fruit. He liked watermelon and he liked apples and bananas, but he didn’t like raspberries or strawberries. He felt like they were too sour.
So I love fruit. And I was the primary meal provider at our home. I was making all of our meals and I often served berries because they’re high in antioxidants. And they’re delicious as far as I’m concerned.
I laughed thinking back on all of the times that he had, you know, eaten these berries or maybe gently pushed them to the side of his plate after I served him because he’s not really a berry person. That’s okay. It was so nice to know, and to update my map with maybe avoid berries.
A few years later, when we were discussing what we wanted to do for a date night, Dave mentioned that a comedian was coming to a nearby town and that he really loved standup comedy. I I really think this is the first time that I had heard that Dave was really into comedy and he was following the comedy scene and he was following along with the careers of a couple of different comedians that he really liked. And he was super excited about that idea of going to this stand-up comedy show.
I was thrilled to find out about another hobby that he had, and that has since become something that we enjoy together as well. It’s been so nice to update our love maps as we’ve grown, as individuals, as our relationship has grown.
I think it’s really important to remember in relationships as well as just in life, generally, that one of the only constants is going to be change and transformation just as the world turns and the seasons change. And we get a little bit older and hopefully a little bit wiser. And our jobs change and shift and our roles change and shift. And if your parents, you know, that as soon as you got things figured out about every six to eight weeks, I’d say something major changes in the lives of one of our children or all three of them at the same time.
And we’re, we’re continually needing to update. And rather than resenting that and feeling annoyed that we can’t quite get our finger on it, that things don’t stay the same. It’s really helpful to update our. Software our own brain capacity to understand and expect change and transformation as a baseline constant in our lives.
And to see that reflected in our partners rather than to say, Hey, you didn’t use to like that, or you didn’t used to be like that, or this is something that I thought I could count on in you because you used to be this way or that way to understand that just as we are changing and our lives are changing, our partner is also continually changing their likes and dislikes their interests, their goals, and dreams building and updating our understanding of each other.
Our love map is one way that we can grow and change together rather than growing and changing a part, learning to love and loving, and then learning to love and loving, and then learning to love and loving is how our relationship maintains its strength. Even as everything around it changes.
Conclusion
I hope that this episode has given you some ideas, even just for simple questions that you can ask.
And remember, I have that PDF available as a free download head to the show notes livefreecreative.co/podcast. You can look for episode 158 and download and print it out, take it to your next date night or set a few minutes on the calendar this week that you can sit down with your partner and ask each other these questions, quiz yourself, quiz each other, get to know each other just a little bit better so that you continue to strengthen the foundation of your relationship and your marital friends.
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