Repair Your Relationship, Part 1

It’s not just the big things like fighting and affairs that ruin relationships. Constant exposure to a partner’s criticism, withdrawal, defensiveness, or even contempt over time can completely undermine a relationship, as can the feeling that your partner just doesn’t get you. Maybe your partner continually dismisses or belittles your feelings. Or you find that when things go wrong, your partner never takes any of the responsibility. These kinds of patterns wear you down, push you away from each other, undermine trust and intimacy, and make it difficult to repair any breaches. In our work at EMDR Associates, we often see this type of long-term relationship erosion. If such is the case in your relationship, you may wonder if it’s too late to make repairs, and if not, where to begin.

Too often in relationships, damage occurs because partners experience conflict and hurt each other as a result. A common source of damage identified by Drs. John and Julie Gottman, pre-eminent researchers in what makes relationships work, is unhealthy relationship dynamics including contempt, criticism, defensiveness and stonewalling (shutting down on your partner).

One thing that’s common in this type of relationship erosion is that the partners haven’t shared their inner worlds with each other. In other words, even though they think they know each other, they don’t actually know key things about their partner’s values, hopes, and dreams. And because they really don’t fully understand each other, they react to each other in unhelpful, often hurtful, ways.

Relationship Repair Through Knowing Our Partner?

A good place to begin a relationship repair is getting to know your partner even better than you do now. Each partner in a couple inhabits a world of his or her own. In other words, each member of the couple lives in a separate subjective reality. That world is filled with the partner’s experiences, history, preferences, aversions, pleasures, and much more. The relationship doesn’t erase the separate world of each partner, nor does it knock down the walls. What does happen is that in a relationship, the two worlds come together and coexist side-by-side.

So, when your partner tells you that she feels hurt by something that you said, your sense that it shouldn’t matter or that your partner should realize by now that you don’t have bad intent is irrelevant to your partner’s inner experience. In other words, the dismissal of your partner’s feelings is based on a sense of reality (yours) that your partner can’t experience, just as you can’t experience your partner’s hurt, which is her reality.

If you don’t ask each other sincere questions about each other’s reality, you might have a heck of a fight. Repeat this pattern often enough and you’ll have relationship damage. On the other hand, research shows that people who do ask such questions and try to learn about each other’s world form stronger intimacy. Relationship researchers  John and Julie Gottman call collecting this knowledge “building Love Maps.”

What are Love Maps?

Love Maps are the collections of knowledge you build about your partner and your partner builds about you. They are the basis of your friendship and the foundation of your intimacy. They consist of the facts, both large and small, that help you understand and respond effectively to your partner. For example, is there a specific kind of touch that your partner prefers when needing to be soothed? Or does your partner prefer space? Who is difficult for your partner to spend time with and who is easy? What music makes your partner crazy?   

You may assume that you already know these things or that you’ll naturally pick up this information as the relationship develops, but that’s not always the case. Life can be overwhelming, and its demands can shift your attention away from continuing to learn about each other. And of course, there’s always the possibility that you’ll misinterpret what you see in your partner if you don’t make a deliberate effort. According to Gottman Institute staff writer Ellie Lisitsa, the research demonstrated that emotionally intelligent couples (as opposed to couples in trouble) “made plenty of cognitive room in their minds for their relationship. They remember the major events in each other’s histories, and they keep updating their information as the facts and feelings of their spouse’s world change. They know each other’s goals in life, worries, and dreams. Without such a love map, you can’t know your partner.”

Building Love Maps is a Deliberate Process

To build love maps requires being deliberate about knowing your partner. It means keeping your mind attuned to what is going on with your partner and your relationship. This enables you to notice and remember how your partner is affected by or responds to the ups and downs of the day, acts of kindness, or slights and insults.

Building love maps can also be done purposefully. It requires paying attention and deciding to hold on to the things that help you understand your partner. Asking each other questions that help you know each other can be part of this process. It is wise to regularly set aside time to do this no matter how long you have been together with your partner.

How To Know Your Partner:

As mentioned above, part of building love maps is deliberately adopting a frame of mind in which you are attentive to the small and large facts about your partner. Notice and remember what hurts, what gives rise to a smile, favorite foods, most appreciated gifts, importance attached to birthdays and anniversaries, a preference for planning or spontaneity and so on. And realize that just because you knew something a long time ago doesn’t mean it still holds. Your partner may have appreciated gold necklaces for presents 10 years ago, but now she might be ready for something else. His favorite food may no longer be steak . You need to find out . The point is to deliberately observe and retain information about your partner’s current  inner world. This requires you to be curious, nonjudgemental, and open.

Even simpler, if you want to build love maps, ask each other questions. This can be fun and informative and it can open you to a whole new world of understanding about your partner and your relationship. The Gottman’s suggest the “love map game.” You play it by answering 60 questions about each other. Each correct answer gets points. The winner is the one who gets the most points. Repeat the game to improve your love maps and have some fun while doing so. Here are a few of the questions:

1. Name my two closest friends?

2. What is my favorite musical group, composer, or instrument?

3. What was I wearing when we first met?

4. What stresses am I facing right now?

5. What is one of my greatest fears or disaster scenarios?

What Happens When You Don’t Build Love Maps?

A major consequence of not knowing each other through love maps is that you may decrease the life of your relationship. That may sound drastic, but research shows that when partners do not have intimate knowledge of each other:

·      Intimacy and emotional connection are significantly reduced

·      Stress and conflict are much harder to navigate

·      Partners are less likely to appreciate each other’s individuality and see each other’s strengths

·      Partners and the relationship become more vulnerable to external stressors and less able to

support each other

·      Life changes are much more difficult to navigate

·      Partners engage in play less and have less fun

All of the items on this list put stress on the relationship and on each partner and can easily make it more difficult to stay together. Put several of these items together and you may well have a breakup.

Get Help to Know Your Partner

EMDR Associates can help you discover the questions you need to answer to know your partner. We specialize in working with couples to help them know each other better, improve their communication and reduce conflict. We are Gottman Relationship counseling trained and utilize a variety of modalities to assist couples in improving their relationships.