How a Love Map Can Help Your Relationship Thrive

Love maps aren't actual maps. Rather, they're a concept created by clinical relationship psychologists Drs. John and Julie Gottman, who have done significant research around relationships and what makes them work. The point of a love map is to help you better understand your partner(s) and strengthen your relationship as a result.

Put most simply, a love map is a place in your brain where you store all the information about your partner and their life, as defined in John Gottman's book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.

"The idea is that in order to have a healthy relationship, you must take the time to intentionally ask questions and explore topics that will help you deeply understand your partner’s inner world," says Certified Sex and Relationship Therapist and coach Kaylee Rose Friedman. A therapist certified in Gottman Couples Therapy, she explains that "love Maps are not actually a literal map, but more of a concept to help you understand your partner more fully." They're one of nine elements of Gottman's concept "The Sound relationship House."

Ahead, we'll look at how love maps are formed, including the key components of them, why they're important, how to create them, and how to build better ones.

How Are Love Maps Formed?

Love maps function through communication, curiosity, vulnerability, and trust in your partner(s). "Key components of Love Mapping include understanding your partner’s family history and how this affects them today, their values, biases, insecurities, fears, and their deepest hopes and dreams," says Friedman. She tells us that through learning about our partner(s) and their life story, we will be better able to understand them on a fundamental level.

Love maps are formed through sharing information, feelings, and thoughts with our partner(s). In turn, they enable your relationship to grow closer and deeper. Friedman explains that "when we have this deep understanding of another person, it helps us feel more compassion, have more patience, we’re able to anticipate needs and we tend to give others the benefit of the doubt when mistakes are made or difficult life challenges come up."

Without having intentionally created a love map, you've likely experienced the natural progression of getting to know someone you've grown close to. It's human nature to share our life experiences, our hopes, our dreams, and our fears. These are all components of love maps.

The Gottman method isn't asking us to do anything different than we'd otherwise do when getting to know a person. Rather, it asks us to be intentional about the process and cover our bases across all major facets of one another's lives.

Why Do Love Maps Matter?

Love maps are important because they can make your relationships stronger and better. They can deepen emotional connection and intimacy. Additionally, they can help us understand each other and feel more seen and understood.

As part of the overall Gottman Couples Therapy, love maps lead to improved relationships. One study notes that "Findings revealed that Gottman’s couple therapy approach had positive effects on improving marital adjustment (P = 0/001) and couples' intimacy (P = 0/001)."

While there is no such thing as a perfect relationship, love maps are a tool we can intentionally employ to create relationships infused with meaning, depth, and intimacy. Because relationships are always growing and changing, just like people are, they aren't a finite concept. Love maps can be worked on, developed, and enhanced over time, as you and your partner(s) move through life together.

Love Map Questions

Love maps center around asking your partner(s) questions. The Gottman Institute has a deck of love map cards filled with questions, as well as a deck of 52 cards for you and your partner(s) to answer before marriage or living together. Some of those questions center around the topics of marriage and moving in, but some are more general to make sure your love map is comprehensive. These are some examples from the cards.

• Who was your best friend in childhood?
• What was your favorite vacation?
• What kind of books do you most like to read?
• Do you have a secret ambition? What is it?
• How is this relationship different than those that have not worked out?
  

Signs You May Need a Love Map/Work on Your Love Map

The impetus to build a love map is not a relationship that's having trouble. Rather, love maps are a fabulous exercise to build closeness and intimacy with anyone, at all stage of your relationship. "All partnerships can benefit from creating love maps together, even platonic friends or family members,' says Friedman. She tells us "it’s a lovely exercise for anyone who wants to build intimacy and closeness in a relationship."

If your relationship is currently struggling, that a great time to examine your love map or work to deepen it. It's also an appropriate time to create one if you haven't already. But you don't need to wait until a relationship is in peril for this activity. Build a love map with anyone you care about, at any time when it feels right for both of you.

What Do "Healthy" Love Maps Look Like?

If you've constructed a healthy love map with your partner(s), you'll probably have a very strong sense of who they are and what makes them tick. "If you have successfully built healthy love maps with your partner(s), you’d be able to demonstrate a deep understanding of who your partner is below the surface," says Friedman.

According to her, you'll know your love map has been build well if you're "able to tell a few impactful stories from your partners’ childhood, explain a few of their insecurities or triggers, name some of their values and strengths, their goals for themselves, and maybe even describe some issues they’re currently working on healing."

A healthy love map, in the simplest sense, is an understanding of your partner(s). Even though it might sound a bit ethereal, it's pretty concrete: A love map is the process you use to get to know and understand someone.

Tips for Building Better Love Maps

In as much as we'll never know someone 100% and all relationship require work, building a love map can enhance the joy you give and get in your relationships. Building love maps is fairly simple: Friedman says that "there are infinite ways to build love maps with your partner(s), namely doing anything that builds intimacy and helps you get tot know each other on a deeper level." She suggests the following tips for building better love maps.

• Use the Gottman cards to ask each other questions.
• Try couples question apps.
• Set aside time to play with your partner(s).
• Do fun activities together.
• Learn new skills together.
• Spend quality time on projects together.
• Have downtime that includes free flowing conversation.

In addition to the love map work your partner(s) and you can do alone, couples therapy can provide structure for love map building. "Exploring the patterns between you with a coach or therapist goes a long way towards building love maps," Friedman tells us. And your relationship doesn't need to be in trouble for you to take this step, either. Friedman notes that "people often assume that only couples who are having problems should go to couples therapy, but relationship therapy can be fun and even playful, and appropriate for all relationships at any stage."