Mapping the Road to a Successful Marriage

How much do we take for granted when it comes to loving and appreciating our spouse?

One of the weirder things that can be experienced in a marriage is learning something new about your spouse. We think that we know everything about them, and then they surprise us with something new. This can be good, this can be bad, but overall, this can cause misunderstandings within each other's "love maps."


Dr. John Gottman (2015) explained love maps as "that part of your brain where you store all the relevant information about your partner's life" (p. 54, "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work"). When it comes to our spouses, all information should be relevant! Knowing what is important about your partner's life isn't the only requirement for having a great marriage. Having regular conversations about hopes, fears wants, and needs can help to expand our love maps.

Applying what I had learned, and utilizing Dr. Gottman's Love Map Questionnaire along with a couple of activities he had suggested to expand love maps, my spouse and I took turns answering questions. There was a lot that my husband knew about me, but there were several questions that stumped me. I didn't even know what my husband's top three movies were. I thought that maybe his top three movies could be narrowed down to specific movie series, but it turns out that his top three movies are the three Lord of the Rings movies. I was shocked to learn this considering how much I knew he liked other movies. I knew that he really loved Lord of the Rings, but I didn't know that degree.

The main thing that I learned from sitting down and answering questions with my spouse was that there is always something new that we can learn about our spouse. Christ knows us perfectly, but our spouse doesn't. A stronger love map of our spouse's interests and needs can help us to know (and appreciate) the background our spouse is coming from, rather than painting them two-dimensionally. We need to open up to our partners and let them open up to us in order to allow them to understand us better, and prevent misunderstandings.

When we know our spouse's love map, we are better able to admire them and nurture the love that we have for them. We can appreciate their perspectives by knowing more and more of who they are. Showing interest in our partners can change the entire dynamic of the marriage relationship! Love maps help us to gauge our level of knowing our spouse. Since our spouse is continually growing and learning (just as we are), we must be sure to update our map as we go.

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