The Growing Couple: You And I Will Develop Together

Ramp up. Be together. Offer your life. Enrich. Destroy the castle. Rebuild it. Awakening. To dream. To sleep. Eat. Devour. Kiss. Love. To want. To discuss. Not agreeing. To reconcile. Smile. To hug. To admire. Cultivate affection. Caress. Excite. All this and more is a growing couple.

Knowing our partner’s tastes, knowing their joys and fears, remembering the names of their favorite painters, having intellectually stimulating conversations, having confidence and freedom, offering special details, etc. This is a couple’s emotional world, with its love maps and detailed routes.

From this it is possible to build a couple without mutual dependence? Yes. Because they know each other’s concerns, support those concerns, and try to do their best to avoid them. This is an essential aspect of the growing couple.

The growing couple’s love maps

According to psychologist John Gottman, love maps are that part of our mind where we store all the relevant information about our partner’s life. Remembering this and paying attention to our partner’s changes in feelings allows us to know their goals in life, their concerns and their hopes.

So, we should take the time to fill out a form with our partner. Although this should be etched in our minds, it’s worth writing it all down together on one sheet. It’s a great exercise in knowledge. We will see…

Characters in my partner’s life

• Friends
• potential friends
• Rivals, competitors, enemies

Important recent events in my partner’s life

• Scheduled event (whether it’s what my partner looks forward to, or what awaits in fear)
• Current tensions of my partner
• My partner’s current concerns

My partner’s hopes and aspirations (for yourself and others)

This point, schematically, is very enriching. In addition, each partner can write in a notebook some information about themselves and exchange notebooks. For example:

My fights and my achievements

• What success in your life are you particularly proud of?

• How have these successes shaped your life? How have they affected your idea of ​​yourself, your capabilities, your goals and the things you strive for?
• How important was pride in your life (ie, the experience of feeling proud, being shaken, expressing praise, etc.)?
• Did your parents show that they loved you? Like? Was love expressed within your family? If not, what implications does this have for your love relationship?
• What role does pride in your accomplishments play in your love relationship? What role do your own struggles play? What would you like your partner to know and understand about these aspects about yourself, about your past, present and future plans?

my wounds and healings

• What difficulties have you already faced? Losses, disappointments, tests, problems, stresses, deep traumas…

• How did this strengthen me? How did I channel my pain?
• How has this affected my love relationship? What would you like your partner to know and understand about these aspects about yourself, about your past, present and future plans?
• How do I express and how did my family express each emotion when I was a child?
• What is my philosophy on expressing feelings?
• What is the difference between my partner and me when expressing? What is hidden behind the differences? What are the implications?

My mission, my legacy, who I want to become

• We have to imagine ourselves in a cemetery in front of our grave: what do we want to put on the epitaph?
• What do I want people to think about my life?
• What is my purpose?  What does it mean?
• How did I want my life to be 10 years from now?

• Etc.

The strength is in knowledge

It is not about longevity in the relationship, but about the quality of intimacy. Being in touch with the external points of our lives (hobbies, for example)  and with our internal world (desires, beliefs, fears, etc.),  makes a couple behave in an emotionally intelligent way.

Being connected and catching up on the changes in the love map that we form for our partner as a person and for the relationship together helps us not to fall apart in periods of change (when having a child, for example).

In particular, we can say that if we want to promote a healthy relationship, we can never relax and fail to KNOW our partner, admire him/her, update our love maps to bring us closer and thus increase individual and joint development .