Love and... Fondness?

As I was reading about the concept of “love maps” (according to Gottman in The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, this is the part of your brain where you store the relevant information about your partner’s life) I was struck by how we don’t only have love maps for our significant other but for those who are significant in our lives. As I was reading through a series of questions in the book designed to help the reader have a better idea of how detailed their love map of their partner is, I realized that we can have similar maps for all the significant people in our lives. I am completely single and I know that I have love maps of the important things for the people who I am the closest to.

As part of my studies, I followed the book’s advice for nurturing my fondness and admiration for another individual in my life. This past week I traveled to another part of the country to spend a week with my mother. We have had a long and complicated relationship over the years. I wanted to begin to soften my heart towards her and so I chose make her the focus of this exercise. I realized that as I made a very conscious and conscientious effort, I did handle our interactions a bit better. When she wasn’t listening to me or ignored my repeated requests for personal space, I was able to stop and recall times when it wasn’t that way and it helped the trip to be a more positive experience than I think it otherwise would have been. It also helped me to see her in a more positive light overall. I have something of a weakness or blind spot when it comes to my parents: I have a hard time seeing their positive traits. I had a difficult childhood and adolescence and both my parents had big roles in that. My school and social life was fairly good, but home life was difficult. When I look back, it is far easier to see the negative. I live over a thousand miles away from each of my parents, but I want to continue practicing that nurturing behavior and expand it to my father. To strengthen my parental relationships, I want to make a point of trying to speak to them at least once every other week. I want them to know that I care about them and love them. I want to re-train my thoughts to not assume the worst when one of them says or does something that is unintentionally hurtful. I think that, over time, this will help to strengthen and enrich the relationships that I have with each of my parents.