Cherishing Your Spouse (wk 6)



I wrote last week about how when I was newly married, I couldn’t imagine getting into a fight or ever being unhappy with my husband, and that the reality is that every relationship hits a rough patch now and then. This week, I wanted to talk about some ways to protect our relationships from crashing during those rough patches. 

The famed marriage researcher John Gottman says that one of the best things we can do to create this solid foundation is to continuously update our “love maps.” 



Having a love map means that you are intimately aware of every detail of your partner’s life. You know who their closest friends are, what their stresses are, what they’re looking forward to and what they are dreading. When you know these things, it’s easier to stand firm when the winds of change blow.



 If you need help creating a love map for your spouse I highly recommend downloading the free Gottman Card Decks app. There is a deck in there with all sorts of questions that will help you build this map. 

Another way to protect your relationship is to nurture fondness and admiration. 


Interestingly, Gottman says that a good test of the level of our fondness and admiration is the way we view our relationship’s past. So, if you’re having trouble feeling that fondness for your partner, think back to the beginnings of your relationship.

 I know it always helps me to be able to go back and read my journal from when we were dating or newly married. When my husband and I were dating, it was largely long distance so we also have an enormous log of emails and instant messages that I can go back and read through to remind myself of those warm fuzzy feelings. 

My favorite Gottman quote of the week is, “Fondness and admiration are antidotes for contempt.” Contempt is one of those four horsemen we learned about last week. When we generally have fond feelings towards our partner, it is harder to feel contempt! 

Not only do we need to reflect back on the good times, we also need to notice the good in the present moment. On Instagram, I follow the amazing parenting guru Ralphie Jacobs (@simplyonpurpose) and one of her catch phrases for effective parenting is “Water the flowers, not the weeds.” What this means is that we need to give more of our attention to the good things our children do, and less to the bad, and their behavior will improve. This works with spouses too! In her stories this week, Ralphie shared an email from a woman illustrating this principle. 

The woman had a night out with friends planned, and her husband stayed home with their daughter. The woman got home late and was distressed to find that the dinner dishes were not done and the house was quite messy. However, she remembered to notice the good, so she simply thanked her husband for letting her have a night out with her friends. 

She then learned that her husband had played with their daughter for 2 hours before bedtime, and then had a situation with his church calling he needed to deal with immediately. He had been unable to do the chores but his evening was well spent. She was so glad she had chosen to notice the good instead of fixate on her unmet expectations. 

I’ll close with this amazing quote from Henry B Eyring from a talk titled “Our Perfect Example” given in the October 2009 General Conference.


We can choose to see the good, and we can pray for help to see it.

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