Love Map: Love Your Partner Doesn’t Have To Be a Labyrinth

One of the biggest challenges, when we talk about relationships, is communication. In communication, we have to understand the responsibility in dialogue lies at the communicator. No one can change the other person. The truth is one of the most important principals of relationships is the ability to understand we all have shadows and bright traits in our personalities.

Why couples get lost from each other? They don’t update their love maps. What is a love map? Love Map is a person’s emotional, internal blueprint for their ideal erotic, sexual situations.

As the Portuguese psychologist with a specialty in sexology, Fernando Mesquita, wrote in his book, “Learn to love” or in Portuguese “Aprender a Amar“, envolves four principals: Action, Motivation, Acceptance, and Respect. 

Our lovemaps start to shape at an early age when we observe how people close to us relate with each other. It is a real-life portrayal where you build what will be your needs and what you want from relationships.

As we get older with the help of our internal love maps, we realize which types of partners we prefer in terms of gender and age. We form the preferences about the values and attitudes we want from our partners to share with us.

Your love map reflects the sense of who you are in your relationship. Once developed, help you to decide with whom you will become romantically involved and how to manage what happens in the relationship.

Relationships are one stage where the couple influences each other in ways that reverberate patterns and acquired behaviors. Here we apply the rule behavior generates behavior.

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With this said, what are the major clues that your partner wants a more serious relationship?

1. Pronouns matter: Your partner will often use more the “We” than “I”;
2. Active Listening with an Agenda: Smitten partners are interested in learning about your goals and interests in order to build a future together.
3. Preference for proximity: Someone who is enamored with you wants to have you in the same room.
4. Dates are device-free zones: Your partner does not waste precious couple time texting or talking with others; the attention is focused on you. An adoring partner selfishly does not want anything to get in between the two of you.
5. A family affair: A real partner invites your family to join the two of you for meals or outings, offer small gifts. Treat your family as an extension of you.
6. You like it? You got it: If your partner want to maintain a relationship with you, want to please you. From favorite foods to fashion, from away weekends to amazing sex, they want you to have it.
7. Actions Speak, but words count: The desire for a closer connection is usually on full display, through both words and actions. Both partners verbalize and behave in ways that demonstrate they are ready to step up.

When we choose to spend our life with someone, we hand them a map of our inner world. Our inner world is a complex box where we save all our past experiences/memories, details of the present, and hopes for the future. Deep fears and grand dreams are part of this box, your box. From your life box, you draw your love map.

Life can shift suddenly, and dramatically, being extremely important to update constantly our love maps. What has the journey to this point been like for you? Where were the smooth roads? Where were the steep climbs or the deserts?

“Asking questions and telling stories adds detail to primitive pencil sketch map that you’ve been handed. As you add detail to your maps you gain clarity about the journey that you’re embarking on together. Early in a relationship, it’s easy to lose sight of the longer journey because now feels so good. Creating the discipline of getting to know each other should be a top priority.”

Now, after this explanation, I invite you to ask yourself “How well do I know my partner?”, “Do I know what are the challenges he or she is facing right now?”.
Don’t allow your relationship to be an old book in an old library. Instead, understand that it is in your hands the power to change your life and even your relationship just being curious. Yes, with curiosity, you will learn more and more about your loved one.

Don’t be an old library, open the book of your life to your partner’s life.

With love,

Alexandra