When did you stop being curious about each other?
Why continuing to know each other matters in long-term relationships
At the beginning of a relationship, curiosity often comes naturally.
We want to know everything. We ask about childhoods and families, past relationships, hopes for the future, favourite music, strange habits and the stories that made this person who they are. We can spend hours talking, sometimes well into the night, because there is still so much territory to explore.
And then, somewhere along the way, we begin to believe we know them.
Of course, in many ways we do.
We know how they take their coffee. We know which story they will tell at a dinner party. We recognise the particular expression that means they’re annoyed, despite insisting they’re perfectly fine. We know what makes them laugh and what is likely to make them roll their eyes.
There is something lovely about this kind of familiarity. It is part of the intimacy of a long relationship.
But familiarity can also quietly become certainty.
I know what you’re going to say.
I know why you did that.
I know what you meant.
And perhaps one of the risks in a long relationship is that we stop being curious about the person who is actually in front of us and begin responding instead to the version of them we have come to know.
The map we carry of our partner
In the Gottman Method, John and Julie Gottman use the term Love Maps to describe how well we know our partner’s inner world.
A Love Map contains the things we know about the person we love: what matters to them, what they are worrying about, the people who are important to them, what they are looking forward to, what is causing them stress, their hopes, fears, dreams and disappointments.
It is the internal map we carry of their world.
But there is something important about maps: they need updating.
The person you met five, ten or twenty years ago has continued having experiences since then. So have you.
Parenthood may have changed them. Work may have changed them. Grief, illness, ageing, friendships, disappointment, success, therapy, loss and the ordinary accumulation of life may all have shifted the landscape.
Even the stories we tell about our past can change. We may understand something that happened in childhood quite differently at 45 than we did at 25.
The person beside us is not fixed.
Neither are we.
When our Love Maps become outdated
Sometimes we know our partner incredibly well and are nevertheless navigating with an old map.
You might know what your partner once wanted from their career, but do you know what they want now?
You might know what frightened them when you first met, but do you know what they worry about these days?
You may know the story of their relationship with their parents, but perhaps not how they understand that relationship now.
And sometimes an outdated map becomes particularly visible during conflict.
When we believe we already know what is happening inside our partner, there is very little room left for curiosity.
She doesn’t care.
He’s being selfish.
She always overreacts.
He just doesn’t want to talk.
We begin filling in the gaps ourselves.
This can happen especially easily when couples have been caught in the same conflict for a long time. We stop approaching the conversation as something new because, in our minds, we already know how it goes.
One person says something. The other hears the familiar meaning beneath it. Defences arrive. Positions harden. Before long, both people are having a conversation they have probably had many times before.
The topic might be different, but the dance is remarkably familiar.
Curiosity creates space
Curiosity doesn’t mean that we have to agree with our partner, nor does it mean abandoning our own experience.
It simply introduces a little space between what happened and what we think it meant.
Instead of:
You don’t care about me.
There might be room for:
What was happening for you when you walked away?
Instead of:
You’re never interested in what I have to say.
Perhaps:
What happens for you when I bring this up?
Sometimes one of the most useful things we can say to someone we love is simply:
Tell me more.
There is an openness in those words. For a moment, we put down what we think we know and allow the other person to tell us something about their experience.
And they may surprise us.
Getting to know each other again
Updating our Love Maps doesn’t need to become another task on the relationship to-do list.
It can happen in very ordinary moments.
You might wonder what has been taking up most of your partner’s headspace lately. What they are enjoying. What has felt difficult. Whether there is something they are looking forward to. What they are dreaming about for the next few years.
You might ask:
What has been hard lately that I might not have noticed?
Is there anything you’re excited about at the moment?
What do you wish you had more time for?
Is there anything about you that you think I’ve misunderstood?
The point isn’t really the questions themselves.
It is the stance behind them.
I don’t want to assume that I already know you. I am still interested in your inner world.
There is always more to discover
Long relationships contain a beautiful paradox.
We can know another person intimately and never completely know them.
Perhaps that isn’t a failure of intimacy. Perhaps it is part of what keeps intimacy alive.
There will always be parts of the person we love that are still unfolding. New thoughts. New fears. New desires. New understandings of old experiences. Parts of themselves they may only just be discovering.
The person beside us is still becoming.
So are we.
Perhaps loving someone over time involves not only knowing them deeply, but remaining curious enough to keep meeting them as they change.
And perhaps every now and then, it is worth putting down the map we already have and asking:
Who are you now? Who are we?
If you’re curious about couples therapy or keen to learn new relational and connection skills to reinvigorate your relationship, I offer couples counsellingand relationship therapy in Heathmont, Ringwood and Thornbury.
