Researchers and therapists alike have long been in agreement that intimacy cannot be reduced to a single dimension. It’s not a matter of affection, attraction , sex , conflict, or communication alone; rather, it’s all of them, all at once. With this combination usually comes a deep sense of familiarity, which Dr. John Gottman , one of the most renowned relationship researchers in modern history, famously called a “love map.”

This refers to a detailed mental space in which you store knowledge about your partner’s inner world: their hopes, fears, habits, and dreams . The strength of that map, in turn, can signal the strength of the relationship. From this perspective, it’s unsurprising that “growing apart” is one of the most common reasons cited when couples divorce .

With that i

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