When Two People With Many Maps Get Married

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My map is drawn with socks. Apparently. It’s easy to trace my route through the house if you follow the socks. And it drives him crazy.

But I’ll take you to the beginning. We’ve been married a long time. 39 years. And it all  began with two very young adults saying ‘I do’. 

Do you ever wish that life came with a roadmap? 

Something that determines which cliffs are safe for cliff jumping and which cliffs are safe only for viewing?  Showing you where the mountain passages are and how to navigate the marshland below?

Interestingly, no maps are needed to appreciate beautiful sunsets or the full moon rising above the mountain peaks.  But perhaps  one of the reasons these never grow old is because no map is needed. You could say the same for holding your newborn child for the first time. Nothing is needed except sheer astonishment and wonder. 

Yet as the new parents leave the hospital with this tiny human,  reality hits. And most of us desperately want a map. How do we navigate parenthood without one?

 At every stage of life, I look for the map.

 How much easier life would be if only I had a map to help me navigate.   It’s perhaps both easier and harder when we’re children because we have tour guides who show us the way. Sometimes however they don’t tell us the ‘why’ which leaves us wondering. Or we resist the direction we’re being led.

However,in adulthood we’re suddenly faced with all these life decisions and they don’t come with a map. How do we raise this baby? How do we navigate our careers? Relationships?  Married life?

One might argue that this is the role of stories and myths.  Wisdom passed down from our elders. Society and community. The church. And I agree. We do carry many maps within our heads.  Where we get into difficulty is if we confuse the map for the territory. And no-where is this clearer than in marriage.

The map is not the territory

This is a term that came out of the field of general semantics. It was coined by Alfred Korzybsk in the first half of the 20th century.  This term encompasses the notion that people understand the world through the limitations of the human nervous system and language.  Given this, it’s easy to see how misinterpretations occur.

A marriage license is not a map

Nor is the marriage ceremony.  But oh are they are loaded with meaning.  Each person brings with them an internal map of perceptions, expectations, and beliefs about marriage and what it should look like. Aware or not, we have ‘mental models’ that we’ve adopted from experience and education that become our lens for understanding and navigating the world. 

Sometimes these mental models are helpful.  And sometimes they’re not.  Often these ‘maps’ cause people to clash like a real-life game of Risk.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re living in parallel universe in relation to your partner, it’s likely you’re using different maps. 

And . . .  we’re back to socks. 

I don’t like socks and wear them only when I have to wear shoes.  So, I leave socks in convenient places.  The front door for when I go out.  The basement because that’s where I exercise.  The family room or my office when I forget to leave them at the front door. Oh and yes,  sometimes our bed because once my feet warm up, I kick them off. 

Now my husband doesn’t hate socks.  In fact, he always wears them.  Sometimes even in sandals!  It’s my socks he dislikes.  Well not so much my socks really, it’s more like where I choose to leave them that’s the problem. 

But the map is not the territory. 

Very early in our marriage we discovered that we used different maps to navigate some areas of our lives.  My husband was finishing up his degree and for some reason that I don’t remember, his prof administered personality tests to both of us. 

When we met with him for the results, I remember his opening words with crystal clarity.  “How’s your marriage going?”  For newly weds it was slightly crushing.  But you might say it was a bit of foreshadowing that day. 

Not only did we discover that we’re both extremely strong-willed, but we are polar opposites in other areas.  It really only confirmed what we already knew.  So how have we survived 39 years of marriage, 20 moves in our first thirteen years together (and zero since then) and three kids? 

Despite the fire-works when we try to address issues using different maps or finding ourselves living in parallel universes, we’ve learned that sometimes, the other’s map is more reliable.  Or if we overlay our maps, new paths emerge.  Or we redraw the map if convinced that both of our thinking is wrong. 

We challenge each other’s thinking because the map is not the territory.  It’s only a representation,and as such it’s subject to change when presented with new information. 

Marriage doesn’t just survive but thrives with commitment. 

Love is a choice rather than a feeling.  It’s easy to momentarily fall out of love when there are socks strewn throughout the house for approximately 14 558 days.  He’s not said that.  I’m imagining.

 You may wonder why I haven’t mended my ways.  I don’t know but it might be connected to hats.  It’s true the hats aren’t leaving a trail through the house. But they are occupying every basket and nook and cranny in the entry-way closet. 

Seriously though, socks and hats are really just metaphors for much bigger issues that arise throughout a marriage.  While writing this post, the song The Gambler by Kenny Rogers came to mind.  It could almost be marriage advice.  But I’m looking at it in terms of the maps or mental models we carry inside our heads.

The Gambler

Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walkaway
And know when to run  
You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time enough for countin'
When the dealin's done

It’s not about hanging onto our beliefs at all costs. The better you understand life and the more open you are to learning,the better positioned you are to cut through the noise and make good decisions.  The song says,

That the secret to survivin'
Is knowin' what to throw away
And knowin' what to keep
'Cause every hand's a winner
And every hand's a loser . . . 

We all use mental models whether we’re conscious of them or not. And just as some maps are good for exploring the Stikine, they are useless for exploring Hawaii.    The higher the stakes the more important it is to understand what’s influencing us and to ask ourselves whether we’ve chosen the right map for the situation.

 Our marriage is stronger than ever.   As our trust for each other deepened and we learned new ways of being, we gave up some of our faulty mental models and rewrote them together.  That said, we have a long ways to go.

Remember though, the map is not the territory. 

It’s a representation.

The key point here and it’s true for every aspect of our lives, not just marriage, is that if we don’t keep learning, we stagnate.  If we don’t spend time reflecting on our way of being and doing and thinking, then we won’t ever change.

 Learning necessitates change.

 I think this is also key to aging gracefully, but that discussion is for another day.

~ Priscilla

P.S. What are your thoughts about mental models and how they are employed in everyday life? We’d love to hear your perspective in the comments below.

Thank you for sharing this post! I appreciate it 😊