Resources & Exercises
Practice Love Math with Your Partner
Deepen your connection and navigate your relationship with wisdom. Below you will find interactive quizzes, discussion prompts, and reflection exercises designed to help you and your partner explore the mathematics of care and compassion together.
Love Languages Reflection
How You Show Love
In what ways is it easy for you to show love?
In what ways is it hard for you to show love?
How You Receive Love
In what ways is it easy for you to receive love?
In what ways is it hard for you to receive love?
1
First Half: Sharing & Attentive Listening
One partner shares how they understand and feel loved using the prompts above. The other partner listens attentively without interruption, taking notes to ensure full understanding.
2
Feedback loop
The listener summarizes what they heard to confirm they accurately captured their partner's feelings. This ensures clarity before switching perspectives.
3
Switch Roles
(6 Minutes Total)
Repeat the previous steps with partners switching roles. This allows both people equal time (3 minutes each) to share and listen, deepening mutual understanding.
Discussion Guide
CARE Reflection in Dyads
Total Duration: 12 minutes
A guided exercise to help partners explore recent emotional challenges and reflect on how CARE steps can influence healthier responses.
1. Recall and Reflect
Part 1
Each partner takes turns to recall a recent emotional challenge and describe their reaction to it. Partner 1 shares an emotional situation and reaction. Partner 2 listens without interrupting.
2. Application of CARE
Part 2
Partner 2, help reflect on how applying the CARE steps could have influenced a different, healthier response. Switch roles after 6 minutes.
The Speaker
- Describe a recent situation and your reaction
- Identify where CARE steps fit in
- Apply reflection to future responses
The Listener
- Listen fully without interruption
- Provide constructive feedback
- Prepare to switch roles after 6 minutes
Respect. If there is an ask to another person, you have to articulate it respectfully, nonviolently, peacefully, in the way a 5 year old could understand because the way we interpret things is from the mind of a child. Should be simple, concrete, unambiguous, in a congruent paraverbal tone. Right conversation at the right time. Speak with your body and autonomic nervous system - relax the hands, relax the tongue, relax the vocal cords, gentle touch.
C
A
R
E
See with compassionate curiosity. Allow yourself to feel angst, discomfort, feelings that we are trained not to have. Without these feelings we cannot ask for what we want. Understand your right to say no.
See
Ask
Respect
Engage
Ask. What do I need to return to ventral vagal activation? Breathing, tapping, etc. Allow yourself to feel with self-compassion, move through the feeling.
Engage, not enrage. First 3 steps should result in communicating your heart’s desire and engaging your partner. To achieve win-win or joy-full solution to the problem, where you see both points of view, you need empathy. Hard conversations need to happen to find relief. Flexibility, learning to speak your partner’s language, not just your own.
1. Correcting Instead of Understanding: When my partner tells me how they feel, I focus on proving why their perception is inaccurate.
0 1 2 3 4
6. Encouragement: I notice and name my partner’s strengths, efforts, growth, and good intentions.
0 1 2 3 4
9. Identity Attacks: I make global statements about my partner’s character, such as:
“You always…”
“You never…”
“That’s just who you are…”
“You’re impossible…”
0 1 2 3 4
4. Defensive Certainty: I have a hard time considering that both of us may hold part of the truth.
0 1 2 3 4
3. Conversational Dominance: I interrupt, lecture, cross-examine, or explain until my partner gives up.
0 1 2 3 4
SMARTT Curiosity Quiz
The SMARTT Curiosity Quiz explores how you and your partner stay curious about each other. Rate each item 0 to 4 based on your experience.
Instructions & Scoring
For each statement, rate yourself from 0 to 4 based on how you behave during disagreement, disappointment, stress, or hurt feelings — not just when things are going well.
0 = Rarely or never | 1 = Occasionally | 2 = Sometimes | 3 = Often | 4 = Almost always
Part 1: Do I Illuminate My Partner?
1. Curiosity: When my partner says something I disagree with, I try to understand their experience before correcting them.
0 1 2 3 4
2. Emotional Validation: Even when I do not agree with my partner’s interpretation, I can acknowledge that their feelings make sense from their point of view.
0 1 2 3 4
3. Expanding Conversation: I ask open-ended questions that help my partner discover something new about themselves.
0 1 2 3 4
4. Non-Defensive Listening: When my partner gives me feedback, I can pause and listen without immediately defending or explaining.
0 1 2 3 4
5. Respect for Difference: I can tolerate that my partner may remember or interpret an event differently than I do.
0 1 2 3 4
7. Repair Attempts: After conflict, I am willing to return, soften, apologize, clarify, or reconnect.
0 1 2 3 4
8. Making Space: I allow my partner to have needs, preferences, limits, and dreams that are not identical to mine.
0 1 2 3 4
9. Kindness Under Stress: Even when I am upset, I try not to humiliate, mock, diagnose, shame, or belittle my partner.
0 1 2 3 4
10. The “US” Perspective: I can shift from “Who is right?” to “What does our relationship need right now?”
0 1 2 3 4
The Scoring Guide
Illuminator Score
32–40: Strong Illuminator
You generally help your partner feel seen, respected, and emotionally safe. Your challenge may be to keep illuminating even when you feel hurt, afraid, or criticized.
24–31: Emerging Illuminator
You have many strengths, but under stress you may sometimes become defensive, dismissive, or overly focused on your own point of view.
16–23: Inconsistent Illuminator
Your partner may experience you as loving at times, but hard to reach during conflict. Your work is to slow down, listen longer, and repair sooner.
0–15: Illumination Blocked by Threat Response
You may not intend to diminish your partner, but your nervous system may move quickly into defense, control, withdrawal, or self-protection.
Diminisher Score
0–8: Low Diminishing Pattern
You rarely use behaviors that make your partner feel small or dismissed.
9–16: Mild Diminishing Pattern
You may diminish unintentionally, especially when stressed, embarrassed, or afraid of being blamed.
17–28: Moderate Diminishing Pattern
Your conflict style may regularly leave your partner feeling unheard, corrected, criticized, or emotionally alone.
29–40: High Diminishing Pattern
This pattern can seriously erode safety and trust. The goal is not shame, but accountability, nervous system regulation, and repair.
6. Encouragement: I notice and name my partner’s strengths, efforts, growth, and good intentions.
0 1 2 3 4
10. The “US” Perspective: I can shift from “Who is right?” to “What does our relationship need right now?”
0 1 2 3 4
1. Correcting Instead of Understanding: When my partner tells me how they feel, I focus on proving why their perception is inaccurate.
0 1 2 3 4
2. Turning Difference Into Defect: When my partner sees things differently, I imply that they are irrational, too sensitive, confused, dramatic, or wrong.
0 1 2 3 4
Part 2: Do I Diminish My Partner?
5. Emotional Minimizing: I say or imply things like:
“You’re overreacting,” “That’s not a big deal,” “You shouldn’t feel that way,” or “You’re making it up.”
0 1 2 3 4
6. Winning Over Connecting: During conflict, I become more invested in being right than in staying connected.
0 1 2 3 4
8. Blame Shifting: When my partner raises a concern, I quickly shift the focus to what they did wrong.
0 1 2 3 4
7. Subtle Contempt: I use sarcasm, eye-rolling, dismissive humor, intellectual superiority, or moral superiority.
0 1 2 3 4
10. Refusal to Repair: After conflict, I wait for my partner to come back first, or I act as if nothing happened.
0 1 2 3 4