At the neural level, my “getting to know you: means my acquiring a resonance with your emotional patterns and mental maps. And the more our maps overlap, the more identified we feel and the greater the shared reality we create. As we grow to identify with each other, the mind’s categories undergo a merging of sorts, so that we unconsciously think about those most important to us in very much the same ways we think about ourselves.
Husbands and wives, for instance, tend to find it easier to name ways they are similar to each other than the ways they differ – but only if they are happy with each other. If not, the differences loom larger.
