In This Article
Bid for connection is John Gottman's name for any small attempt by one partner to engage the other's attention, affection, or affirmation. The bid can be a sentence, a glance, a touch, a question, a sigh.
Gottman's lab tracked bids in detail. They are most often almost trivial, look at this dog, can you grab the salt, I had a weird dream last night, but each bid is, in the lab's framing, the partner asking do you have a moment for me. The bid does not feel like a load-bearing question. Over years, the answer to it is.
Turning toward, away, against
Gottman classifies responses to bids into three: turn toward (engage, respond, share attention), turn away (miss it, ignore it, stay on the phone), and turn against (snap, criticize, dismiss). In the six-year follow-up on newlyweds, the couples who stayed together turned toward each other's bids 86% of the time. The couples who divorced turned toward 33% of the time. The arithmetic of small attention adds up.
Importantly, most missed bids are not malicious, they are absent-minded. The partner is reading something, watching something, working. The cumulative effect of missed bids is not anger at any one instance but the slow conclusion that he is not really there when I reach, which over a decade hardens into distance.
Why bids are easy to miss
Bids are coded in shorthand. It's cold in here may be a request for help with the thermostat or a request for company on the couch or just a comment about the temperature; in a long relationship the partner usually knows which one it is, and answers the bid under the sentence. Bids get missed when the receiving partner is distracted, depleted, or has stopped reading the surface for the meaning underneath.
Practicing the turn toward
The clinical move is small and deliberately repeatable. When a partner makes a bid, even a tiny one, the receiving partner pauses what they are doing for two or three seconds, makes eye contact, and answers. Pause, eye, answer. Over a year, this single habit shifts the relationship more reliably than any anniversary trip. The turn toward is the unit of intimacy.
Where it shows up around VibeLovely
Bids for connection underlie almost every Communication piece on this site.
References
- Gottman, J. M., & DeClaire, J. (2001). The Relationship Cure: A 5 Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships. Crown.
- Driver, J. L., & Gottman, J. M. (2004). Daily marital interactions and positive affect during marital conflict among newlywed couples. Family Process, 43(3), 301-314.
- Gottman, J. M. (2011). The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples. W. W. Norton.
- The Gottman Institute. Bids for connection: turning toward instead of away. gottman.com
