If You Want A Better Relationship, You Need To Pay Attention To ‘Bids’

In relationships, partners make requests for connection every day, often in small or subtle ways. When your partner asks you to fill up their water bottle, for example, or groans when they check their phone or points out a cute dog on your morning walk. These are called “bids,” according to renowned relationship researcher John Gottman, and they are the building blocks of emotional communication.

These interactions may seem insignificant, but how you respond to them has a profound impact on the future of your relationship, according to Gottman’s research.

The main goal of a bid “is to get time, attention, affection, acceptance, affirmation or some other positive signal back,” Marni Feuerman, a marriage and family therapist in Boca Raton, Florida, told HuffPost.

Bids can show up in different ways: as a comment, a question, a story, an invitation, a request for help, a facial expression or a physical gesture. Sometimes bids are direct, like asking your partner if they want to run errands with you. Or they can be indirect, like saying, “I’m going to bed now,” Feuerman explained.

“The hope of the ‘bidder’ is that the ‘bidee’ will ‘turn towards’ the partner in response,” she said. “When one partner says, ‘I’m going to bed,’ the hope is that the other partner will say, ‘I’ll be there soon too’ or ‘I’ll join you,’ or ‘Give me a kiss goodnight,’ or something similar.”

There are three ways you can respond to a bid, according to Gottman: You can turn toward your partner, turn away from them or turn against them.

Turning toward your partner means acknowledging or fulfilling the bid, San Francisco marriage and family therapist Alapaki Yee, clinician director at the Gay Couples Institute, told HuffPost. Turning away from your partner is when you don’t acknowledge the bid, intentionally or unintentionally. And turning against your partner, he said, is when “a seemingly neutral request gets a slap on the hand.”

In the “I’m going to bed” example, saying “I’m coming up soon” or extending your arms out for a hug is turning toward your partner. Turning away would be if you didn’t respond because you were looking at your phone. And turning against would be saying something harsh like, “Seriously? You’re like an old lady. It’s so early,” Feuerman said.

You want to turn toward your partner as much as possible — with the understanding that sometimes you’ll slip up here and there.

“Even the best of us miss bids on occasion. Often it’s quite innocent,” Feuerman said. “The key is to respond to a majority of them.”

In the 1990s, Gottman and his team at the University of Washington observed the interactions of 130 newlywed couples in what came to be known as “The Love Lab” and followed up with with them six years later. They found that those who were still married had turned toward each other 86% of the time during the observation period, while those who ending up divorcing had turned toward each other just 33% of the time. The takeaway: The way you respond to these requests for connection speaks volumes about the health of the relationship.

Why is that? Because paying attention to your partner’s bids and responding with presence, warmth and curiosity helps build trust.

“Trust asks this question: Will you be there for me when I need you most?” Yee said. “When you turn towards your partner, you’re saying ‘yes’ to that question. Bids that get a ‘turn towards’ deposit into the emotional bank account. It’s like a savings account you can withdraw from and lean on when you need it.”

But when you miss the bids — even unintentionally — the trust begins to erode between you over time, he said.

“Turning away and against is a withdrawal from the emotional bank account,” Yee said. “One cannot trust their partner will be there for them when making similar bids in the future.”

According to Yee, this can can have a number of negative impacts: more arguments between partners, feelings of resentment, loneliness, disconnection and lack of intimacy, just to name a few.

A pattern of rejected bids also discourages someone from making future bids and “even sets them on the path to getting needs met elsewhere,” Feuerman said.

In happy relationships, both parties “make frequent bids and respond to a majority of them in a positive way,” Feuerman said.

“It’s often a two-way street but there are some relationships where this is very out of balance and one partner pursues the connection much more than the other,” she said. “In these cases, the pursuer making lots of bids that go ignored or rejected can get burned out and stop trying, resulting in a very unsatisfying relationship.”

When you’re the one making the bid, Feuerman suggests being “clear, direct, asking for what you really want or need and avoid sounding critical or whiney.” This increases the likelihood your partner will respond.

“If you find a lot of your bids are missed by your partner, sit face-to-face and have a conversation about it and see if you can get on track,” she said. “If not, a skilled couples therapist would likely be able to help.”

When you’re on the other side of the interaction, be more mindful of the ways in which your partner may be trying to get your attention, Yee said. That means making an effort to reduce distractions — like by putting your phone in another room, closing your laptop or turning off the TV when you’re together, for example.

Some ways to turn toward your partner include listening to what they say, responding to their requests, being engaged when they talk about their day, helping them solve a problem and showing interest in their accomplishments, big and small, Yee said.

With this knowledge, hopefully you can start to take the small but powerful steps to strengthening your relationship.