How to Bid and Build Emotional Connection

What if the most important element to a happy marriage occurred in the mundane, day to day, not so obvious interactions of your marriage? According to marriage research expert Dr. John Gottman, this may be the secret sauce to building a great marriage.

While studying hundreds of couples in a life simulated “apartment lab” with the cameras rolling (sounds interesting and little bit like reality tv), Gottman and his team discovered that couples are constantly making “bids” to one another, and in fact, happy couples (self-reported) were found to bid up to 100 times in ten minutes. Wow! This might sound like a lot of work, but in fact, this process is quite simple and easy to implement.

What is a bid for connection? As Dr. Gottman explains in his book, The Relationship Cure, bids can be verbal or non-verbal, sexual or non-sexual, significant and insignificant. The key is that a bid for connection is an attempt to create connection between two people. Gottman breaks bid responses into three categories. The first is turning toward, which is reflected in showing some level of interest (does not need to be an over the top response). For example, the following day to day chat with turning toward might sound like this.

Bob: “Did you see that the neighbors bought a new car?”
Judy: “Yes, I sure would like a new car to replace our clunker.”

The opposite of turning toward is turning against which might look like the following interaction.

Judy: “Yes, when are you going to ever get a decent paying job so we can buy a new car? "

Another bid response, less insidious than the former, is turning away. Again, Judy’s response under this category (turning away) might look like the following.

Judy: “Yes, what do you want for dinner?”

Her response, might also have been silence and am immediate change of subject. For simplicity sake, you can break bid responses into turning away and turning towards. Obviously, couples who respond with a high ratio of turning towards build more emotional connection in their relationship and the amazing thing is it applies to what may seem like insignificant interactions. Pat Love, author of Hot Monogamy, describes relationship failure as a result of withdrawing interest and energy in the relationship.

Improving your bid responses beings with raising awareness as to when someone is bidding and how you tend to respond. Next, be becoming more intentional with how you want to respond, more of this starts to show up in your day to day interactions.

Try to become more aware of how bids are an attempt for connection and how they are present in every relationship. You have the choice of response to turn towards or away, either which might seal the fate of your marriage!