A simple effort to give our partners space to express themselves can go a long way
In recent years, the discourse on romantic relationships has been inundated with misinformation online. While there are many misconceptions regarding how to address relationship problems, there has been a bevy of research on relationships that can help us demystify the pillars needed for a healthy relationship.
One of these pillars is referred to as “bids for connection.”A bid for connection is a verbal or nonverbal cue that indicates your partner is looking for you to respond to what they are saying or thinking. This concept was first studied by Dr. John M. Gottman and colleagues at the University of Washington.
“We learned… that husbands headed for divorce disregard their wives’ bids for connection 82 percent of time, while husbands in stable relationships disregard their wive’s bids just 19 percent of the time” said Gottman in his book “The Relationship Cure”. Gottman goes on to write that wives headed for divorce disregard their husbands 50 percent of the time, while happily married wives disregard their husbands bids 14 percent of the time.
Examples of verbal bids include your partner saying, “Hey, look at the cute dog on the sidewalk,” or “Let me show this TikTok I thought was funny.”
Nonverbal bids would include your partner sneakily smiling at you during a group discussion to indicate they found something funny or simply making eye contact after a wild thing was said as if to communicate with their eyes, “Are you hearing this?”
While these behaviors may seem minor, frequent missing, or worse, rejections of these bids could result in a couple distancing themselves from one another.
Given the many distractions in our lives, from school, work, and family, giving our partners the undivided attention they require as human beings to feel loved and cared for can be challenging. Thus, it is essential to be very intentional in our interactions with our partners. For example, we can close our laptops, put our phones away, and ask more than just what they did today by asking how the events of their day made them feel.