What is a Bid?
Have you ever wondered why you and your spouse ended up in the position you’re in? Why you’re happy or miserable? You can’t seem to pinpoint exactly where your relationship started to go wrong? One day you were both just unhappy? These are questions many people have a hard time answering. It’s easy to notice change over an extended period, but it’s hard to identify “in the moment” directional shifts. Bids are part of our everyday conversations. Every interaction between spouses involves bids. Our ability to identify a bid when our partner is bidding is essential the success of our relationship. Bids play a significant role in having a healthy or toxic marriage. In this post we will be defining what a bid is, what it looks like, the different types of bids, the effects of them, and a few statistics concerning them.
According to John Gottman, a leading researcher on marriage and couples, a bid is “the fundamental unit of emotional connection.” When we break down every interaction we have with our partner, there are bids. Any time your partner is wanting to connect with you, they will let you know in some way. They can give you a certain look, gesture, or touch. They can come in a variety of styles. They can be verbal or non-verbal, physical or intellectual. They can involve jokes or moments of being serious. You can identify a bid by your spouse trying to emotionally connect with you. A response to a bid can be positive or negative.
There are three types of bids:
Turning Towards – is giving your partner your attention when they are bidding for connection
Turning Away – is when you don’t see your partner’s bid for attention
Turning Against – is responding to a bid for connection in a negative way
A bid can have negative or positive effects. If we choose to turn against or away from a bid, it usually leads to a diminished connection or dying conversation. Turning towards bids for connection usually lead to continued interaction and stronger connection.
Why are Bids Important?
The divorce rate can be viewed as directly impacted by our failure to connect. John Gottman also provides statistics concerning divorce and bidding. His research shows that husbands heading for divorce disregard their wives’ bids for connection 80% of the time, while husbands in healthy relationships disregard their wives’ bids for attention just 20% of the time. Wives headed for divorced are preoccupied while their husbands bid for connection 50% of the time while happily married wives are preoccupied 15% of the time.
If we want the divorce rate to drop, we need to start turning towards our spouses more often. When we ignore or combat our spouses attempts to connect, we block connection, which causes us to grow distant.
Have conversations with your spouse to see how you can improve on turning towards them. Ask them, “in what ways am I not turning towards you?” and “What can I do to turn towards you in that moment?”