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Recently Dan called to me from the garden, “Come and look at this.” It was early evening. I was on the sofa, heavily pregnant, sweat dripping down the back of my neck and my legs. A combination of pregnancy-related pelvic girdle pain and a sleepless night meant hoisting myself off the sofa would be a big effort. “Why?” I asked, searching for a good enough reason. “Trust me,” he replied, “it’s worth it.”
This small moment is what relationship researchers and psychologists Drs. Julie and John Gottman call ‘a bid for connection’. After four decades of research, studying thousands of couples, the Gottmans found the way in which we respond to these bids can determine whether a relationship lasts. If you notice and turn towards them around 86% of the time, you are building on your connection, trust and intimacy. But if you turn away and only respond to them around 33% of the time, you are inviting distance into your relationship.
You will probably find these bids for connection in your relationships every day. Your partner might ask you to look out the window at a bird, or try to start a conversation about an article they’ve read and loved. They might begin to tell you a story about a colleague at work while you are uploading a photo to Instagram, or replying to a WhatsApp message from a friend. It wasn’t until I started reading about the Gottmans' research that I understood how — if they are ignored — these small bids can stack up into bigger resentments. Maybe if I hadn’t found their work I would have have stayed inside on the sofa that night, sweating and scrolling online, using my swollen body as an excuse not to go out into the garden.
Instead I waddled outside and there it was, what he wanted to share with me: a pink rainbow at sunset in a purple sky. We looked up at it in the cool night air and I understood how my mood could flip like a coin. Instead of going back inside I lay down on the grass, and Dan did too. We stared up, out into the night. We talked and pointed out bats in the sky. In that moment, lying on the grass, we were teenagers with no responsibilities, not two adults getting ready to bring another person into the world. I thought about how much I would miss moments like these, just the two of us, but how ready we were to share them too. To add 'parents' to the many different selves we encountered in each other. Perhaps when sleep-deprivation threatened to pry us apart I would remember this feeling and try to find a way to be teenagers together again. I could have missed this, I thought. And for what? Another ten minutes scrolling through twitter. It’s frightening how carelessly and unknowingly we cut ourselves off from these small, shining fragments of life.
So this week’s newsletter is a reminder to notice these bids for connection from the people you love, and then to turn towards them. They might seem small. You might be busy. But perhaps, if you pay attention, a tiny moment will open up into an opportunity for love that you will be glad you didn't miss.
 Drs. John and Julie Gottman
NL: Several people I’ve interviewed have mentioned your ‘bid for connection’ theory. Why do you think meeting a tiny bid for connection, or rolling your eyes and ignoring it instead, has such a big impact on our relationships?
John: These bids for attention are really attempts to connect with one another. As we read other people's emotions and gestures and nonverbal behaviour, we can tell what's going on in their minds and in their hearts. And so [when we make a bid for our partner’s attention] in these small moments we’re looking for confirmation, for validation, for understanding, for love. If a partner responds to that bid by turning towards it with interest and saying, “Yes, I'm here for you, even if you just want to get my interest and tell me about an article you're reading,” that turns out to be powerful in predicting the future of a relationship. We found that in newlywed couples who eventually divorced, when we looked back, six years earlier they had turned toward their partner’s attempt to get their interest only 33% of the time. Whereas when we looked at the couples who stayed married, six years earlier they had turned toward those bids 86% of the time. So these small but powerful events accumulate to make a huge difference in a relationship.
Julie: In Western culture we've developed this idea that people should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, that they should be independent, and that autonomy is the ideal. The reality, biologically, is that human beings are pack animals, not solo creatures. We need to feel part of a tribe or a family or a group or a partnership in order to feel safe and secure in the world, and to survive. In fact, our ancient ancestors travelled in groups or packs; that desire to connect in order to survive is deeply embedded in our bones. So little gestures like an eye gaze or a nod when a partner wants your attention are subtle ways of knowing we are connected to each other. And that’s linked to our own safety, security and survival.
Often we are attracted to people who have different qualities to us and yet sometimes we feel irritated when they don’t act the way we would in a situation. Why can we feel frustrated by that, even if the fact they are different to us is one of the reasons we love them?
Julie: One thing we need to state is that everybody is different and the myth that opposites attract is an illusion. But I think the reason we get annoyed by that is we're very familiar with ourselves, right? We know how to deal with ourselves. Human beings are primarily… not self-centred, but born with a primitive instinct for self-preservation. We're looking for ways to deal with our external world that are familiar and easy to manage, in order to maximise our self-preservation. That would mean finding a partner who was similar to us. But there's really no such thing, and we'd be bored with a clone.
John: I would add there is a phenomenon in social psychology called the ‘fundamental attribution error,’ which was first described by a psychologist named Fritz Heider. He said that we're more forgiving toward ourselves than we are to other people. It’s natural to think, I'm okay but my partner is defective, if they're different. That's the fundamental attribution error that is pervasive throughout research on memory, too. Every time we remember a social event, we always remember it in a way that’s a little biased toward ourselves, rather than the other person.
Julie: There's no such thing as absolute truth; it's all about perception. And because each of us comes from a different history of experiences and we’re in a different body – including the eyes and ears — we're going to experience whatever happens in a relationship in different ways. So there’s always two points of view, and often we think ours is right.
I know from your research you developed the magic 5:1 ratio, which means that in happy, stable couples for every one negative feeling or interaction, there must be five positive ones. Why do we need five positive interactions in order to combat one negative?
John: Well, the five-to-one ratio was computed during conflict. And I should say that a lot of the positivity we observed in couples who had happy, lasting relationships had to do with interest in one another. That’s about communicating active interest in what your partner is saying — asking questions is one way, but also responding, nodding your head, maintaining eye contact and mirroring your partner's emotions. Those are all ways of being positive.
But your question was about why negativity is more powerful, and it's really about survival. We're trying to predict the current danger in the world, which means we’re tuned in to the negative, to other people's anger or disappointment and the danger they might present. We want to make sure we survive. And the negative stuff makes us consider and think and plan.
What I love about your work is it helps people to see conflict as part of the fabric of a relationship. How do you think conflict can be productive, or even useful, in relationships?
Julie: It's fantastic. I would almost call it the road to a deeper connection. Often arguments occur because people have different points of view and they hold fast to them, because of something they want or are trying to achieve. Or the arguments can be based on an underlying painful background to a story, which is triggered by their partner’s behaviour. When you take time to explore your partner's point of view - their feelings and their underlying dreams, or why certain positions on an issue are important to them - you discover another layer in that individual. Perhaps an enduring vulnerability that’s occurred because of something difficult in their childhood. It's important to know those things because they compose the deepest part of who your partner is as a human being.
The couples who do use conflict to understand each other better…is there anything they do, or have in common?
Julie: It's not about what they have in common. First of all, it's their ability to have a curiosity about each other, to want to understand at a deeper level why their partner feels what they feel, or needs what they need, or wants what they want. It’s about learning how to ask questions and then to have a dialogue with each other about those questions. The other thing is empathy. They're able to step out of their own shoes and understand their partner’s needs and feelings and dreams from their point of view, not just from their own.
In my relationships there have been two types in conflict: the first, which we’ve been talking about, is rooted in the inevitable things that crop up in a relationship, almost like the natural wear and tear of intimacy. The second is when conflict comes from external stresses outside the relationship, like financial pressures or a fertility struggle or a family illness. Do you think the second conflict can be useful too?
Julie: Absolutely. In fact, research has shown that when couples learn to manage their outside stress together, they do not relapse nearly as frequently after therapy as those who are overwhelmed by it. So it’s an important skill to have.
John: Julie is referring to a serendipitous finding by late colleague, Neil Jacobson, who discovered that after therapy half of the couples relapsed and went back to old patterns, rather than using more functional ways of dealing with conflict. Neil was trying to understand why that happened, so he studied couples who had been in his therapy programme two years later. The only difference between the half that had relapsed and the half that hadn’t was that the latter had created a stress-reducing conversation that helped them to manage outside stresses together. One of the fascinating things was those couples didn't know each other, but they all had invented this stress-reducing conversation.
When you say they developed a stress-reducing conversation, how did that work?
Julie: I’ll give you a simplified version of the structure. One person is the speaker, the other is the listener. The speaker talks about what’s causing them stress outside the relationship. The listener’s job is to ask the speaker questions to understand why that particular issue is stressful for them e.g. What makes that so upsetting for you? What's your worst-case scenario here? These questions help them to understand the internal landscape of the speaker.
Then the listener empathises with the other's experience. They say things like, “It makes sense to me that you're feeling that way. I get it.” They are not trying to solve the problem. That's important, because if they do that before the speaker asks for advice, the speaker will feel cut off emotionally and unable to unfold what is going on inside them. Another part, if both people are open to it, is to touch each other non-erotically. Perhaps you put an arm around the person, hold their hand or touch their shoulder. And lastly, it's important for the listener to not side with the enemy. If the speaker is complaining about a neighbour, for example, or a teacher of their child, it’s unhelpful for the listener to say, “That person was just trying to help our child.” Because the speaker could feel turned against, rather than seeing their partner as an ally. The listener’s goal is to help the speaker feel less alone in their problem by understanding their feelings and empathising with them.
A lot of your work and advice comes back to both partners being curious about each other and their relationship. But what if one person wants to do that work, and the other resists it? Is that a relationship that’s just not going to work?
Julie: Not necessarily. There may have been regrettable incidents that shred the safety between the partners, so that one person who was emotionally injured during those fights doesn't feel safe enough to open up and be vulnerable. And so they shut down and become withdrawn. In that case, what's helpful is for people to process those fights or regrettable incidents. By ‘process’ I mean trying to understand each other's perceptions and feelings about what happened and recover from it, rather than letting that incident stand as an obstacle between them.
Something that’s important in relationships is honouring each other’s dreams. But that can be scary for some people, if it involves their partner making a big change like quitting a job that means they might not be able to pay the rent. Or a career change that might mean a lifestyle change for the couple. Why is it important to not resist those changes, even if we might fear the risk that comes with them?
Julie: That's a big one that blocks people from honouring each other's dreams. There's a lot of fear of big change, but the reason it's so important to honour each other's dreams is that every person with a will to live is a dreamer. No matter who you are, every person yearns for an experience or for something that gives their life meaning and purpose and a sense of value. And we know, for example, from history, that women's dreams, to a large extent, were shut down and managed within relationships. It's only in the last hundred years maybe, or even 40 to 50 years, that women have begun to feel more entitled to having their dreams honoured. So what we dream for is where people live, it's part of their deepest humanity. And what is love? Well, love is taking a very real interest in and concern for your partner's wellbeing and happiness. And often that’s linked to what that person dreams about being — not just doing, but who they want to be.
What do you wish you’d known about love?
Julie: That it doesn’t make me needy to express my needs. In fact, there’s no such thing as ‘needy’. That doesn’t mean my partner has to fulfil all my needs, but it’s okay for me to voice them.
John: As a scientist I’ll always ask, is there one underlying thing that organises all of the findings? And that one underlying thing is to have this motto: when your partner is upset, the world stops and you listen, and that’s an opportunity for connection. It means that whatever adversity you’re facing, whatever your partner is concerned about, it’s something that you know about and connect over. Having an emotional check-in periodically with your partner during the day is a great way to say, “What’s in your heart? What’s on your mind right now? I want to know what you’re feeling and what you need.” Having that motto is what makes a real difference in relationships.
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