Bids for Connection

What a bid for connection is, why the small moments between two people matter more than they look, how to notice them and turn toward them, and what to do when your own bids keep going unanswered

Written by Ivana, psychologist and psychotherapist

9 minute read  ·  1,970 words

You’re both in the kitchen. Your partner looks up from their phone and says, “Oh, look, that’s the café we went to on our first trip.” You’re halfway through a message, so you say “Mm” without looking up. They go back to their phone. Nothing really happened. And yet something small did.

Most of us have been on both sides of that moment. The psychologist John GottmanJohn GottmanAmerican psychologist, professor emeritus at the University of Washington, known for decades of research observing couples and for the Gottman Method of couples therapy. calls moments like this bids for connection: small attempts to get another person’s attention, interest or affection. His research suggests that the way two people answer these ordinary moments, again and again over months and years, says a lot about how their relationship is doing.

Bids are easy to learn to notice, and turning toward one usually takes only a few seconds!

A bid can be almost anything

A bid is any attempt to connect. It can be a question, a comment, a joke, a touch or even a sigh. “Look at that.” “How was your day?” “I’m so tired.” A hand on your shoulder as someone walks past. Some bids are clear requests, but a lot of them are quiet, and the need underneath isn’t always said out loud. “Did you see that article?” can simply mean “Talk with me for a minute.”

Bids aren’t only for couples, either. Friends make them to each other all day long, and so do parents and children, and colleagues. A child holding up a drawing is making a bid. So is a teenager who hangs around in the kitchen doorway without quite saying why. Most of the research has been done with couples, though, so that’s where this article mostly stays.

Three ways to answer

Gottman describes three ways people respond. Turning toward means answering the bid in some way: looking up, replying, showing interest. It doesn’t have to be enthusiastic, and a small, real acknowledgment counts. Turning away means missing or ignoring the bid, usually without meaning to, because you’re busy or distracted. Turning against means answering with irritation, as in “Can’t you see I’m working?”

If you recognize yourself in turning away, that doesn’t make you a bad partner. Everyone does it sometimes, and it’s rarely deliberate. It usually just means your head was somewhere else.

Phones make it easier to turn away

You probably know the feeling of talking to someone who’s looking at a screen. In one study, researchers asked adults in relationships how often their partner was distracted by a phone while they were together. Researchers call this partner phubbing, from phone and snubbing (yes, that’s the real word). People who reported more of it also reported more arguments about phones and less satisfaction with their relationship. Many studies since have found the same link, and a 2025 review that pooled more than fifty of them confirmed it.

These are surveys, so they show a link rather than a cause. But they describe something most of us will recognize: a bid made to someone looking at a screen is easy to miss, and a missed bid doesn’t always get made again.

What the laboratory apartment showed

In the 1990s, Gottman and his colleagues at the University of Washington invited newlywed couples to spend a day in an apartment set up as a laboratory. The couples cooked, ate, read and talked while the researchers watched. Years later, Gottman reported that how the couples had answered each other’s bids was linked to what had happened to their marriages.

According to a widely quoted figure from Gottman’s lab, couples who were still married six years later had turned toward each other’s bids 86 percent of the time. Couples who had divorced had turned toward each other only 33 percent of the time.

These numbers appear in writing for the general public rather than in a peer-reviewedpeer-reviewedChecked by other independent researchers before it is published in a scientific journal. Books and articles written for the public usually don’t go through this process. paper, and they show a link, not proof. But they point to something the research keeps finding: the ordinary moments seem to matter a lot.

Everyday moments carry into harder ones

In another study from the same lab, researchers filmed newlywed couples during an ordinary dinner in the laboratory apartment, and then during a fifteen-minute talk about a disagreement. Couples who were more playful and enthusiastic with each other over dinner also showed more humor and affection when they talked about their disagreement.

It was an observational study, so it can’t say which came first. But it fits a simple, hopeful idea: the goodwill you build in small moments is still there to draw on when a conversation gets hard.

Good news is a bid too

Bids aren’t only about needing something. Sharing good news is one of the most common ways people reach out. Think of the last time you couldn’t wait to tell someone something great, and how it felt when they lit up, or didn’t.

Researchers filmed dating couples talking about recent good and bad events in their lives. How partners responded to good news was more closely linked to how the relationship was doing two months later, and to whether the couple had broken up, than how they responded to bad news.

So being there when things go right seems to matter at least as much as being there when they go wrong. A warm, curious “Tell me everything!” is a turn toward. A distracted “Nice” is a turn away, even when it’s meant kindly.

Notice the quiet ones

Loud bids are easy to catch. It’s the quiet ones that slip past: a sigh, a comment about something outside the window, a question that seems to be about nothing much. When you notice one, it can help to ask yourself whether there’s an invitation in it. There often is.

Small is enough

Turning toward doesn’t mean dropping everything. Looking up and saying “Oh, where?” counts. So does “I want to hear about it, give me five minutes to finish this.” What matters is that the bid is received and acknowledged, not that you answer it at length.

The same goes for messages. When your partner sends a photo of something that made them think of you, a quick reply that shows you looked is a turn toward, even hours later.

Missed one? Go back

Nobody catches every bid, so please don’t be hard on yourself when you miss one. Going back to it later is a turn toward in its own right: “You were telling me about the café earlier, and I was miles away. What was it?” A small acknowledgment like this is a form of repair, and it tells the other person that their reaching out was noticed after all.

Make your own bids easier to see

Maybe you’re the one whose bids keep getting missed. That can feel lonely, and it’s not something to brush off. One thing that can help is making your bids a little clearer. “Can you look at this with me for a minute?” is easier to catch than a sigh. A clear bid isn’t needy. It just gives the other person a better chance to answer.

Some people find it hard to make bids at all, especially if reaching out hasn’t gone well for them in the past. If that sounds familiar, try noticing the moments you hold back, and what you expect would happen if you didn’t.

Talk about the pattern, gently

If your bids have been missed for a while, it may be worth talking about it, and how you start that conversation matters. In one study of newlywed couples, Gottman’s team found that the first three minutes of a conversation about a disagreement predicted which couples were still together six years later. How a conversation begins tends to shape how it goes.

It usually helps to say what you’ve noticed and how it feels, rather than what your partner is doing wrong. “I’ve been missing you lately. When I show you something and you don’t look up, I feel a bit on my own” is much easier to hear than “You never listen to me.” A conversation like this is a bid too, and a gentle one is so much easier to turn toward.

Most of what holds two people together doesn’t happen in the big conversations. It happens in the few seconds after one of them says “Look at that.” Next time, look!