Emotional bids: the research on small moments of connection

By EQTiger Editorial. Review status: needs-expert-review. Qualified review is pending; the review date records an editorial check. This is general education for adults, not therapy or couples counseling, and EQTiger does not diagnose anyone, including your partner.

What counts as a bid

The term is widely used in couples work influenced by John Gottman, and the closest peer-reviewed study we could verify is described below. A bid is a small request for connection. It can be a question ("Want to hear something funny?"), a comment ("That car is the color we painted our first kitchen"), a touch, a laugh, or even a heavy sigh that invites "what's wrong?". The partner can respond in roughly three ways, usually described as turning toward (engaging), turning away (not noticing or ignoring) and turning against (responding with irritation).

The labels are a practitioner's vocabulary. They are useful precisely because the moments are small: most bids are not about anything important, which is why they are easy to miss.

What the research actually found

Dinnertime and later arguments. Janice Driver and John Gottman observed 49 newlywed couples during a 10-minute dinnertime interaction and, separately, a 15-minute conflict discussion (Driver and Gottman, 2004). They developed a new coding system for the dinnertime moments. Couples who showed more playfulness and enthusiasm in the everyday moments also showed more humor and affection during conflict. The authors are clear that the study was observational and correlational, so it cannot show that turning toward bids causes better arguments. It is preliminary support for the idea that small daily moments matter.

Good news. In a related line of work, Shelly Gable and colleagues found that how partners respond when one shares good news is linked to relationship quality. In a study of 79 dating couples, responses to positive events predicted relationship well-being and breakup two months later more closely than responses to negative events (Gable, Gonzaga, and Strachman, 2006). Sharing good news is one of the most common bids there is.

Small kindnesses and thanks. Sara Algoe, Shelly Gable and Natalya Maisel studied cohabiting couples day by day and found that a partner's thoughtful actions prompted gratitude, and that gratitude predicted feeling more connected and satisfied the next day, for both partners (Algoe, Gable, and Maisel, 2010). A larger program of studies by Amie Gordon and colleagues found that people who felt appreciated were more appreciative in return, and appreciative partners were more responsive and more likely to stay together (Gordon and colleagues, 2012).

Positive feeling over the long run. Gottman and Levenson's 14-year study of married couples found that a lack of positive feeling, both in arguments and in ordinary conversation, predicted divorce later in marriage (Gottman and Levenson, 2000). That study used a prediction model fit within one sample, so its accuracy figure should not be taken at face value, but the direction of the finding fits the bids idea.

The statistic you may have seen

Popular articles often quote precise percentages for how often couples who stayed married turned toward bids compared with couples who divorced. We looked for a peer-reviewed paper reporting those figures with an abstract we could open and check, and did not find one. The 2004 dinnertime study above is the closest peer-reviewed source we could verify, and it reports associations, not those percentages. Until a checkable source is available, treat the specific numbers as unverified.

Phones and missed bids

Devices are a modern way to turn away without meaning to. In a survey of 143 married or cohabiting women, those who reported more technology interruptions during couple time also reported more conflict about technology and lower relationship satisfaction (McDaniel and Coyne, 2016). In an experiment where participants imagined a conversation with someone who kept checking their phone, more phone use lowered how good the conversation felt and how satisfied people were with the relationship (Chotpitayasunondh and Douglas, 2018). One study was cross-sectional and the other used an imagined, animated conversation, so neither shows what happens in a specific couple over time.

What the research does not show

• That every missed bid matters. Everyone turns away sometimes, especially when tired, sick or busy with a baby. The research is about patterns over many moments, not single slips.
• That bids explain why relationships end. Small moments are one ingredient among many, and these studies cannot separate cause from effect.
• That turning toward means always being available. "I want to hear this, give me ten minutes to finish this email" is turning toward. Promising and then following through counts.

How to turn toward more often

1. Learn your partner's bids. For a week, notice the small ways they reach for you: a comment from the other room, a link they send, sitting close.
2. Respond with one specific thing. A question about the detail they mentioned shows you heard it.
3. When you cannot engage, say when you can. "Hold that thought until after this call, I want to hear it."
4. Make your own bids easier to see. "Can I tell you about my day? I need five minutes of you" is clearer than a sigh.
5. Thank the small things. Saying "thanks for making coffee" is a bid in return.

Try a three-day bid log

If you want to see your own pattern rather than take the research on faith, keep a private log for three ordinary days. Each evening, write down two or three moments when your partner reached for you and what you did, plus one moment when you reached for them.

Most people find the misses cluster at predictable times: the morning rush, the first ten minutes home, the last hour with a screen. That tells you where one small change will do the most. The log is for your own learning, not something to show your partner as evidence, and it should never become a tally of their misses.

For specific words, see checking in after a hard day. If one of you rarely turns toward the other and it has become lonely, feeling taken for granted covers how to raise it.

Key studies

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