A bid for connection is any attempt — however small — to get your partner's attention, affection, or support. "Look at that dog." "How was the meeting?" A hand on your shoulder while you're cooking. John Gottman, the University of Washington researcher who coined the term, called bids the fundamental unit of emotional communication. Relationships aren't built or broken in big conversations. They're built or broken in how you answer these tiny ones.

What Does a Bid Look Like?

Most bids are disguised as nothing. That's why people miss them:

  • A comment that invites a response. "This article is wild." The literal content barely matters — the subtext is engage with me.
  • A question that isn't really a question. "Are you tired?" often means "I want time with you tonight."
  • Physical bids. A touch, a look across the room, sitting closer on the couch.
  • A sigh, a groan, fidgeting. Low-level distress signals hoping someone asks "what's up?"

You have three options every time: turn toward (acknowledge it, even briefly), turn away (miss or ignore it), or turn against ("Can't you see I'm busy?").

Why Do Bids Matter So Much?

Because Gottman's numbers are brutal. In his longitudinal research with newlyweds, couples still married six years later had turned toward each other's bids 86% of the time. Couples who divorced had managed 33%. He called these groups the "masters" and the "disasters" — and the difference between them wasn't how they fought. It was how they handled hundreds of trivial moments. Happy couples made roughly 100 bids per ten minutes at the dinner table.

Here's the mechanism: every ignored bid teaches the bidder that reaching out doesn't work. Turning away is actually more corrosive than turning against, because rejection at least confirms you were heard. Silence confirms you weren't. People who stop getting responses stop bidding — and then one day you're two people managing a household, wondering where the closeness went. Most "we just drifted apart" stories are thousands of unanswered bids in a trench coat.

In Practice

She's reading on the couch and says, "Huh — my sister got the job." He's scrolling and says "mm." Twenty minutes later he asks if she wants to watch something; she says "whatever you want" without looking up. Neither of them clocks either moment. Six months of this, and she describes the relationship to a friend as "fine, but he's not really there," while he genuinely can't name anything wrong. Nobody yelled. Nobody cheated. They just went 0-for-2, then 0-for-40, on the small stuff. The fix in that living room costs ten seconds: "Wait, the hospital job? Is she taking it?" That's a turn toward. That's the entire skill.

How Do You Get Better at Bids?

Catch them first. For one week, just notice bids — yours and theirs. Most people are shocked at how many they've been sleeping through.

Respond small but real. Turning toward doesn't mean dropping everything. "That's wild — tell me in a sec, I'm finishing this email" still counts. Engagement, not performance.

Make your own bids legible. If your bids are sighs and hints, you're making your partner pass a test they don't know they're taking. "Hey, I want twenty minutes with you tonight" is a bid that can actually be answered.

Watch the pattern, not the moment. One missed bid is noise. A 33% response rate is a trajectory. If you're trying to figure out whether you're in a rough week or a real pattern, talking it through with Lainie can help you see what's actually happening before it calcifies.

The good news buried in Gottman's data: you don't need to be perfect. The masters missed 14% of bids. You just have to show up for most of the small moments — because the small moments are the relationship.