Your partner looks up from the window and says, “Look, the cardinal is back.” You’re halfway through an email, so you say “hm” and keep typing. Nothing happens. Nobody gets upset. But that small moment was a bid for connection: a reach for your attention, with a quiet question underneath it. Are you with me?
Psychologist John Gottman named these moments after years of watching couples go about ordinary days. The Gottman Institute reports that in one study of newlyweds, couples who were still married six years later had turned toward each other’s bids 86% of the time while being observed in the lab. Couples who later divorced had done so 33% of the time. Everyone misses bids sometimes. What matters is the overall pattern, and a pattern is something you can learn to see and change.
What is a bid for connection?
A bid for connection is any attempt to get another person’s attention, interest, affection, or support. It can be a question, a comment, a joke, a touch, or a sigh loud enough to be heard from the next room. The words on the surface are usually ordinary. The request underneath tends to be the same: notice me, be interested in me, be on my side.
You may also hear them called bids for attention, bids for affection, or emotional bids. They are the same idea with a different emphasis. A bid for attention (“Watch this”) asks you to look. A bid for affection (a hand on your back as you pass) asks for warmth. A bid for support (“I have that review tomorrow”) asks you to help carry something. Many bids are a little of each.
Bids are not only a couples thing. Friends make them by text, kids make them at bedtime, and coworkers make them at the coffee machine. Partners trade them all day long, which is why most of the research, and most of this post, is about couples.
Examples of bids for connection
Most bids are easy to miss because they look like nothing. A few everyday examples:
- “You will not believe what my sister texted me.”
- Reading a headline out loud, or asking, “Did you see this?”
- “How was the dentist?” or any question about your day
- A hand on your shoulder, a foot nudging yours under the blanket, a squeeze while you wait in line
- A photo of the dog sent in the middle of a workday
- “Do you want to take a walk after dinner?”
- Sitting down next to you instead of across the room
Some bids come in disguise. “You’re always on your phone” sounds like a complaint, and it is one. It is often also a bid: I miss you, and I want you back. A bid that keeps getting missed tends to come back louder and sharper, which makes it even harder to hear as a reach.
In couples therapy, we slow an argument down to find the bid inside it. “You never plan anything” can turn out to mean “I want to feel like a priority to you.” Once a partner hears the request instead of the charge, both people tend to soften, and the conversation can move somewhere new.
It helps to catch your own hidden bids, too. If you hear yourself making the same complaint for the third time this month, ask what you are hoping your partner will do. Saying that part out loud is usually easier to answer.
Turning toward, turning away, and turning against
There are three basic ways to answer a bid. Take the same one, “Look, the cardinal is back,” and three different replies.
Turning toward
“Oh, where?” You look up, even for a second. Turning toward does not require enthusiasm or a long conversation. A glance, a laugh, or “tell me after this call” all count. It tells the other person the reach landed.
Turning away
“Hm.” You keep typing. Turning away is usually not cold. It is distraction, fatigue, or simply not noticing that anything was asked. On the other end, it can feel like talking to an empty room. When it happens in the middle of an argument and one person shuts down completely, it can harden into stonewalling.
Turning against
“I’m working. Can you not?” Turning against answers the bid with irritation, criticism, or sarcasm. It hurts in an obvious way. Even so, a Gottman Institute article argues that turning away can do more damage than an outright rejection, because a rejection at least leaves room to keep talking and repair things. Being ignored leaves nothing to respond to.
Why missed bids matter
A missed bid now and then is nothing. A long run of them becomes the feel of the relationship. Each answer is a small signal about whether it is worth reaching for this person.
Feel like you keep missing each other?
If the small moments between you and your partner have gone quiet, therapy can help you find your way back to them. Our DC therapists work with couples and individuals on exactly this.
When bids keep landing, people reach more. They share the small stuff, and the small stuff builds the trust that gets a couple through the big stuff. It is also the goodwill you draw on when you disagree. When bids keep going unanswered, people tend to stop making them.
That drift is how many couples end up feeling like roommates. Nobody did anything you could point to. There were just a lot of small moments where nobody turned. It works the other way, too: small, repeated moments of turning toward are one of the most ordinary ways a relationship gets warmer again.
Why bids get missed, or stop coming
Most missed bids come from ordinary life, not from a lack of love.
- Phones and screens. A bid that arrives while you’re scrolling competes with something built to hold your attention.
- Stress and long days. After a week of back-to-back meetings or a late night on the Hill, attention is the first thing to run out.
- Different bid styles. One person bids with words, the other by doing things. A partner who fixes the squeaky door may be bidding, and waiting for you to notice.
- Bids that are too subtle. A hint or a sigh is easy to read as nothing at all.
History plays a part, too. If you grew up in a home where reaching out got ignored or teased, you may have learned to stop reaching, or to reach so quietly that nobody could turn you down. That habit protected you once. In a relationship, its price is that your partner may not know you’re asking.
Some people have the opposite problem. With relationship anxiety, every missed bid can feel like proof that something is wrong, and a distracted “hm” can ruin an evening. Neither pattern is a flaw in your character. Both are ways of protecting yourself that you can learn to loosen.
How to notice and respond to bids for connection
None of this asks for grand gestures. It asks you to catch more of the small moments and answer more of them.
Learn what your partner's bids look like
Turn toward, even briefly
Make your own bids easier to see
Repair the bids you miss
The same steps work with friends. The friend who keeps sending you articles, or texts “thinking of you” out of nowhere, is bidding too. A quick, real reply keeps the thread alive.
When to talk with a therapist
If you and your partner keep missing each other, or one of you has stopped reaching out at all, it can help to have someone else in the room. Couples therapy gives you both a place to slow down the moments that keep going wrong and to hear what each of you has been asking for. Depending on the therapist, that work may draw on psychodynamic therapy, emotion-focused therapy, the Gottman Method, or other approaches. The fit between you and the therapist matters as much as the method.
Couples are sometimes surprised by how small the first changes in therapy are. A partner starts looking up from the laptop. Someone says “tell me more” instead of “uh huh.” We pay attention to these moments because they are where closeness gets rebuilt, one ordinary exchange at a time, long before the bigger conversations feel safe.
Individual therapy can help too, especially if reaching out feels risky for you, or if you notice you go quiet when someone reaches for you. Those habits made sense once. They can change.
Start turning toward each other again
If the small moments in your relationship have started slipping by, our Dupont Circle therapists can help you both notice them and answer them again.
Last updated: October 2026
This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical or mental health advice. Always consult with a qualified mental health professional for personalized guidance regarding your specific situation.
