Turning Toward Bids for Connection
- Difficulty
- Starter
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- —
In the Gottmans' apartment lab, 130 newlywed couples were filmed over six years. Repeatedly one partner would try to get the other's attention — share something funny, point at a boat going past, mention something they'd read. The Gottmans call this a bid for connection, and the cameras always swung to catch the response, which fell into exactly three types: turning toward (acknowledging the bid), turning away (no response at all), and turning against (an irritable response like 'would you be quiet, I'm trying to read'). The couples who divorced within six years had turned toward bids only 33% of the time; those still together had turned toward 86% of the time. Turning toward functions like an emotional bank account: the balance you build in ordinary moments buys humour, affection and lower physiological arousal during conflict.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Learn to recognise a bid
A bid is any small attempt to get your partner's attention or share something — a humorous remark, an interesting story, something they're reading, a comment about a boat going past. Most bids are trivial in content and significant only as attempts to connect.
Pro tip Assume the bid is about connection, not about the boat.
- 2
Know the three possible responses
Turning toward acknowledges the connection ('yeah, huh'). Turning away is no response at all. Turning against is an irritable response — 'would you be quiet, I'm trying to read'. Every bid gets one of these three.
Watch out Turning away is not neutral — in the data it sits with turning against on the wrong side of the divorce line.
- 3
Default to turning toward — the response can be tiny
The successful response in the lab footage was minimal: acknowledging the connection at all. The masters weren't producing thoughtful replies to every remark; they were hitting an 86% acknowledgement rate on trivial bids.
Pro tip Low effort, high frequency beats occasional deep engagement — the metric is percentage of bids acknowledged.
- 4
Bank it — and spend it during conflict
Turning toward builds an emotional bank account. When the balance is high, conflict looks different: more sense of humour about yourself and each other, laughter, affection even while disagreeing, and reduced physiological arousal — which means less flooding.
In the wild
In the Gottmans' apartment lab, a newlywed sitting by the window says 'oh, what a beautiful boat that is, going by.' The cameras swing to the partner. If the answer is even a distracted 'yeah, huh' — that's turning toward. Silence is turning away. 'Would you be quiet, I'm trying to read' is turning against. Six years on, the seventeen couples who had divorced had turned toward these tiny bids only 33% of the time; the couples still together had done so 86% of the time. The content of the exchange was worthless; the response rate predicted the marriage.
→ A 53-percentage-point gap in bid response rate separated the divorced couples from the intact ones six years later.
Common mistakes
Saving your attention for the big conversations
The predictive behaviour lives in trivial everyday moments, not in scheduled deep talks. A partner who is fully present once a week and unresponsive daily is running a low balance.
Treating no response as harmless
Turning away registers as a failed bid just as turning against does. Silence while absorbed in a phone or book is the most common way couples drain the account without noticing.
From the transcript
“another one is turning toward it turns out to be a very powerful thing in a relationship”
“they had turned toward these bids only 33 percent of the time whereas the couples who are still together six years earlier had turned toward…”
“and we also discovered that turning toward is like an emotional bank account”
From the episode
The Science Behind Why Relationships Last Or Fail - Drs John & Julie Gottman
Drs John & Julie Gottman