John Gottman's research lab at the University of Washington watched thousands of married couples interact in close quarters across decades. One of the most-cited findings from that work is a number: couples who were still happily together six years after the original observation turned toward each other's small attempts at connection about 86% of the time. Couples who had divorced or were in a distressed relationship had turned toward about 33% of the time. The number stuck because it surprised even the researchers — the difference between thriving and dissolving relationships seemed to come down not to dramatic moments of conflict or romance, but to the quiet, daily, almost-invisible exchanges Gottman called "bids for connection."
This piece is a working guide to bids — what they are, what they look like in real homes on real Tuesdays, the three responses partners can make to them, and how to retrain the response that's become habitual. The 30 examples below are not the only kinds of bid; they're a representative cross-section drawn from the cases Gottman's clinical team has published, with details adjusted to keep the texture ordinary rather than dramatic.
What a Bid Actually Is
A bid for connection is any verbal or non-verbal attempt one partner makes to engage the other's attention, affection, humour, support or shared experience. The defining feature is that it's a small request, often disguised as not-a-request, that the other partner can choose to engage with or not. Gottman's clinical team identified bids as ranging from a few words ("look at this") to a sigh, a touch, a question about something on TV, or a tentative reference to a worry.
Three responses are possible: turning toward (engaging, however briefly), turning away (missing or ignoring the bid, usually unintentionally), or turning against (responding with irritation, sarcasm, or dismissal). Gottman's longitudinal data found that the ratio of turning-toward to turning-away/against responses across daily interactions was a stronger predictor of relationship durability than any single conflict measure. (See spotting the Four Horsemen and the Four Horsemen overview.)
The 30 Examples
Each example below is a real-shape bid — the kind that happens dozens of times a week in any cohabiting relationship. After each one, a one-line note on what the bid is asking for. Most of these are not framed as requests. That's the point.
Attention bids
Affection bids
Support bids
Shared-meaning bids
Humour bids
Practical / co-management bids
Sexual / sensual bids
Repair bids
"The relationship is built in these moments. Not in the grand ones. The 86% versus 33% finding was about whether partners turned toward each other in the small invitations no one was looking at."
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The Three Responses, Walked Through
Turning toward — what it actually looks like
Turning toward is not always full attention. Often it's a brief acknowledgement that registers the bid even when you can't engage fully. "Hold on — what did you see?" while you're cooking. "Oh, that's interesting — tell me in a minute when I'm off this call." A half-second of eye contact. A "mm-hm" that arrives at the right time. The minimum threshold is lower than people imagine. What matters is that the bid was registered and the partner knows it was registered. (See checking in with your partner and communication skills.)
Turning away — usually unintentional
Most turning-away is not hostile. It's distracted. The phone, the cooker, the email, the toddler. The partner makes a small bid; you genuinely don't hear it, or you hear it and forget to respond, or you intend to come back and the moment passes. Each individual instance is forgivable. The cumulative pattern — bid after bid after bid landing in dead air — is what produces the 33% number in distressed couples. The bids don't stop coming because the partner is needy; they slow down because the partner has learned the bids don't get received.
Turning against — the most damaging
Turning against is when the response is irritation, sarcasm, dismissal, or a Horseman. "I'm busy, can it wait?" with the wrong tone. "Why are you telling me this?" "What now?" Eye-rolls. Sighs. Each instance does outsized damage because the bid was offered in vulnerability and met with a wall. Gottman's data is reasonably consistent that one turning-against response can offset several turning-toward responses in the underlying emotional accounting.
Why It's Hard to Turn Toward Consistently
Three structural reasons most adults turn away or turn against more than they want to:
Cognitive load. Modern adult lives — particularly with children, work, and the constant pull of phones — leave less mental bandwidth for the small attention bids deserve. Daniel Kahneman's two-systems framework predicts exactly this: bids land on the slower, attention-demanding system, but our default state under load is the fast, automatic system. Bids don't get processed until they escalate.
The "I'll get to it later" trap. Many turning-aways are inadvertent — you intend to engage, you mean to come back, the moment passes. The intended turn-toward never lands. The partner experiences turning-away regardless of the intent behind it.
Mismatched bid styles. Some bids are obvious; some are deeply subtle. A sigh is a bid. A glance is a bid. A repetition of the same factual sentence with slightly different emphasis is a bid. Partners with mismatched bid-style sensitivities can spend years missing each other's specific patterns. The fix is named-curiosity, not telepathy. (See attachment theory in dating.)
How to Retrain the Response
1. Notice bids out loud, in retrospect
For one week, at the weekly check-in or in a quiet moment, name one bid you noticed your partner make that day or week. The act of naming it does two things: it confirms to your partner that you saw it, and it trains your own attention to start noticing similar bids in real time. By week three of this practice, most partners report a measurable increase in their hit-rate on incoming bids. (See the weekly check-in template.)
2. Acknowledge even when you can't engage
The minimum viable turn-toward is "I see you — give me five minutes." That single sentence, when offered honestly, lands as turning toward, not turning away. The partner has been received. The bid has been registered. The five minutes that follow can then be a genuine engagement rather than a hurried fragment.
3. Slow your own bids
Most adults make bids faster than their partner can register them. If you're the partner whose bids keep landing in dead air, one option is to make the bid more visible — slow down the sentence, add half a second of eye contact, name what you're inviting. "I'd love to tell you about something — do you have a minute?" lands far more reliably than the sighed alternative.
4. Don't punish your partner for the bids they miss
Resentment about missed bids is one of the highest-cost patterns in long relationships. The partner who missed the bid usually didn't mean to. The partner whose bid was missed has a legitimate hurt. The naming of the missed bid is what repairs it, in the moment or at the next check-in. Stored, accumulating resentment about missed bids is a different problem — that one calls for the conversation.
Bids in Dating, Not Just Established Relationships
Most of Gottman's work was on established couples, but the bid framework applies clearly in dating relationships too — sometimes more visibly, because new relationships don't yet have the rituals that automatically deliver turning-toward responses. Watch the early texture: are your bids registered by this person? Are theirs registered by you? Is the turning-toward rate, on a normal Tuesday, somewhere close to 80%? Or is it closer to 50%? Couples whose turning-toward rate in dating is high tend to scale that rate into established relationships. Couples whose rate is already mediocre in dating rarely improve later. (See secure-functioning couples and secure attachment in love.)
The Trickier Bids — And Why They Get Missed
Some bids are inherently harder to register. A particular kind to watch for:
- Bids made under disguise of complaint. "I'm so tired" is sometimes information; often it's a bid for attention or care. The complaint frame can hide the request, especially in long marriages.
- Bids made under disguise of irritation. "Why is the post still on the table?" can be a request for help, or for being seen, or for the routine that has slipped to be reset.
- Bids made via children. "Tell your father what you did at school today." The bid is partly about the child, partly about the partner.
- Bids made by silence. The partner who has gone quiet over dinner is often making a bid for noticing.
- Bids made by repetition. The fact of mentioning the same thing twice in different framings is often the bid — the topic itself is secondary to the wanting-to-be-heard.
The intervention for missed bids of this kind is the same as for ordinary bids: name what you noticed, even retrospectively. "I think you mentioned the post twice this morning. I'm sorry — I missed what you were really asking for. What is it?" Most partners experience the retrospective naming as a stronger turn-toward than an in-the-moment hurried response would have been.
The 86% number — where it comes from
The specific finding comes from Gottman and colleagues' observations of newlywed couples in the Love Lab apartment, followed up six years later. Of the couples still in stable, satisfied marriages, the average turning-toward rate during the original observation was 86%. Of the couples who had divorced or who were in distressed relationships, the average was 33%. The finding has been replicated across multiple Gottman-lab studies and is described in Gottman's book The Relationship Cure and academic work. For wider Gottman context see ten years of relationship research.
A Two-Week Practice
- Week 1: spend the week noticing your own bids and your partner's bids. Don't change anything yet. Just count, roughly, at the end of each day, how many bids you each made and how many got turned-toward.
- Week 2: set a soft target — turning toward 80% of bids you notice. Even partial responses count. The minimum viable turn-toward, again, is "I see you — give me five minutes."
Most couples who run this two-week exercise report a noticeable shift by day ten — not dramatic, just steadier. The cumulative effect across months is much larger than the per-day change suggests. The relationship is built in these moments, and rebuilt one bid at a time. (See vulnerability in building intimacy.)
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Where Bids Sit in the LoveCertain Approach
We weight communication style at 15% of compatibility, and screen — alongside values, life stage, and attachment style — for the responsiveness patterns the research literature ties to long-term relational health. Turning-toward receptivity is part of that signal. We only show matches above 70% compatibility. (See how matching works and compatibility science.)
For an authoritative primary-source overview from the Gottman Institute on bids and turning toward, see their guide to bids and turning toward.
The Honest Encouragement
The 86%-versus-33% finding is one of the more hopeful pieces of relationship research that exists. It says that the difference between thriving and dissolving relationships is mostly in the small moments — and the small moments are mostly within your control. You can't control your partner's bids. You can largely control your responses. Start there. Two weeks from now, your relationship will feel slightly different. Two years from now, the difference will be much larger.
