In relationships, both verbal and nonverbal communication play a role in how well you connect with and feel seen by your partner. What you say, how you say it, and how your body language supports your words all matter. When couples are in conflict, things like tone, responses, and eye contact can help them move through their conflict or add fuel to the fire and make them feel more disconnected.
Bids for Connection
One way to support healthy dialogue and build connection is to be attuned to your partner’s “bids for connection.” This term was coined by Dr. John and Julie Gottman, leading researchers in the field of love and relationships. A bid is “an invitation to connect” (Gottman & Gottman, p. 3); it is an attempt for positive connection from you or your partner. This can be verbal or nonverbal and come in the form of feelings, observations, opinions, invitations, physical gestures, or questions.
Responding to Bids
How bids are made is just as important as how they are received. When a partner initiates a moment of connection, the other partner can respond in one of three ways (Gottman & Gottman, p. 5). Let’s use an example to illustrate the differences. If your partner says, “I was thinking we should try that new restaurant in our neighborhood this weekend.” You could respond by;
Turning Toward – “Oh yes, I know which one you are talking about; sounds good.”
This involves being present and responding to your partner. It does not mean you have to agree, but you show interest and help your partner feel seen.
Turning Away – “. . . <silence>.”
No response is given; when you turn away, you completely ignore or miss the bid. This is like ghosting the bid.
Turning Against – “Why would we do that? That’s a terrible idea.”
When we turn against, we reject a bid, shutting down the conversation and likely causing anger.
When you turn toward the bid, you accumulate moments of connectivity. Whenever you turn away or against it, a withdrawal is made from your love bank. Turning toward helps nurture your relationship and offset those times when you are in conflict. Many couples feel challenged by the lack of time to focus on their relationship. They have competing priorities and endless to-do lists, and the thought of spending time on the relationship feels daunting. Meaningful connection can come in small moments, and opportunities present themselves several times throughout the day. Consider a kiss goodbye, quick text or phone call during lunch, greeting your partner with a hug, using eye contact, sharing a laugh, etc.
Reflecting on Connection
According to Gottman’s research, how well couples recognize and respond to bids can determine the health and longevity of relationships. Couples who report happy and satisfying relationships turn toward each other 86% of the time (The Gottman Institute). The key to cultivating connection is bringing awareness to these moments of connection. As you go into this week, think about the interactions with your partner and reflect or write down what you notice.
When was the last time you tried to make a bid for a connection? What did you do? How was it received?
When was the last time your partner tried to make a bid? How did you respond?
References
Gottman, J., & Schwartz Gottman, J. (2022). The Love Prescription. Random House USA.
As a couples therapist, I see couples who are struggling to re-invigorate their sex life, they are struggling with finances, they have trouble raising their children, etc. Having these reasons in mind as to why many of my couples come in on the brink of divorce, researcher Dr. John Gottman says that the main reasons why couples divorce is due to sex, finances, and raising children. I must say that though Dr. Gottman has a point, I disagree—couples divorce due to lack of emotional connection.
If you are not emotionally connected and engaged in your marriage, you will not be able to manage a sex life together, manage money together, or create a safe parenting space together. Dr. Sue Johnson, creator of the dynamic Emotionally-Focused Couples Therapy, says that the erosion of an emotional bond between two partners is the beginning of the end to their relationship. As humans, we are wired to connect in a safe and emotionally healthy way. If we do not have this in a marriage, we will slowly disconnect and eventually divorce if no action for couples therapy is taken.
Disconnection can look like many different things. Maybe you and your spouse keep arguing about household chores or who will walk the dog next. Perhaps a spouse can feel unsupported in their idea to switch careers. Maybe there is just an overall feeling of loneliness on both parts in the marriage. The main point to understand on a general disconnect in the marriage is that it can be understood and helped. Much of what we do in couples therapy at Austin Family Counseling is strengthen the emotional bond between partners as well as create a safe space for re-engagement and for couples to work on issues that have been reasons for feelings of disconnection in their marriage. Basically, a general feeling of disconnection is not a valid reason to divorce when there are many resources and tools to help build and strengthen your marriage. Rarely do couples come to me with the presenting problem of lack of engagement and leave the therapeutic process unhealed, reassured, and optimistic about their exciting new opportunities to re-spark their romantic life.
Extreme cases, however, can absolutely be reasons to separate. In my years of practice, I have seen such reasons for a therapist to recommend separation as physical abuse, emotional/verbal abuse, and active addiction.
Physical Abuse
This is perhaps the main reason that couples should divorce. Physical abuse of any kind is not acceptable in a marriage or any other kind of relationship. Physical abuse is seen in marriages where one partner has significant anger issues and has not managed their emotion to the point of it being unsafe to be close and vulnerable to this person. Women who stay married to physically aggressive men are very likely to have come from abusive households where they see abuse as a “natural” thing.
According to the American Journal of Emergency Medicine, since the stay-at-home order has been put into effect in 2020, an alarming increase of domestic violence cases has occurred in the US. More partners are shut into their homes with their spouse, putting them more at risk of physical danger when the aggressive partner becomes triggered. Other effects that are brought on by the stay-at-home order are alcohol abuse, depression, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress, all VERY easy triggers of physical abuse.
If you are involved in a physically abusive marriage, I urge you to reach out for help and escape from a dangerous situation as soon as possible within your boundaries of safety. If you are in Austin, the Salvation Army’s Austin Shelter for Women and Children, the SAFE Children’s Center, and Casa Marianella are all places where women and families can go for refuge from a physically abuse situation. As a couples therapist who becomes aware of physical abuse, I am ethically bound to stop couples therapy immediately and let the abusive partner know they need to do their own counseling and anger management if couples therapy ever resumes.
Emotional/Verbal Abuse
Aside from physical abuse, verbal and emotional abuse is another form of abuse that is sadly much harder to spot. Physical wounds leave visible marks, but emotional wounds can go unseen for sometimes decades. Emotional abuse is defined as any form of emotionally manipulative behavior perpetrated by one person to another that can cause PTSD, stress, or anxiety. Some forms of it are below:
Gaslighting: making the partner being gaslit think something is different than they actually experienced it. Example: “Something must be wrong with your memory because I never said that!”
Minimizing: making someone feel inadequate or unworthy based merely on how they are feeling Example: “I don’t know why you’re feeling that way, you didn’t have it that bad!”
Intimidation: using threatening language to reinforce a sense of control by the partner through invoking fear. Example: “I will hit you if you say that to me one more time!”
Though no form of abuse is ever acceptable, there tends to be more hope for emotional abuse than physical abuse in the couples I see. Sometimes, separation is key for partners where verbal abuse is going on before they are able to come back together and make the decision to either stay together or divorce. However, in my sessions with couples, a hard boundary I hold is to have no gaslighting, minimizing, intimidation, or name-calling in session. If you believe your partner has narcissistic qualities in them, definitely seek help for mental health as these can have longlasting negative effects on someone’s sense of self.
Active Addiction
Though many treatment modalities indicate couples can survive an active or recovering addiction, in extreme cases a marriage cannot always survive. If a partner is currently abusing alcohol and becomes physically or emotionally abusive, it is in the other partner’s best interest to leave when the marriage becomes an unsafe place. Unless the addicted partner commits to going to AA or therapy to work on their addiction, the marriage will become an unsafe place for both people, triggering an abusive cycle that both partners will be feeding into.
When a partner is addicted to an illegal substance (i.e. cocaine, methamphetamine, heroine, etc.), the marriage is further complicated due to the unlawful possession of illegal substances in a household. Not only is the marriage riddled with addiction and addictive patterns, but this presents the marriage with far more dangers and reasons to divorce. Though only one partner is using, both spouses when living together are subject to legal ramifications that puts the non-addicted partner in a very precarious position.
When couples come to me with an addiction present, I hold a firm boundary that the person who is addicted seek help through groups (i.e. AA, NA, SLAA, etc.), separate individual counseling, or in further cases checking into a detox and addictions treatment center for couples therapy to continue. It is unethical to do couples counseling while a noticeable addiction is going on due to the fact that the vulnerability needed in couples therapy can at times exacerbate the addicted spouse’s addiction.
My approach to working with couples is anchored in Gottman Couples Therapy, which helps couples manage conflict and doesn’t attempt to eliminate all marital conflict. This concept resonates with me because I think it’s unrealistic to never disagree with one’s partner. In fact, John Gottman, who studied couples for several decades, says most couples have perpetual problems. A perpetual problem is one that comes up again and again due to enduring personality differences. Happy couples are able to manage their perpetual problems in a variety of healthy ways, including using humor, compassion, and understanding. Couples who are not successfully managing their perpetual problems become gridlocked. In the book “The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work,” Gottman writes the following signs of gridlock in a relationship:
By: Mavis Ball, LPC-Intern Supervised by Dr. John Jones, LPC-S
Feeling rejected by your partner
Talking doesn’t help & leads to frustration and/or hurt feelings
Refusal to shift your position on the argument
There’s no humor or affection with the subject matter
Eventually become emotionally disengaged from one another
Being stuck in gridlock with your partner adds excessive stress to a relationship and can lead to its demise. Gottman Couples Therapy employs several tools to help couples move past gridlock.
Broken Dreams
The “Dreams within Conflict” exercise is one of my favorite tools to help gridlocked couples. This exercise promotes the idea that there is a broken dream behind every gridlocked conflict. Rather than discussing the conflict, the couple works together to discuss each person’s broken dream. Maybe you’ve seen couples therapy on television or in a movie, and witnessed the passé exercise where one person is asked to repeat their partner’s words. This exercise is NOT about parroting words! Each person takes turn being the speaker and the listener. The speaker’s job is to talk honestly about their position (their broken dream), and to avoid arguing or persuading their partner to join their point of view. The listener has to 1) create a safe environment that allows their partner to be vulnerable, 2) ask questions aimed at understanding the speaker’s dream, 3) suspend judgment, and 4) avoid trying to solve the problem. When both the speaker and the listener are fully committed to their roles, gridlock ends.
You may be wondering how discussing “broken dreams” helps solve problems. It doesn’t solve the problem. Our goal is simply to move past gridlock to dialogue. Respectful, productive dialogue empowers couples to either solve their solvable problems, or successfully manage their perpetual problems. Gottman says, “You don’t want to have the kind of relationship in which you win and are influential in your relationship but wind up crushing your partner’s dream. You want the kind of relationship in which each of you support one another’s dreams.”
I’ve experienced powerful shifts in couples while facilitating the “Dreams within Conflict” exercise. It’s beautiful to witness a couple transition from negative, unproductive arguments to meaningful dialogue. I feel privileged to help couples restore harmony in their relationship.
Reference: “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work” by John Gottman, Ph.D. and Nan Silver
