Gottman Method Couples therapy defines a bid as any attempt from one partner to another for attention, affirmation, affection, or any other positive connection. Bids show up in simple ways, a smile or wink, and more complex ways, like a request for advice or help. In general, women make more bids than men, but in the healthiest relationships, both partners are comfortable making all kinds of bids. Here is a short video clip explaining bids as ways to turn towards each other:
This blog post says: “Gottman’s groundbreaking ideas about bids were born from his 40-year-long quest to answer one question: What separates the relationship masters from the relationship disasters?”
“He conducted this research with his colleague Robert Levenson at the University of Washington. He brought couples into an observation facility, dubbed the Love Lab by the media, and recorded them discussing their relationship. He asked them to share the story of how they met and then to recount a recent fight. He even had some couples spend a week in an apartment decked out with cameras (with their permission) to see how they interacted during everyday moments.”
“Six years later, the researchers followed up with the couples and divided them into two camps: the masters, couples who were still happily married, and disasters, couples who had either broken up or remained together but were unhappy.”
“When he studied the tapes of these two types of couples, he looked for differences in the content of their conversations. What did the masters discuss that the disasters didn’t?”
“In his book “The Relationship Cure“, Gottman writes, ‘But after many months of watching these tapes with my students, it dawned on me. Maybe it’s not the depth of intimacy in conversations that matters. Maybe it doesn’t even matter whether couples agree or disagree. Maybe the important thing is how these people pay attention to each other, no matter what they’re talking about or doing.'”
“Simply put, successful couples are attentive. They listen, and they put their phones down when the other person wants to chat.”
“This research led Gottman to develop one of the core tenets of his philosophy for building successful relationships: healthy couples constantly make and accept bids to connect.”
Gottman Method with Elaine Korngold
I have extensive training and experience in applying research and evidence-based Gottman Method to helping monogamous couples to improve their relationship to each other and to change how they manage stress. In sessions with couples using Gottman Method therapy, I teach them to notice ‘Gottman style’ bids and I often quote various research statistics from the Gottman Institute. For example, most relationship problems (69%) never get resolved but are “perpetual” problems based on personality differences between partners. For these types of problems, the couples work on improving their communication skills while accepting each other’s varying perspectives. For the remaining 31% of the disagreements, the focus is on understanding each other’s point of view and practicing the art of compromise. Contact me to learn more.