Love Connection
Building and Nurturing Connection and Intimacy in Relationships
Travis Jeffords, M.Div, M.S., LCMHCA, NCC
As the father of a 7 year old, I’m used to someone trying to get my attention.
When my wife and I are talking to each other at the dinner table, she will often interrupt us without realizing it: “Hey mom! Hey mom! Hey mom! Hey mom!” And of course, she continues to repeat herself until we pause our conversation to acknowledge her.
It turns out that subtly telling one another “hey, pay attention to me!” is one of the most common things we do in relationships with one another as humans…and…how we handle that moment can have profound effects on the health and future of our relationships and marriages.
If you want to know one simple, concrete thing you can do to improve your relationship with your partner TODAY - read this post.
Turning Toward verses Turning Away
John Gottman famously began the “Love Lab” interviewing couples in 1986, and has since interviewed and coded over 3,000 couples. You can watch this (super old) video of the love lab below if you’re interested.
Participants in the Love Lab had every action and facial expression scrutinized and judged and coded so that researchers could try and make sense of broad patterns that existed from couple to couple. What they found is that there was a distinct difference in the longevity of couples that “turned towards” one another, versus those that “turned away.” “Turning towards,” at its core, just means acknowledging your partner's bid for connection in some way.
Here are some examples of “turning towards” your partner:
Your partner lets out a big sigh, and you acknowledge their sigh by something as simple as saying “hey, what’s that sigh all about?”
Your partner is watching TikTok in bed next to you and starts laughing and says “that’s too funny!” and you simply say “oh yeah? What’s so funny?”
Your partner walks up to you while you’re cooking dinner and puts their hand on your shoulder, “turning towards” is as simple as physically turning your head towards them and saying “hey babe!”
These micro-moments matter.
If you’re reading this and thinking, ‘hey, anybody could do these things,’ then, you’re absolutely right. The thing is, everybody doesn’t.
Oftentimes, our partners do not come right out and say “hello, I’d like you to focus on me for a minute because I’m feeling distant from you and I had a hard day. I’d like to connect with you and feel close to you”...instead we all make bids for connection, insinuating that we want attention.
Learning first to recognize moments when your partner wants to feel close, and then learning to respond to those moments positively is a relationship changer.
It doesn’t seem like much…and a single moment of answering a partner's bid for connection may not be that much…but over time, years and years of these answered or unanswered bids can build up, and make a big difference.
5 years of answered bids for connection and “turning towards,” could mean that your relationship has the foundational connection to work through conflict with an understanding and trust that you and your partner deeply care about each other.
5 years of unanswered bids for connection and “turning away,” constantly could mean that you and your partner just don’t have that deep well of connection and trust to draw from when you need it most…your fights may be more intense, more full of criticism…all because you weren’t paying attention to each other in the little moments that didn’t seem to matter. And when there’s a big moment like an affair, a couple that has “turned away,” for years, will have a harder time having the foundational trust needed to come out the other side healthier.
Below is a video breaking down the exact numbers that Dr. John Gottman and his wife Dr. Julie Gottman found in their research.
They found that:
“Relationship Masters” (people in happy, flourishing relationships) turned towards each other and answered one another’s bids for connection 86% of the time.
while conversely,
“Relationship Disasters” (the opposite of the happy, flourishing couples) turned towards each other only 33% of the time.
The Gottmans’ research has also shown that it wasn’t conflict, or infidelity, or other big issues that ended up being the reason that couples separated and went their own ways. Often, it was just years of distance and years of resentment from years of small failed bids of connection.
Small moments matter, and small actions matter. If you’re in a relationship and you don’t know where to begin or what went wrong - here is a concrete thing you can do today: start paying attention to your partner's bids for connection and respond to them with curiosity, compassion, and connection.
