The Secrets of Successful Couples: Bid Attempts, Communication, and Emotional Connection (Episode #31)

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Welcome to the Human intimacy podcast. I'm Dr. Kevin Skinner. Thank you for joining me. Today we're going to be talking about the secrets of successful couples. If you are struggling in your relationship or if you just like to take your relationship to the next level, I'm glad you're with me. I'm going to be focusing on what researchers have taught us about successful couples. I'm going to be sharing research from Dr. Sue Johnson, Dr. John Gottman, and we're going to be looking at what these couples do who seem to have that secret sauce. They seem to be finding ways to work through differences, find joy, and create the relationship that many of us long for. So let's go ahead and get started. The first concept I'd like to introduce comes from Dr. John Gottman. Have you ever heard the term bid attempt? A bid attempt used by John Gottman is describing a situation where it's an action or a gesture that one partner makes to seek the attention, affection or connection from their partner. These bids can be verbal or nonverbal, and they can range from simple requests for acknowledgement to deeper attempts for emotional support and intimacy. For example, let's just go through a couple things. A comment like, hey, did you see the news today? Or maybe just a simple gesture, a touch on the shoulder or rubbing your partner's hand, or asking for help with something like, hey, could you help me with this cooking thing? Or could you help fix this? While we might not think of these initially as a bid attempt, it really is our partner's way of of asking for help or seeing some type of connection or wanting some type of connection with us. So when we consider a bid attempt, maybe it includes sharing our thoughts and our emotions. So it could be as simple as sharing something interesting or exciting that's happening in your life. In essence, what you're doing is you're reaching out to your partner again. John Gottman calls it a bid attempt. It's a bid attempt for connection, spending time together. When we look at successful couples, the key things that we see over and over and over again is that they take time. And these bid attempts are simple ways to reach out to include your partner in your life. So if I was to give you guys a simple assessment today and ask you to do a self reflection on your relationship, I'd be asking you a question. How often do you reach out or does your partner reach out to you in a bid attempt? We've talked about what it can look like. Everything from a question to hey, did you know this or did you see this or what are your thoughts on this? Could you help me with this? Hey, I'd love to go out on a date with you this evening. So this is a quick self awareness of are we doing this or are we not doing this in our relationship? Now the question then follows is okay, now there's a bid attempt. In other words, one partner has reached out trying to connect with their partner. There are three possible responses. The first is that the partner could turn toward the bid attempt and really I'm turning towards you, I'm listening, I'm present, I'm engaged. The other option is I could turn away where I ignore the comment entirely or I continue scrolling through my phone and it's a missed opportunity because I'm not paying attention to this bid attempt from my partner. In some situations I can actually be a very rejecting person and I can turn against the bid attempt saying something dismissive like hey, I don't have time right now or why are you always bringing this up? These simple things then create tension and conflict in the relationship. So really when a partner reaches out, it's a bid attempt for connection, we can turn toward it, we can can turn away or in worst case scenario, we can turn against and really push our partner away. So the secrets of successful couples is they take time to turn toward their partner. Now sometimes we are into conflict or we're fighting. And interestingly enough, I have found that when partners bring up issues, it's usually a way to connect. Now you may not think of it that way. You may think, oh, why are we talking about this? Why are we fighting about this? Why can't we just move on from whatever the conflict is. But when your partner stops doing that, they become apathetic. They stop caring about the relationship. So I often in my work, tell individuals when your partner is asking you questions, when they're trying to figure out something, when they want to know something, it's usually a good sign because they're trying to make sense of issues or conflict or things that are unresolved in the relationship. So think about a bid attempt not just as a positive thing, but your partner reaching out to connect with you. So question that we're focusing on here, how often do you and your partner make bid attempts for deeper connection? Give yourself a score between zero. We're not doing this and a seven. We are doing this a lot. So score between zero and seven. Take the time right now to give yourselves a score between 0 and 7. Let's now move on to the second concept of successful couples, and it really boils down to effective communication. When we look at the research on what happens between successful couples and couples who don't make it, one of the underlying issues is effective communication. Usually effective communication, we can talk about what it is and what it isn't, but it's open and honest communication. It helps us resolve conflicts because we're willing to step back and understand what we are trying to communicate, and then we're trying to understand what our partner is trying to communicate. Effective communication is really when we as a couple are attuned not just to the words, but to the body language, the gestures, the tone of voice. When we look at effective communication, researchers have found that the tone of voice and the body language of are significantly more important than the message itself. Now, the message is important, but when we are watching our partner, we know. When we feel comfortable with them, we know that they're being a person who is honest with us or a person who's telling us the truth. So effective communication, it's open, it's honest, and it includes things like not just the words, but the tone of voice and the body language that comes with it. You know when your partner's upset at you, you know when they're angry. You know when, oh, my goodness, we're going to be in for a fight tonight, or it's going to be a really good night. Maybe it's a night that we can spend a little bit of extra time in the bedroom and enjoy each other. You can tell the difference, but how do you know that difference? It usually comes with the messages that you're sending to each other. What happens in Successful relationships. The effect of communication is individuals are opening up. They're sharing their thoughts, they're sharing their feelings. What we would say is verbal and emotional intimacy. They share intellectual ideas, things that they've learned, or things that they're thinking about. And when successful couples spend time talking about the things that are on their mind, it brings their partner closer to them. In contrast, when couples are fighting, you can observe them from a distance. Their body language shows that they're frustrated. And then if I was a fly on the wall, you would see little statements of conflict. Well, why didn't this happen? Or did you do this? Almost in a tone of accusatory. What ends up happening is we communicate. I'm not happy right now. Now, we might not say it directly, but when we communicate with our frustration, with our mood, sometimes the silent treatment, what we begin to do is we send a message. I'm not happy, but I'm not going to talk with you about what I'm experiencing. Successful couples learn to have effective communication. They learn to be open and honest, even with their frustrations. And so it's not that we're avoiding conflict, it's that we learn how to do it in a respectful way and with dignity. I have Phil upset when this happens, and I'm not sure what to do. I'd like to work through this because our relationship matters to me versus you know what? You never are going to stop doing that. Every time I've asked you, you keep doing it over and over. What's wrong with you? Don't you listen to me now? You can feel that there. But when I'm connecting, I would like a better relationship. And so successful couples are in this conversation together. They're listening, attuning to each other. And when we look at communication, if we could really break down step by step of what's happening. I have found that many couples, they don't have effective communication patterns. So they do the same things over and over again, getting unhealthy results. In contrast with successful couples, they take the time, they slow down the communication. And. And what I mean by slowing it down is they understand when things aren't going well. They pause, they evaluate. Hey, can we. Something's not right here. Or I'm frustrated and I don't know what to do. And sometimes they're so aware that they say, maybe I need to step back and evaluate what's really happening here. So effective communication is truly one of the more important parts of what a successful relationship incorporates into it. The secret sauce is effective communication. Now, there are many different examples of that on our website at Human Intimacy, Marianne Michaelis. She has a wonderful course on how to effectively communicate. And one of the things that's so important is really slowing down and learning how to communicate effectively. Unfortunately, in our society, we have spent so little time learning how to communicate effectively. I mean, think about it. We go through high school, we go through college. How many of us actually have been taught how to do these things? We go through the education system, and we really are not learning how to effectively communicate in our most important relationships. So number two secret sauce of successful couples is they take the time to learn how to communicate effectively. And in truth, it's not easy, especially when you're frustrated or when your needs are not being met. It's so much easier to go into this person I'm frustrated at, I'm angry at. And we go into what I refer to as fight mode because our needs are not being met. Because if we really look at ineffective communication, it's because our needs in many situations are not being met, our expectations are not being met. And we think our partner should be doing this, and we think our partner should be doing that. And whether that comes from helping around the house to spending more time together, to listening to, to take. Helping take care of the children, taking care of the billing, the finances, whatever it is, we have to learn to communicate about all of these issues. And when we don't learn to communicate about these issues, then we fight. You're not meeting my needs. You're not taking care of your end of the relationship. And then when we begin to fight, we pull apart, and we're at greater risk for turning out of the relationship towards other things that distract us from what this relationship was usually in the beginning. So really effective communication is at the foundation of all healthy relationships. All right, so that is concept number two. The secret of successful couples. Number three is goes hand in hand with it, and it's managing conflict respectfully. Interestingly enough, successful couples know that, that how they manage conflict can either create a connection or it can seriously damage the relationship. Dr. John Gottman, leading researcher in marriage and family therapy, he has found what he's identified as the four horsemen. Now, many people have heard of these, but when you step back and evaluate your relationship, let's just go through them real quick. Because as we look at managing conflict, when people use, number one, criticism, they're criticizing their partner, what begins to happen is the relationship begins to erode. Now I can add on to that contempt. Oh, you're so Stupid. Why do you ever do that? The contempt actually damages the relationship significantly. So criticism and contempt are one and two, followed by defensive listening. In other words, I'm preparing what I'm going to say. I'm not even listening to you because I'm defending myself. So defensive listening, not understanding, not trying to really understand where my partner is coming from. And then the fourth is stonewalling, ignoring, avoiding. I'm not going to talk about this. I'm not going to talk about the ignoring, pushing our partner away. When individuals use these four horsemen in the relationship, it puts the relationship at greater risk for divorce. So regardless of what issues you and your partner are trying to solve, as long as these four issues are happening in your communication patterns and you're at greater risk because you're in a battle. Criticism, contempt, defensive listening, and stonewalling. If you can simply remove those things from your relationship, you can have a more mature adult conversation. Regardless of what the issue is, you can be more effective in your communication. The sad thing is, our culture today, we are not good at not using the four horsemen in some version. So learning how to communicate our differences and the challenges or the ways that we are hurting each other and doing it effectively is a really important component of your relationship success. So as successful couples go down the road together, yes, they have conflict. It's not that they're not having conflict. In fact, every couple has their differences. It's how they go about communicating that those differences that make a big difference. So when we learn to manage conflict respectfully, we eliminate the four horsemen and really give ourselves a chance to connect on a deeper level. The next element, number four of secrets of successful couples is they offer emotional support to each other. This comes from the work of Dr. Sue Johnson. She's really just a powerhouse in terms of teaching us as therapists how to create connection. Unfortunately, this year, she passed away. But the work of Sue Johnson will reverberate through our community as marriage and family therapists for generations to come. She focused on attachment, the attunement to another person, being emotionally aware, emotionally available to our partner, which means that we have to be emotionally capable of dealing with other people's emotions. She calls it an attachment, attachment bond. So being emotionally supportive during both good and challenging times can strengthen the relationship bond. This involves very specific things. Empathy, reassurance, a simple gesture of I'm here. A hug, Can I help? And encouragement when your partner is going through stress or when they're excited. So just a really simple example of this, it's listening without Trying to fix the problem. Or when you see your partner doing something, you celebrate with them. Offering emotional support is being aware of what our partner is experiencing and doing it in a way that they feel. Our emotional presence. If your partner is struggling, it may reach be reaching out, saying, hey, are you doing okay? They didn't even say anything. You're just aware of their body language. Hey, is there anything else I can do for you? I know you've been through a busy week. Is there something that I could do to help make it easier for you? See, emotional support is that kind of attunement to our partner's emotional needs. That's what successful people do, is they provide that kind of emotional support. And imagine that that is done day in and day out. Day in and day out, that kind of emotional support binds us together. Now let's look at the other side of that. When we're emotionally misattuned to each other, my partner may be suffering or struggling, or I might be highly stressed, but I'm not turning toward them because I don't think they're available. I don't think they want to be there for me. So successful couples, they emotionally become attuned to each other. The longer we're misattuned, not aware or not able to turn toward our partner, we're going to turn somewhere. The question is where? And is it going to be to work? Is it going to be to food? Is it going to be to substances? Is it going to be to pornography? We turn away from each other because we feel so isolated and alone. In contrast, when we learn to turn toward each other, that emotional support, we become attuned to each other. We have a great capacity for deeper levels of intimacy. Number five secret of successful couples is related to healthy physical touch. What we understand about our bodies is we need healthy touch. What is referred to as touch deprivation would be the other side of the coin here. As human beings, we long for touch. And those things can be as simple as holding hands, touching each other on the shoulder, a long embrace, and obviously, physical affection in the bedroom. When we begin to understand the power of touch, we get oxytocin and vasopressin. When we are in a healthy relationship, touching each other. Now, when I work with couples to rebuild their relationship after any form of conflict or fighting or after some type of betrayal, what I find is this is a slower process. It's not something that we rush into. It's something that we learn to do. That's learning to trust each other again, learning to feel that partner's presence, and literally we begin to feel them. And that kind of healthy touch can then increase the trust hormones of oxytocin and vasopressin. So the deeper the wound, the slower the process is. But far too often, I find that couples who really need connection, they're not touching, they're not holding hands, they're not embracing. So if you want to practice what successful couples do, it's not just sex in the bedroom. Healthy touch is done throughout the entire day. A simple walking by your partner and just rubbing their shoulder. Or when you get home from work, a long embrace when you've been apart for a while, taking the time to just hold each other. Not just a short hug, but imagine embrace, it's 10, 15, 20 seconds. That type of embrace is extremely helpful in helping us connect on a deeper level. When I work with couples and I see them in high levels of conflict, I can guess that they're not engaging in physical contact. The end result and the consequence is they feel touch deprivation. Every human being from birth to death longs for healthy touch. Now I'm saying healthy intentionally here. It's not just touch, it's healthy touch health. Not the kind of touch where I walk by and it's a sexual gesture. That's not what I'm talking about. Healthy touch is kind of a playful, a rub on the back, a foot massage. These seemingly simple things are not simple. It's like putting money into the bank, the relationship bank. And when I talk through with this couples, one of the things I do is I give a metaphor of like, when we're connecting, it's like putting money into the relationship bank. And if you're not making enough deposits, when things go difficult, when you need to take a withdrawal, you don't have money in the bank. So take the time to put money into the relationship bank. Your relationship bank. Physical affection and intimacy, these are things that successful couples do, is they take the time to do that. Now, again, I want to reiterate, if there's been harm and damage, betrayal, if there's been something related to that breach of trust, then these things are going to take a little bit longer. But when you start rebuilding trust again in the relationship, it needs to be incorporated back into your relationship. We long for connection, and healthy touch is a core part of that. Let's now move on to this sixth concept related to what successful couples do. I'm going to relate it to a really simple metaphor. As individuals, when we are born, we don't have a lot of cognition. So we don't know necessarily what we're doing. But one of the things that we naturally do is we read our parents, our caregivers. We watch their facial expressions. We listen to their tone of voice. We long for touch. So what happens? We refer to these as our most basic needs. I want to address one of them because successful couples have learned to do this. And the example of a child is perfect here. Because when we watch children, they're observing, they don't know how to say things, but maybe they're crying as a way to get attention as adults, how do we cry for attention? That's what I would like you to pay attention to. When we're metaphorically crying for attention as an adult, we all do it, but we might not do it in a healthy way, almost a demanding way, an expectation. I need you to take care of my needs. I need you to nourish me. I need you to feed me. I need you to finish that sentence. But in a healthy relationship, it is a reciprocal awareness of each other's needs. Attunement is the concept successful couples learn to attune to their partner. And it's not just a tone of voice, it's their body language. So attunement, much like the emotional awareness and effective communication. When I'm attuned to you, I sense when you're in distress and offer comfort. When I'm attuned to you, I recognize when you're making that bit attempt that John Gottman talked about. When I'm attuned to you, I recognize that you're in emotional distress and I offer comfort and support. And when I'm attuned to you, I recognize when you need me to give you extra attention and affection. When we attune to each other. Marriages are absolutely beautiful. So the sixth secret of successful couples is attunement. They are attuned to each other. And when you watch it, it's a beautiful thing. It comes everything from our eyes looking at each other to our tone of voice. These forms of expression allow us to connect on deeper and deeper levels. So how attuned are you? I would invite you to think about the level of attunement in your relationship, how attuned you feel to your partner. A zero. I don't feel very attuned at all. And a seven. I feel very attuned to my partner. Not necessarily whether your partner's attuned to you, but whether you feel attuned to them. Now, moving on to our seventh secret of successful couples. I would invite you to think about the level of gratitude. As we watch couples, there is something that happens. They begin to recognize and appreciate each other on a deeper level. So often we take each other for granted, even the simplest things. Doing the dishes, doing the laundry, mowing the lawn, changing the oil, picking up the groceries from the grocery store. We often take these things for granted because they're day to day tasks. When couples recognize and appreciate each other, something internally happens inside of them. They feel valued, they feel affirmed. So one of the really important secrets of successful couples is they recognize and appreciate each other for the things that they are doing and they acknowledge it. Hey, thank you for taking out the trash. I often forget that or, you know, I really, I woke up this morning and the dishes were done. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thanks for doing the laundry. I really appreciate it last night when you asked me how I was doing. These are simple examples, but appreciation and gratitude go a long way in the connection journey. So think about your relationship. Think about how much appreciation you are giving or expressing to your partner. Then how much of it's coming back. Now, I can't control whether they're going to give it back. But what I would invite you to consider is whether you're actually giving it. Are you showing appreciation? Are you validating your partner? A friend of mine, Ken Patey, used the word, are we affirming our partner's worth? Are we affirming the worth of the people who we say we love the most? When we affirm the worth of others, great things happen. So this seventh secret of successful couples, of what successful couples do, is they take the time. They pause. They identify, recognize, acknowledge what their partner is doing. And as they do that, their partner, something happens inside of them. Think about it. Inside of you. When somebody says something to you, recognizing something you've done, what does it feel like inside? So I would invite you to think about it. How much gratitude and appreciation are you expressing to your partner? Again, a scale. Zero. Not doing that. Seven. I am doing that. All right, so these are seven of the things that we find successful couples doing. Everything from their level of communication to healthy touch to expressing gratitude. My invitation to you as our listener is to consider your relationship. Are you applying these principles and the principles of fundamental truth in your relationships? Now I can hear some people saying, but if I do that, my partner will think everything's better. And I'm so frustrated and so angry at them. Yes, there is a time to work through those things. Nevertheless, having inside of you a desire to be better in Relationships to show your partner. Now, in my experience, when we choose to let go of old patterns and we choose to engage in these, we can create the kind of relationships that we long for. So now I invite you, take the time put and implement these skills into your day to day interactions because they really are, they're day to day interactions. Expressing appreciation when you get into a situation. Being emotionally aware and attuned to your partner. Not being afraid of difficult conversations, but doing so without the four horsemen, contempt and criticism, Defensive listening and stonewalling. As we review these core concepts from today's podcast, my guarantee is this. If you will practice these skills, your relationship will naturally improve. If you are stuck and you don't know where to go, if you haven't taken test your relationship, it literally goes through these kind of questions and walks you through them step by step. So if you haven't participated in the Test yout Relationship Online at Human Intimacy, that online course I strongly recommend you do because when you take the test, you will have a very specific report on your relationship and ideas on what you can do and your partner can do to enhance and strengthen your relationship. All right, didn't mean that to be a commercial, but that is one of my favorite assessments because it really helps couples break down the challenges and identify them. And then I give feedback and suggestions and even have videos to help you in those areas. All right. To our listener, thank you for taking time to be a part of the Human Intimacy Podcast. It is a pleasure being with you. We are now over 10,000 downloads so I just want to express appreciation to our listeners. Please feel free to share the podcast with your friends and family. Also, we have the free webinar series@human intimacy.com. if you go to the free content on the site, you'll see the free webinar series where we have a many different webinars that we've done. We will continue to do question and answer sessions at the Human Intimacy website. So if you haven't given us your email, shoot us an email. Get on our email list. We'd love to have you be a part of what we're doing at Human Intimacy. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to the Human intimacy podcast. I'm Dr. Kevin Skinner. Thank you and have a great week. It's like you're shining, you're siren.