The Relationship Cure: A 5 Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships Page 2

  Having access to humor and affection during a conflict is invaluable because it helps to de-escalate bad feelings and leads to better understanding. Rather than shutting down communication in the midst of an argument, people who can stay present with one another have a much better opportunity to resolve issues through their conflicts, repair hurt feelings, and build positive regard. But this good work must begin long before the conflict starts; it’s got to be grounded in those dozens of ordinary, day-to-day exchanges of emotional information and interest that we call bids.

  And what happens when we habitually fail to respond positively to one another’s bids for emotional connection? Such failure is rarely malicious or mean-spirited. More often we’re simply unaware of or insensitive to others’ bids for our attention. Still, when such mindlessness becomes habitual, the results can be devastating.

  I’ve seen such results in my clinical practice at the Gottman Institute, where I’ve counseled many people who describe their lives as consumed by loneliness. They feel lonely despite their proximity to many significant people in their lives—lovers, spouses, friends, children, parents, siblings, and coworkers. Often they seem surprised and greatly disappointed at the deterioration of their relationships.

  “I love my wife,” one client says of his faltering marriage, “but our relationship feels empty somehow.” He senses that the passion is waning, that the romance is drifting away. What he can’t see are all the opportunities for closeness that surround him. Like so many other distressed, lonely people, he doesn’t mean to ignore or dismiss his spouse’s bids for emotional connection. It’s just that the bids happen in such simple, mundane ways that he doesn’t recognize these moments as very important.

  Clients like these typically have trouble at work, as well. Although they’re often skilled at forming collegial bonds when they first start a job, they tend to focus totally on the tasks at hand, often to the detriment of their relationships with coworkers. Later, when they’re passed over for a promotion, or when they discover they have no influence on an important project, they’re baffled. And they often feel betrayed and disappointed by their colleagues and bosses as a result.

  Such feelings of disappointment and loss also crop up in these clients’ relationships with friends and relatives. Many describe peers, siblings, and children as disloyal, unworthy of trust. But when we dig deeper, we find a familiar pattern. These clients seem unaware of the bids for connection that their friends and relatives have been sending them. So it’s no wonder that their loved ones feel no obligation to continue their support.

  People who have trouble with the bidding process also have more conflict—conflict that might be prevented if they could simply acknowledge one another’s emotional needs. Many arguments spring from misunderstandings and feelings of separation that might have been avoided if people would have the conversations they need to have. But because they don’t, they argue instead. Such conflicts can lead to marital discord, divorce, parenting problems, and family feuds. Friendships fade and deteriorate. Adult sibling relationships wither and die. Kids raised in homes filled with chronic conflict have more difficulty learning, getting along with friends, and staying healthy. People who can’t connect are also more likely to suffer isolation, as well as dissatisfaction and instability in their work lives. Any of these problems can create a tremendous amount of stress in people’s lives, leading to all sorts of physical and mental health problems.

  But our findings about the bidding process give me a tremendous amount of hope. They tell me that people who consistently bid and respond to bids in positive ways have an astounding chance for success in their relationships.

  We’ve written this book to share these discoveries with as many people as possible. We hope that reading it will help you to form and maintain the kind of strong, healthy connections that lead to a happy, fulfilling life.

  Bid by Bid: How to Build Better Relationships One Step at a Time

  Writer Anne Lamott tells the story of her ten-year-old brother agonizing over a school report he had to write about birds. Frozen by the size and complexity of the task, he turned to his dad for help. She writes, “My father put his arm around my brother’s shoulder and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”

  So it is with our ties to friends, family, and coworkers. Complex, fulfilling relationships don’t suddenly appear in our lives fully formed. Rather, they develop one encounter at a time.

  If you could carefully observe and analyze those encounters—as my research colleagues and I have done—you would see how each one is made up of many smaller exchanges. There’s a bid and a response to that bid. Like cells of the body or bricks of a house, such exchanges are the primary components of emotional communication. Each exchange contains emotional information that can strengthen or weaken connections between people. Here are some examples.

  “Hey, Mom, when’s dinner going to be ready?”

  “Stop nagging! As soon as I can get it on the table!”

  “Your monthly report is past due—again.”

  “Why don’t you look in your e-mail? I sent it to you last night.”

  “Knock-knock.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Are you busy tonight?”

  “Maybe…Maybe not…”

  Bids and responses to bids can be big, overblown, cathartic events such as those we see in the movies:

  “Will you marry me, Violet?”

  “I will, Jack, I will!”

  Or they can be the small, mundane exchanges of everyday life:

  “Get me a beer while you’re up, okay?”

  “Sure, do you want anything else? Any chips?”

  Bids can be subtle: “That’s a pretty dress.”

  Or they can be straight ahead: “I want to make love to you.”

  Bids can be fairly insignificant exchanges between strangers: “Can you call me a cab?”

  Or they can be poignant secrets whispered between friends: “You’re not going to believe what happened to me last night!”

  Bids allow strangers to get acquainted: “Do you mind if I sit here?”

  And they’re essential for longtime friends or partners who want to stay close: “I’ve missed you so much. Let’s go somewhere and talk!”

  Positive responses to a bid typically lead to continued interaction, often with both parties extending more bids to one another. Listening to this kind of exchange is kind of like watching a Ping-Pong game in which both players are doing very well.

  “What are you doing for lunch today?”

  “I brought a sandwich. Want to join me outside?”

  “Sure. But I need to get something from the deli first. Need anything?”

  “Yeah, get me a Dr. Pepper. Maybe I’ll bring those pictures from my family reunion?”

  “Sure, I’d love to see them. And we can plan the party for Peg.”

  “Yeah, we better get started on that.”

  But a negative response to a bid typically shuts down emotional communication. All bids cease. The game is over. People want to pick up their Ping-Pong paddles and go home.

  “What are you doing for lunch today?”

  “Lunch? Who’s got time for that?”

  “Maybe some other time, then.”

  “Yeah, some other time.”

  But our research shows that “some other time” rarely happens. In fact, the probability that a person will attempt to re-bid once an initial bid has been rejected is close to zero. That’s not to say people need to accept every lunch date that comes along. But they can refuse specific invitations while still accepting the bid for emotional connection.

  “What are you doing for lunch today?”

  “I wish I had time for lunch. I’ve got to finish this report. What are you up to?”

  “I brought a sandwich. I thought I’d go sit outside. But I have to go by the deli for a Coke. Want me to bring something back for you?”

  “That would be nice. Can you get me a ham on
rye and a Dr. Pepper? Oh—and catch some rays for me while you’re out there, okay?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Bids typically grow in intensity and frequency as a relationship grows and deepens. Think about the steps you might take in making a friend on the job. Your initial bid might be a software question on your first day. That leads to a joke—politically correct, of course—over cubicle walls. Your potential friend laughs and invites you to lunch. Conversation centers on fairly routine, work-related issues. But then one day, after you’ve had a few breaks together, you take the risk of asking him how he really feels about the boss. He tells you, and you end up asking him for some career advice. A few months later, when you find out that your favorite project has been canned, you’re enraged! Where do you go to blow off steam? To his office, of course. You trust him. You can say whatever’s on your mind. It won’t come back to haunt you. As the years go by, you start getting together on weekends to watch the game. You have him and his wife over for dinner. He learns all about your family, your childhood, your passions, your fears. It’s hard to remember what life was like before you met him. You always open his e-mail first. And now you tell him all your jokes.

  How did it become possible? One small interaction at a time. And how do you keep it afloat? By continuing to make bids to one another for connection, and by continuing to respond to one another’s bids, moment by moment, in positive ways.

  While the process sounds simple, most people can think of many relationships in their lives that have gone awry because of failed bidding or failed responses to bids.

  Below are a few “disaster” scenarios that may seem familiar to you. First you’ll see an example in which the bidding process goes badly, resulting in interactions that hinder the development of the relationship. Then you’ll read a bidding “makeover”—the same scenario, but with a few adjustments in key exchanges that take the conversation into new territory, leading the relationship into a more positive realm.

  Let’s start with Kristine and Alice, the sisters whose mom has Alzheimer’s. Although it’s been years since they’ve been involved in each other’s lives, Kristine wants to get closer. It’s going to take some effort, though, especially considering their contrasting lifestyles. Kristine, who moved to New York after college, remained single and childless. Her life centers on her career. Alice married right out of high school, stayed in Omaha, and had four kids. Her life is built around kids and family. Because they’ve made such different choices, each spends at least a little time wondering what the other thinks. And if there’s anything they want from each other, it’s probably a little validation, or at least some good-hearted, sisterly interest. Still, it’s hard because they’ve got so little in common, as we see in this phone conversation:

  “I’m fine, honey,” Alice says, sounding surprised to hear from her sister on a Thursday night. “We’re all fine. How are you?”

  “I’m okay,” Kristine answers. “Quite well, actually.”

  “So what’s going on?”

  “Well, I’ve been working a lot. Um…looks like I’m finally going to get that big account I’ve been after for so long.”

  “You mean that makeup thing?” Alice asks.

  “No, no. I’ve had the cosmetics firm for years. This one is an ISP.”

  “A what?”

  “Oh…an Internet service provider.”

  “Ah, computer stuff.” Alice chuckles nervously. “Well, you lost me there.”

  “Yeah…well, that’s what it is. It’s…computer stuff.”

  “Oh.”

  “So is it hot there?”

  “Yeah, in the nineties.”

  “And how are the kids?”

  “Good. Danny’s baseball team is going to state finals.”

  “Neat.”

  “Yeah. We’re real proud.”

  “You must be.”

  “Yeah. Well, we are.”

  And so the conversation continues with each sister delivering facts about her life that the other just barely responds to. They seem to have no frame of reference for each other’s worlds, so it’s hard for them to pick up each other’s cues. If this conversation is a Ping-Pong game, then these women have holes in their paddles and their balls just keep dropping off the table. It doesn’t take too long before they run out of steam, become discouraged, and call it quits. You get the feeling it will be a long time before either of them phones the other again.

  But consider how the conversation can go differently if the women start giving one another just a little more information, asking just a few more open-ended questions in ways that express interest in the other. Here’s a makeover. We’ll pick up the conversation where Alice realizes that Kristine is talking about “computer stuff.”

  “Yeah, it’s computer stuff,” says Kristine, chuckling herself. “There’s so much jargon to keep up with.”

  “I don’t know how you do it.”

  “Actually, I feel like I’m always behind the curve. I try to make myself read the technology section in the newspaper—as much as I can stand, anyway. I imagine it must be the same for you and Larry with the kids. Isn’t Danny always asking for something new for his PC?”

  “Yeah, seems like Larry’s always ordering him a new computer game or gadget or something. Hey, did I tell you that Danny’s baseball team made state finals?”

  “No, that’s great! When is it?”

  “At the end of the month. It’s in Lincoln. Larry’s taking time off work so we can all go down there and cheer them on.”

  “What a trip! I should send Danny some kind of good-luck charm. Maybe a Yankees cap or something.”

  “Oh, he’d love that. He still talks about our trip to Yankee Stadium.”

  Feel the difference? The interest Kristine and Alice express in one another’s lives is a stretch for both at times. But the effort each sister puts forth seems to encourage the other to try also. You get the feeling they want to be in this conversation and in this relationship.

  Now let’s take a look at a classic bidding scenario that seems ripe for disaster: the bid for a mate. Paul is a divorced guy in his late forties who hasn’t dated in several years. In fact, it’s been years since he’s even asked anybody out because he hates how vulnerable it makes him feel. Besides, he tells himself, all the great women are already taken. But then he meets Marly at a friend’s birthday bash. She seems fun, attractive—a little shy, maybe—but, to his surprise, unattached. He gets her phone number from his friend and stumbles through an invitation to coffee. Incredible as it seems, she accepts.

  Marly, too, is surprised that she accepted. Just a few months out of a bad split-up, she had decided to take a break from dating. But Paul gets good reviews from Greg, their mutual friend. Still, there’s nothing she hates worse than a first date. She’s just no good at making small talk.

  Paul arrives at the coffee shop fifteen minutes early. Marly’s about ten minutes late. They make eye contact as soon as she walks in the door. She flashes a weak, strained smile and heads toward his table.

  “Hi, there,” he says as she takes a seat. He notices that she looks smaller than she did at the party. And awfully nervous as she pulls her raincoat close around her body.

  “Hi.”

  “Did you have any trouble finding it?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” She looks toward the menu hanging over the counter.

  “It’s self-serve. Let me get you something.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What would you like?”

  “Um. Just coffee. Black.”

  He returns and sets the Styrofoam cups on the table. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So…gee,” Paul offers. “I had a great time at Greg and Susan’s the other night.”

  “Yeah, it was nice.”

  “Greg’s a great guy.”

  “Yeah. He’s so funny.”

  “Susan, too.”

  “I don’t know Susan as well.”

&nb
sp; “Do you live near here?” Paul asks.

  “No. I live on the East Side,” Marly replies.

  “But you work around here?”

  “Yeah. Sixth and Maple.”

  “That’s where AltaGuard is.”

  “Right.”

  “So that’s where you work?”

  “Um-hmm.”

  “That’s quite a commute.”

  “Yeah. But I’m getting used to it.”

  “AltaGuard is an insurance company, right?”

  “Um-hmm.”

  “What do you do there?”

  “Data entry.”

  And so it goes…like a bad job interview. “I figured she was shy, but this is ridiculous,” Paul says to himself. “She’s bordering on depressive. Then again, maybe it’s me. Maybe she doesn’t like bald guys. Maybe I should have met her at a nicer place. Maybe she’s sorry she came.” And as the grilling continues, Paul’s interior monologue gets gloomier and gloomier. “This isn’t working. I shouldn’t have done this. Greg should have warned me. How do I get out of this?”

  Good question. Let’s see how this conversation—this bid for relationship—might go if Paul made just a few adjustments in his questions and if Marly responded with a little more information. We’ll take it from Paul’s arrival with the coffee.

  “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So…gee, I had a great time at Greg and Susan’s the other night.”

  “Yeah, it was nice.”

  “Greg and I go way back. I think I told you we were college roommates.”

  “That’s right. At Ohio State.”

  “And how do you know them?”

  “Greg and I used to work together.”

  “At that insurance company on the East Side?”

  “Yeah. SafeCore.”

  “Right. I remember Greg hated that place! His boss was this real neurotic—oh no, don’t tell me…you were his boss, right?”

  Marly laughs. “No. Thank goodness. That was Roberta.”

  “Right! ‘Her Royal Majesty Roberta!’ So do you still work there?”

  “No, I’m at AltaGuard now.”

  “So did you guys get T-shirts made that said, ‘I survived the Reign of Roberta—1999’?”