Gottman's Bids for Connection: Accepted or Ignored in Texts

Gottman's Bids for Connection: Accepted or Ignored in Texts

We have all received that message: "Look at this meme, it's hilarious 😂", with a screenshot attached. Or this one: "Are you busy tonight? I'd really like us to talk." These small gestures, these light or more insistent calls, have a name in clinical psychology: bids for connection — literally, offers made towards the other person, attempts to create a bond.

The researcher John Gottman, who spent decades analysing couples, discovered something surprising: it is not the big conflicts that kill relationships. It is the way we respond (or fail to respond) to these small daily attempts at connection. And when you examine them in writing, time-stamped, over weeks or months, these bids reveal a pattern that does not lie.

What exactly is a bid for connection?

A bid is an attempt to establish emotional contact. Gottman sorts them into four categories:

• Informational: sharing an observation, a thought ("I just bumped into your mother downstairs")
• Playful: a joke, some teasing, a game ("Lol, remember when...")
• Emotional: expressing an emotional need ("I've had a bad day, can you listen?")
• Physical: a touch, a gesture (in a message: an emoji, an offer of a hug)

To every bid, the other person responds in one of three ways:

Turning towards: responding with enthusiasm, asking questions, keeping it going ("Oh really? Tell me!")

Passive engagement: responding without really investing ("Mmh, okay")

Turning against: ignoring, replying about something else entirely, or criticising ("Haven't you got anything better to do?")

In a single message, this is anecdotal. But when you analyse hundreds of messages spread over time, a response pattern emerges that maps out the whole dynamic of the couple.

How bids appear in written conversation

Unlike a spoken conversation, where nuances of tone, gaze and voice can rescue a misunderstanding, writing freezes the reaction. That is precisely why it is worth examining them in written form: every time-stamped message is a trace.

Take a concrete example. Alice writes at 7.45pm: "When are you getting back? I was thinking of making pasta 🍝"

Turning towards: "Around 8.30! Great idea, I love it. Do you need me to bring anything?" (Alice feels seen, her initiative is welcomed) Passive engagement: "OK" (Alice receives a mechanical confirmation; the bid is "received" but not really taken up) Turning against: no reply at all, or "Eating out with colleagues, see you later" (Alice discovers she wasn't part of the plan; her bid is bypassed)

Taken in isolation, this message says very little. But if you scroll through six months of conversations and count — Alice makes 15 playful bids a week, and gets an actively engaged response 2 times out of 15 — you see a pattern of progressive disconnection. That is something no single conversation can reveal.

Why written bids are easier to read than spoken ones

Gottman studied couples in the laboratory, observing their face-to-face interactions. But in a modern couple who also communicate by text, WhatsApp or Messenger, something fascinating happens: writing becomes an involuntary archive of the pattern.

When you reread your messages alone, you are overwhelmed. You see a thousand details, you get lost interpreting an emoji, you start doubting yourself. Rereading hundreds of messages on your own is exhausting; the psychological analysis offered by ScanMyLove brings these patterns to the surface, grouping together the bids that were accepted, ignored or rejected over time, and revealing the hidden structure of your dynamic.

The three profiles of bid responders

The engaged responder: replies to 70-80% of bids with enthusiasm, or at least with attention. Their messages contain questions, joyful emojis, references to what the other person said. Example: Alice: "I've finally finished that project that was stressing me out" Bob: "YES! Tell me all about it, you must be relieved? Shall we celebrate tonight? 🎉" The passive responder: replies, but without really engaging. Lots of "ok", "sure", "cool". The messages are short, undeveloped, with no emotional bounce. Alice: "I've finally finished that project that was stressing me out" Bob: "Good" The rejecter: ignores, sidesteps, criticises or belittles. They may also reply, but off the point, or with a negative remark. Alice: "I've finally finished that project that was stressing me out" Bob: "Just as well, though you know you could have done it sooner"

Gottman showed that the couples who separate are often those where one of the two (or both) regularly reject the other's bids. Not because a huge event blew up, but because a thousand small connections were ignored.

Hidden bids: when the attempt is implicit

Sometimes a bid is not a direct request. It is an opening:

• "I'm really low at the moment" → an implicit emotional bid ("I need to be heard")
• "Did you see? I cut myself while cooking" → a bid for attention ("notice me")
• "What are you doing on Saturday?" → a bid for shared planning ("shall we see each other?")

Many conflicts arise because an implicit bid is heard as an attack or a criticism. For example: Alice: "Have you seen the state of this house?"

Alice is making an implicit bid: "I need help" or "I'm overwhelmed". But Bob may hear: "You're careless" — and respond defensively: "Yes, and? You think I do nothing?"

By examining written conversation over time, you can see whether these implicit bids are regularly misunderstood, or whether on the contrary there is a culture of clarification ("I think you're saying X, is that right?").

The cumulative effect: from ignored bid to break-up

Here is what often happens:

Weeks 1-4: Alice makes bids, Bob ignores 40% of them. Alice starts making fewer bids. Weeks 5-12: Alice makes 50% fewer bids. Bob, without noticing, carries on ignoring the ones she does make. Alice starts wondering whether she really matters. Weeks 13-24: Alice has almost stopped making bids. She sends practical messages ("Be there at 6") but no more emotional overtures. Bob notices that she is "distant". He does not see that it is his response to her bids that created that distance. After 6 months: Alice sends a message: "I don't think we have anything in common any more". Bob is shocked. "Where is this coming from?" But if you scroll back through the messages, you can see exactly where it came from: a series of micro-rejections that, added together, destroyed the bond.

As we saw in our article on Gottman's four horsemen, rejecting bids is often the first warning sign, before criticism, contempt and defensiveness.

How to identify your own bid patterns

For the bid-maker: ask yourself these questions as you reread your messages:

• How many bids do you make each week?
• What kind of bids do you make most often? (playful, emotional, informational?)
• Have you noticed a decline over time?
• Have you started making more "testing" bids ("Do you still love me?") to check whether the other person responds?

For the responder:

• What percentage of bids do you receive on average?
• Do you respond more by turning towards, or passively?
• Are there types of bids you systematically reject? (playful bids, emotional ones?)
• Have you noticed that your partner is making fewer bids?

Reversing the pattern: antidotes to rejected bids

If you recognise a pattern of rejection, there are CBT strategies for changing it:

Become aware: every time you receive a bid, pause. Ask yourself: "That's a bid. What is my usual reaction...?"

Respond by turning towards, even a little: instead of "ok", write "ok, tell me more!" or "cool, and then what?". A single question changes everything.

Create connection rituals: a message every morning, a call in the evening. Rituals replace random bids with a predictable structure.

Reframe implicit bids: if your partner says "The kitchen is a mess", instead of feeling attacked you can reply: "I think you're telling me you're overwhelmed. Is that it?"

These micro-changes, repeated over weeks, rebuild a pattern of engagement. And that is precisely what time-stamped messages let you verify: you can see the change registering over time.

Written analysis as a mirror of the couple

What makes bids so powerful in written analysis is that they reveal intentionality without the defences of speech. When you say "I didn't see your message", that is possible. But when 50 messages show a pattern of passive replies, the intention becomes legible.

Writing does not lie over the long run. An isolated message can always be reinterpreted ("Maybe he was busy"). But 200 messages across three months trace a truth: either you connect regularly, or you gradually ignore each other.

That is why the psychological analysis of couples' conversations, grounded in clinical models such as Gottman's, is so revealing. It transforms a subjective impression ("We don't talk any more") into readable data ("You make 12 bids a week, 3 of which get an actively engaged response").

As we explored in our article on nonviolent communication applied to your messages, there are ways of rephrasing your bids so that they land better. But first, you have to see the pattern.

Conclusion: your messages tell a story

Every bid you make, every reply you give, becomes part of a story. On its own, a message says nothing. But together, over time, they form a narrative of the couple: the story of a connection that is either strengthening or eroding.

If you feel that something has broken between you and your partner, don't look for the big fracture. Look for the small disconnections: the ignored bids, the passive replies, the emotional overtures that dried up.

And if you really want to understand what is going on, reread your messages — not to torture yourself, but to see the pattern. Because it is in that pattern that the truth of your relationship lies.

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Gildas Garrec, CBT psychotherapist in Nantes