This month we have an excerpt from one of Dr. John Gottman’s books, “The Relationship Cure: A 5-Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships.” In it we will discover what Dr. Gottman believes is the building block of connecting in relationships. As we learn what goes into creating meaningful connections, we can be more intentional about preventing emotional distance between us and our spouse. We can also have some tools to repair damage and regain intimacy once it has faded.

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Meet Phil and Tina, a couple in their thirties who seem to have it all. Solid jobs, two beautiful kids, lots of good friends—and they love each other. Trouble is, they haven’t had sex in six months.Seated together on a small sofa in a therapist’s office, the couple describes how the problem started.

“Tina’s company was going through this big reorganization,” Phil explains. “And every day she’d come home exhausted.”

“It was a real drag,” Tina remembers. “I was spending all day in these long, tense meetings, trying to defend people’s jobs. When I got home, I couldn’t shake the stress. I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I felt so anxious. Phil tried to be nice, but…”

“I wanted to help her, to tell her it was going to be okay, but I couldn’t do anything right. It wasn’t like we had this huge, catastrophic breakdown or anything. It was more about the little stuff. I’d kiss her on the back of her neck or start to rub her stomach when we were in bed—things that used to get her attention. But now I was getting nothing in return. Zip. It definitely threw me off balance.”

“And I felt that if I didn’t get all hot and bothered the minute he touched me, he was going to be wounded or something.” Tina explained. “It just made me so tense.”

Phil got the point. “She has all these people leaning on her at work. And then she comes home to this guy who’s feeling insecure, who’s whining about his needs. It was such a turnoff for her.”

So, to preserve his pride, Phil quit trying. “I got tired of the rejection.” he explains to the therapist. “I don’t know how long we can go on like this. It’s tough to keep putting yourself out there only to be shut down all the time. Sure, I love her, but sometimes I’m afraid we’re not going to make it.”

“It’s not working for me, either,” Tina says through her tears. then, after a long silence, she adds, “I miss making love, too. I miss the way it used to be.”

“Well, maybe that’s a place to start,” Phil says quietly. “Because you never told me that before. You never gave me that information.”

Phil couldn’t have said it better. Whether people are struggling to save a marriage, to cooperate in a family crisis, or to build rapport with a difficult boss, they usually have one thing in common: They need to share emotional information that can help them feel connected.

Phil and Tina are like many couples I see in marital therapy. Whatever conflicts the couples may have—sex, money, housework, kids—all of them long for evidence that their spouses understand and care about what they’re feeling.

Sharing such information through words and behavior is essential for improving any significant relationship. But even our best efforts to connect can be jeopardized as a result of one basic problem: failure to master what I call the “bid”—the fundamental unit of emotional communication.

A bid can be a question, a gesture, a look, a touch—any single expression that says, “I want to feel connected to you.” A response to a bid is just that—a positive or negative answer to somebody’s request for emotional connection.

We learned that people typically respond to one another’s bids for connection in one of three ways: They turn toward, turn against, or turn away. By correlating these three types of behavior with the status of their relationships ten years later, we were able to show how each of these types of behavior affect people’s connections over the long term. In a nutshell, here’s what we learned:

1. Turning toward

To “turn toward” one another means to react in a positive way to another’s bids for emotional connection. One person makes a funny comment, for example, and the other person laughs. A man points to an impressive car as it passes by, and his friend nods as if to say, “I agree. That’s quite a car!” A father asks his son to pass the ketchup, and his son does so in a kind, accommodating way. A woman muses about a vacation she’d like to take, and her coworker joins in. She asks her questions, adds her opinions, lends colorful details to a trip they imagine together.

What happens in relationships where people consistently turn toward one another’s bids for connection? Our analysis shows that, over time, they develop stable, long-lasting relationships rich in good feelings for one another. Like the “marital masters,” they also seem to have easier access to humor, affection, and interest in one another during conflict, a factor that allows them to stay connected emotionally, solve problems, and avoid the downward spiral of negative feelings that destroy relationships.

2. Turning against

[pullquote style=”right” quote=”dark”]Husbands headed for divorce disregard their wives’ bids for connection 82% of the time, while husbands in stable relationships disregard their wives’ bids just 19% of the time.[/pullquote]People who turn against one another’s bids for connection might be described as belligerant or argumentative. For example, if a man fantasized about owning a passing sports car, his friend might reply, “On your salary? Dream on!”Turning against often involves sarcasm or ridicule. In one instance in our marriage lab, a wife gently asked her husband to put down his newspaper and talk to her. “And what are we going to talk about?” he sneered.

“Well, we were thinking of buying a new television,” she offered. “We could talk about that.”

But his next response was just as mean: “What do you know about televisions?” he asked. After that, she said nothing at all.

[pullquote style=”left” quote=”dark”]Wives headed for divorce act preoccupied when their husbands bid for their attention 50% of the time, while happily married wives act preoccupied only 14% of the time.[/pullquote] This woman’s withdrawal is typical in situations when one person habitually turns against another, we discovered. After all, who wants to be ridiculed or snapped at? We also found that this pattern of hostility followed by suppression of feelings is destructive to relationships. Among married couples, the pattern leads to divorce later on. Interestingly, the married couples in our study who habitually displayed this behavior did not divorce as quickly as couples whose main habit of interaction was for one partner to turn away. But eventually the majority of them did split up.

3. Turning away

This pattern of relating generally involves ignoring another’s bid, or acting preoccupied. A person in these instances might comment and point to that impressive sports car, but his friend wouldn’t bother to look up. Or he might look up and say something unrelated, such as, “What time do you have?” Or, “Do you have change for a five-dollar bill?”

In one poignant example from our marriage lab, the wife apologized to her husband for a mistake she made in preparing dinner that night. She raised the issue three times during the course of the evening, obviously wanting him to let her off the hook. But all three times the husband met his wife’s comments with silence and looked away.

Another husband said, “Dinner’s almost ready.” while his wife divided her attention between reading and watching TV. She didn’t respond. So he went over to the couch where she sat and said, “How’s your book, hon?” She ignored him again. He then kissed her twice, and she was unresponsive to his kisses. “Is that book good?” he asked. Finally she said, “Yes, it has some nice pictures in it.” That was their entire exchange.

In our marriage studies, we found that turning away on a regular basis is actually destructive. Partners who display this pattern of interaction become hostile and defensive with each other—particularily when they discuss an area of continuing disagreement. This behavior typically results in early divorce.

Now what?

What can we take away from this? First of all, how we connect with our spouse is vitally important. Secondly, its the numerous small, mundane connections of everyday life that matter. Its the accumulated sum of these connections that determine how we feel about each other. Perhaps this is why the husband that has been cold or neglectful to his wife finds that the bouquet of roses or romantic dinner he suprises his wife with doesn’t have the desired effect he anticipated. In relationships—and specifically connecting—quantity does matter. We need to be turning toward each other often and on a regular basis. I wonder if our relationship with God works the same way. I wonder if God is looking for regular, meaningful interaction throughout the day, not just in the morning or once a week on Sunday. Perhaps as we turn toward him more often, He will turn toward us.

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Excerpts from taken from “The Relationship Cure: A 5-Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships” by John M. Gottman, Ph.D. and Joan DeClaire. ©2001. For more info about Dr. John Gottman or his books visit www.Gottman.com.