Bids for connection: the small way to be a better friend
Gottman's couples research reports partners turned toward 86% of bids if they stayed married vs 33% if they divorced. What it might mean for friends.
In this article4 sections
Dear you, who stopped answering the group chat weeks ago,
Nobody is angry. Somebody posted a photo of a dog in a raincoat on Tuesday and the thread went quiet, and that quiet is what I want to talk about. If you have been wondering how to be a better friend without a big gesture, the smallest unit of friendship might be the thing to look at: the bid.
John Gottman, the couples researcher, defines a bid as any attempt to get another person’s attention, affirmation or affection. The Gottman Institute says he studied newlyweds and followed up six years later. Couples who stayed married had turned toward each other’s bids 86% of the time. Couples who divorced averaged 33%. The Institute gives no sample size or citation on that page, and a Psychology Today summary repeats the same two figures without one either. I could not trace them to a paper, so read them as reported, not audited.
| Turned toward bids | Outcome after six years | |
|---|---|---|
| Stayed married | 86% | Together |
| Divorced | 33% | Separated |
What the research is, and is not
This is couples research. It says nothing, as far as I can find, about friends. Applying it to your group chat is my extension, untested, and I would hold it loosely. The idea travels well because friendships run on the same traffic: a tiny offer, and a choice about what to do with it.
What a friend bid looks like
- A meme sent with no caption.
- “Look at this” and a photo of a sky.
- A voice note that begins “this is stupid, but”.
- A 6 a.m. clip of someone already up.
- “Did you see the game?”
None of these asks for anything large. That is the point. Each one says: you came to mind.
Ways to turn toward one
You can reply with one specific detail (“the raincoat is the best part”). You can answer the question under the question, so a meme about a terrible Monday gets “rough week?” You can send a reaction and promise the rest later, which at least acknowledges the person. When the bid is good news, use the approach in four ways to reply when a friend posts good news, where Shelly Gable’s research favors a curious question over a flame emoji.
Turning away is quieter: no reply, or a reply about something else. Turning against is the snark. Most of us do the first by accident, and a bid that sits unanswered tends to get sent less often.
About your silence
If you went quiet because you are tired, that is allowed. Your friends may be assuming the worst, which people do (here is the research on why), and a small bid back is the cheapest repair. Friendships also grow on repeated low-stakes contact, as Moreland and Beach’s classroom study suggests.
The one place DontSnooze touches this is mechanical: when the alarm goes off it asks for a short video, and if you skip it a random camera-roll photo goes to friends you chose, so the group gets a small daily bid from you even on days you feel like hiding.
So start with the dog in the raincoat. Send one word back. Whether that moves a friendship from 33 toward 86 nobody has measured, but it costs you less than the silence does.
Yours, a friend
If the group chat feels like a poor substitute for seeing people, the fear-of-missing-out research explains why scrolling tends to leave that gap open. The same reflex to fill every quiet minute with a screen is the subject of a well-known study on sitting alone with your thoughts.