Laura: Researchers can watch a couple talk for just fifteen minutes and predict, with over ninety percent accuracy, whether they’ll get divorced. Sophia: Whoa, hold on. Ninety percent? That’s… a lot. Laura: It is. And the secret isn’t in what they fight about—money, kids, chores, none of that. It’s in how one person responds to the other making a simple comment about, say, a bird outside the window. Sophia: Come on. A marriage can’t possibly hinge on a comment about a bird. That sounds like a party trick, not science. Laura: It feels like it, but it’s pure science. And it’s the central, mind-blowing idea in the book we're diving into today: The Science of Trust by the incredible duo John Gottman and Joan DeClaire. Gottman is this legendary researcher from the University of Washington, and he’s famous for creating what’s known as the "Love Lab." Sophia: The Love Lab? That sounds both romantic and slightly terrifying. Laura: It was basically a custom-built apartment where he and his team would invite couples to stay for a weekend. They’d observe them through two-way mirrors, wire them up with sensors to track their heart rates, stress levels, everything. He turned the messy art of relationships into a hard science. And what he discovered was that the biggest, most stable connections are built, or broken, in the absolute smallest, most insignificant-seeming moments. Sophia: Okay, so he's not just a relationship guru, he's a data guy. I'm intrigued. What is this secret language of birds and tiny moments?

Laura: That's the perfect question. Gottman calls these moments 'bids for connection.' A bid is the fundamental unit of emotional communication. It’s any gesture—verbal or nonverbal—that says, "I want to feel connected to you." Sophia: It’s like sending out a little emotional ping, just to see if someone pings back. Laura: Exactly. It can be as simple as "Wow, look at that sunset," or a sigh, or even just making eye contact across a crowded room. The words themselves are almost irrelevant. The subtext is always: "Are you with me? Are you in this moment with me?" Sophia: That makes sense. It’s not about the sunset, it’s about sharing the experience of the sunset. Laura: Precisely. And when these bids are missed or ignored, it causes real damage. There's a story in the book about two sisters, Kristine and Alice, that just perfectly illustrates the pain of a failed bid. Their mother has Alzheimer's and lives near Alice, who is the primary caregiver. Kristine lives several states away. Sophia: Oh, that’s a tough situation already. Laura: It is. So Kristine calls Alice to check in, and during the call, Alice casually mentions that their mom had a seizure and was hospitalized a few days ago. She never called Kristine to tell her. Sophia: Ouch. That’s a huge piece of information to just drop into a conversation. Laura: Kristine is, understandably, furious. She feels completely shut out. Her bid for connection—calling to ask about their mom, wanting to be involved—is met with this wall of dismissal. Alice’s response is basically, "I was busy, and you're far away, what could you have done anyway?" Sophia: Wow, you can just feel the frustration. It’s not about the medical details; it’s about feeling like you don't matter. Alice is treating her sister's concern like an inconvenience. Laura: And that’s the core of it. Kristine isn't just asking for facts; she's bidding for inclusion, for shared experience, for the feeling that they are in this family crisis together. Alice turning away from that bid creates this massive emotional wound. But bids can also be the thing that saves a relationship. Sophia: Okay, give me the flip side. A story of hope. Laura: There’s another couple in the book, Phil and Tina. They're in their thirties, good jobs, two kids, but they haven't been intimate in six months. They go to therapy, and the reason seems straightforward. Tina's job went through a huge, stressful reorganization, and she was just exhausted and had no interest in sex. Sophia: That sounds pretty common, actually. Stress is a huge intimacy killer. Laura: It is. But here’s the breakdown. Phil felt rejected by her lack of response to his advances—his bids for physical connection. So he just stopped trying. He withdrew. They were in this silent, lonely standoff. Sophia: So they both stopped making bids. The communication just died. Laura: Completely. Until one moment in therapy. After they lay it all out, Tina says something quietly. She looks at Phil and says, "I miss making love, too. I miss the way it used to be." Sophia: Oh, that’s a huge bid. That’s everything. Laura: It’s the whole game. And Phil’s response is just as powerful. He’s stunned, and he says, "You never gave me that information." In that moment, he realizes her silence wasn't rejection; it was exhaustion. And her one sentence, that one bid, opens the door for them to start rebuilding everything. Sophia: So Phil and Tina's problem wasn't just about sex, it was a total information and connection breakdown. Her one sentence was a bid that could literally save their marriage. It’s amazing how much weight a few words can carry.

Laura: Exactly. And that one sentence from Tina highlights that every single bid we make faces a crucial crossroads. Gottman found there are only three ways people can respond, and these responses are what he measured in the Love Lab to make those wild predictions about divorce. Sophia: Okay, lay them on me. What are the three paths? Laura: The first and best is 'Turning Toward.' This is when you acknowledge the bid and engage with it. It’s the ping back. Your partner says, "Look at that bird," and you look and say, "Oh, wow, it's a cardinal." You’ve connected. Sophia: Simple enough. What are the others? Laura: The second is 'Turning Away.' This is when you ignore or dismiss the bid. You just keep scrolling on your phone. You don't even look up. The bid is left hanging in the air, unanswered. The third, and most destructive, is 'Turning Against.' This is when you respond with hostility or annoyance. "Can't you see I'm busy? Stop bothering me with birds!" Sophia: I can see how turning against is terrible. That’s just being mean. But what’s the real-world difference between turning away and turning against? One feels passive, the other aggressive, but they both feel bad. Laura: They do, but they’re different poisons. Turning away is neglect. It sends the message, "You are not important. Your interests are not interesting to me." Turning against is contempt. It sends the message, "You are an annoyance. Your needs are a burden to me." And the data from the Love Lab on this is just staggering. Sophia: This is the ninety percent accuracy stuff. Laura: This is it. In one study, Gottman observed couples during a simple dinner-hour conversation. Husbands who were headed for divorce disregarded their wives' bids a shocking 82% of the time. Sophia: Eighty-two percent! That’s not a bad day; that’s a pattern of total neglect. It’s like they're living with a ghost. Laura: It is. And for husbands in stable, happy relationships? They only disregarded bids 19% of the time. The difference is astronomical. Gottman calls this building an 'emotional bank account.' Every time you turn toward a bid, you make a small deposit. You build up this reservoir of goodwill, trust, and connection. Sophia: So when a real conflict comes up, you have capital in the bank to spend. You can weather the storm because you know, fundamentally, that you’re on the same team. Laura: You’ve got it. But if the account is empty because of constant turning away, then even a small disagreement can bankrupt the entire relationship. There's no goodwill to draw on. Every conflict feels like a fight for survival. Sophia: It’s fascinating that the book is so highly rated by readers and experts alike, because this concept feels both incredibly simple and profoundly difficult. It’s not about learning complex negotiation tactics; it’s about paying attention. Laura: That's the genius of Gottman's work. He demystified it. He showed that relationship health isn't some magical, unknowable thing. It's a skill. It's a series of small, observable, and correctable actions.

Sophia: Okay, so if turning toward is so important and relatively simple, why are we so bad at it? It seems easy enough to just look up from your phone. Laura: Because we have these deep-seated, often unconscious habits that get in our way. Gottman calls them 'Bid Busters.' They are the silent assassins of connection. Sophia: Bid Busters. I like that. It sounds like a team of emotional villains. Laura: They really are! And they're sneaky. For example, one of the biggest is what he calls a 'harsh startup.' This is when you begin an interaction with criticism or accusation. Think about a parent saying to a teenager, "What time did you get in last night?" with that accusatory tone. Sophia: Oh, that conversation is doomed from the first sentence. The shields go up immediately. Laura: Instantly. The bid for connection, which might be a genuine "I was worried about you," is completely lost. But my favorite bid buster, because it's so personal and so universal, is what Gottman calls a 'crabby habit of mind.' Sophia: A crabby habit of mind. Honestly, that sounds like my Monday mornings. But I feel like we all know someone like that, or maybe we are that person. The person who always finds the one thing to complain about. Laura: Exactly. It's a default setting of looking for what's wrong instead of what's right. And Gottman tells this incredibly vulnerable story about himself to illustrate it. He had just joined a new synagogue, and there was a man who led the prayers and sang. And Gottman's first, instant thought was, "What a show-off. He just loves the sound of his own voice." Sophia: That’s such a human reaction. It’s so easy to be a critic. It's almost a defense mechanism. Laura: It is. But then he had this moment of clarity. He realized that his reaction had nothing to do with the singer and everything to do with his own 'crabby habit of mind.' He was living in a state of impatience and criticism, and it was poisoning his ability to connect with the beauty of the moment. Sophia: Wow. That takes a lot of self-awareness to catch yourself in the act like that. So how did he fix it? What's the remedy for a 'crabby habit of mind'? Laura: It’s so simple it’s almost radical. He made a conscious decision to change. He decided to actively look for things to praise and appreciate in people. The next time he saw the singer, he went up to him and said, "You have a beautiful voice. Your singing is very moving." Sophia: And I’m guessing the singer didn’t say, "I know, I’m a show-off." Laura: Of course not! He was touched. And they ended up becoming good friends. Gottman realized that by changing his own internal focus from criticism to appreciation, he fundamentally changed his ability to connect with the world around him. He busted his own bid buster.

Laura: And that’s really where all these ideas come together. We are constantly sending out these tiny bids for connection. And in every moment, we have a choice in how we respond: we can turn toward, turn away, or turn against. Sophia: And those tiny choices, repeated thousands of times, build up or tear down our 'emotional bank account.' Laura: Exactly. And often, we fail to make deposits not because we're malicious or don't care, but because of these sneaky 'bid busters'—a harsh startup, a moment of mindlessness, or that 'crabby habit of mind' that defaults to criticism. Sophia: It's both terrifying and hopeful. Terrifying that such small, seemingly insignificant moments have so much power over the health of our most important relationships. But it's also incredibly hopeful. Laura: How so? Sophia: Because it means we don't need grand, dramatic gestures to fix things. We don't need a week-long vacation or expensive therapy, necessarily. We can start to repair and strengthen our connections right now, in the next ten seconds, with the very next bid that comes our way. It puts the power back in our hands. Laura: That's a beautiful way to put it. The cure for a broken relationship isn't a single big event; it's a thousand small moments of turning toward someone. Sophia: It really makes you wonder, what's one small bid you've missed or met this week? In a conversation with your partner, your kid, a coworker? A moment where someone just wanted you to look at the bird with them. Laura: That's a great question for everyone to think about. The book is full of these practical exercises and questionnaires to help you identify your own patterns. It’s a powerful toolkit. We'd love to hear your stories or thoughts on this. Find us on our socials and share a moment where you noticed a 'bid' in action. Sophia: It’s a concept that, once you see it, you can’t unsee. You start noticing bids everywhere. Laura: You really do. It changes how you see the world. Laura: This is Aibrary, signing off.