What I Learned About Life From Bird-Watching
Or, the one thing that defines a successful relationship
I’m on the very slow road to training as a sex and relationships therapist. When I signed up for this I thought it would take a few months but instead it’s a minimum of four years, which is probably a good thing. I’m not sure I’d trust a therapist with just a weekend’s worth of training. The advantage of this slow road is that it’s giving me lots of time to read around the subject and realise just how little I really know about building relationships with other people.
Right now my favourite people to learn from are Drs John and Julie Gottman. They’re both relationships therapists and they’re married to each other (I can’t decide whether this is a recipe for an amazing marriage or actually quite tiring). As well as their private client work, they also run an incredible research lab in Seattle complete with a guest house where couples can come and have their relationship analysed. Essentially, you and your partner move into this guest house and then all your interactions are monitored by a research team. They then dig into the data of how you treat each other and from that can assess the health (and longevity) of your relationship. They’ve written lots of papers and books about what they’ve learned but most of it can be summarised by what is known as “the bird test”.
What the Gottmans noticed was that throughout the day couples make “bids” for each others’ attention. For example, if one of the couple was an avid birdwatcher, they might point out a beautiful bird flying past the window to their partner - this was a “bid”, a request for connection. The partner, not so avid a birdwatcher, had a choice - they could either “turn towards” their partner by showing interest in what they’ve just said, asking questions or supporting them, or they can “turn away” from their partner by not engaging with them or only responding minimally.
When they followed up on these couples six years later, researchers found that the couples who were still together had turned towards each other 87% of the time. They met their partner’s “bid” for connection and emotional recognition the vast majority of the time and this resulted in a deeper partnership that lasted.
Those who turned towards their partner less than a third of the time? They were divorced.
I love this research because it makes relationships so simple. We can argue all day about attachment styles or communication preferences but when it comes down to it, the biggest determining factor in most relationships is really, “did you pay attention to my quirks and foibles when I needed you to?” It’s so simple.
It also works brilliantly in all relationships, not just our romantic ones. Feeling a bit disconnected from old friends? Make a point of spending a bit more time in your group Whatsapp chat. Ask questions or comment on the silly memes they’ve sent you rather than just sending a thumbs up.
Want to build new friendships? Pay attention to when they put in “bids”. Recently I went on a four hour foraging walk with a group of new people. It was supposed to be two hours, which is probably about my limit for an interest in mushrooms, but the person taking it was so excited by everything around them that the walk just kept going. I could have decided I’d had enough and headed home but instead I kept listening, kept “turning towards” and when we finally hit the tea and cake stage of the walk, I’d made a new friend.
Want your work team to feel more supported without having to take back all the work you’ve just delegated to them? Tune in when they put in a “bid”. Have they sent you a quick message on Slack about finishing a piece of work? Take five minutes to ask them how it went / what they’ve learned from it. It’s also worth noting that different team members will put in different “bids” - for one it might be an email about a win they’ve just had, for another it might be a complaint. One of these might feel easier to deal with than the other but both require the same thing, some gentle engagement and listening from you. Five minutes of effort on your part can be the difference between an engaged team and spending half your time recruiting new people.
When we get busy it’s easy to turn away from bids. Turning towards them requires effort and very often we’re tired or dealing with something else which feels more important. We tell ourselves that we’ll make a big effort with them later, that we’ll do something which goes above and beyond the call of duty to make them feel good, and in doing so we forget the key point of the Gottman research - it’s the little things that matter.
The point of the research is to help us identify bids for connections from our partners but I also like to use it to check in with myself. If you’re anything like me, then you probably spend a lot of your week on autopilot just trying to get everything done and then you get to the end of the week and collapse exhausted. Recently I’ve been trying to break this pattern and one of the ways I’ve done that is by watching out for my own “bids”. Some things I’ve identified as my subconscious’s bid for connection:
The pile of clothes on my bedroom chair reaches mountainous proportions. A few days worth of clothing waiting to be sorted is fair enough, drowning under a pile of discarded jumpers is a sign that I need to stop working and start looking after myself.
Road rage. Anyone who’s been in a car with me knows that I have very little patience on the roads but when general frustration reaches rage I know there’s more going on. Road rage, for me, is never really about the journey I’m on, it’s about the fact that I’m ignoring some point of stress or anger elsewhere in my life. It’s a reminder to check back in with myself.
Procrastination. I am a chronic procrastinator but recently I’ve stopped seeing this as a failing and instead started seeing it as a bid for kindness or fun. When I sit with why I’m procrastinating it nearly always comes back to a fear of not being good enough and a need for some gentle self-compassion.
And of course sometimes I ignore all of the above and sit scrolling on my phone because after all I’m only human.
The need for connection runs through all of us. We want to be seen, heard and acknowledged. In an ideal world we have people around us who can do that for us but sometimes we just have to do it for ourselves and in my experience, that’s where the real relationship work begins.
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What a beautiful newsletter, Harriet! The training sounds fascinating.
Well said, Harriet. This was beautiful!
As a Seattleite who's recommended The Gottman Method to many friends, it's exciting to see how far a reach gems of the city can have!
And, as an often burnt-out Autistic wife and mother, this is a great reminder to answer those "bids" with acknowledgement and kindness whenever I've run out of "the spoons" to engage further than that, but to continue engaging whenever I can.
Even so, I'm happy that we're in the 87% range. 😉
Thank you for sharing, Harriet! Your personal examples were so relatable, too!