Non-verbal bidsbid (bid for connection)A small attempt to connect — a comment, a glance, a question — that invites a partner's attention, humor, affection, or support.Glossary → honored is one partner noticing and responding to the other's wordless gestures of reaching out — a hand-squeeze, a sigh, a foot pressed against a thigh, a lingering at the doorway — and treating them as the real requests for connection they are.
The Gottman Institute calls a bid "the fundamental unit of emotional communication" — any attempt to get attention, affection, humor, or support — and bids can be verbal or non-verbal 1. When one lands, a partner can turn toward it, away from it, or against it 12; this flag is specifically the willingness to read a wordless bid as a bid and turn towardturning towardResponding to a partner's attempt to connect with attention, warmth, or interest, rather than ignoring it or reacting with irritation.Glossary → it. It helps to distinguish it from neighbors: it is not general physical affection (affection is often the response; the flag is the perception), not mind-reading (it's a modest, educated noticing rather than certainty), and not the louder skill of "good communication," which usually means talking well. This is the quieter cousin — knowing that not everything important arrives in words.
The strongest evidence for turning toward is Gottman's longitudinal observation: couples still together had turned toward bids roughly 86% of the time, those who divorced about 33% 13 — striking because behaviorally observed, though correlational. The non-verbal piece rests on adjacent solid science: Hertenstein showed touch alone can communicate distinct emotions — love, gratitude, sympathy, anger, fear — above chance 4, and a 2024 Nature Human Behaviour meta-analysismeta-analysisA study that statistically combines results from many separate studies to estimate an overall, more reliable pattern than any single study alone can show.Glossary → of 137 studies found medium-sized health benefits of touch 5. The responding half connects to perceived partner responsivenessresponsivenessA partner's demonstrated understanding, validation, and care — how much you feel truly seen and supported, which research treats as a core driver of intimacy.Glossary → 6; Jolink and Algoe found responsiveness forecasts affectionate touch, and touch one day predicts being seen as more responsive the next — a reinforcing loop 7. Attachment research adds the backdrop of attunementattunementBeing closely tuned in to another person's inner state — sensing and responding to what they feel — so they feel understood rather than alone with it.Glossary → to an infant's non-verbal signals 8.
Why it matters
Why it matters. Most of a shared life is conducted in glances and proximity, not declarations; honoring wordless bids widens the relationship's bandwidth and distributes the lower-stakes labor of reaching out.
How to cultivate it
How to cultivate it. Widen what you count as a bid, lower the cost of turning toward, build a shared dictionary out loud then let it go quiet, check gently when unsure, and repair the inevitable misses.
The honest caveat
The honest caveat. The layers aren't equally strong. Gottman's statistics are correlational and from specific samples 13; the touch-and-emotion findings were largely with strangers in labs 4; the broader touch benefits concern interventions generally 5; and the responsiveness loop mostly measures perceived responsiveness 7. None isolates the non-verbal channel as the active ingredient. Treat the specific claim as well-grounded practice wisdom on solid adjacent science. This flag is especially load-bearing where a partner communicates more easily without words — including many autistic partners, given that alexithymiaalexithymiaA difficulty identifying and describing your own emotions, so the bodily signal of a feeling may arrive before any word for it does, or no word arrives on…Glossary → runs near 50% in autistic people 9 — but non-verbal attunement complements plain words, never replaces them.