Reading and returning sexual 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 → is the capacity to notice your partner's subtle, often wordless erotic overtures as overtures — and to turn towardturning towardResponding to a partner's attempt to connect with attention, warmth, or interest, rather than ignoring it or reacting with irritation.Glossary → them in kind, with the reciprocal grace of having your own quiet bids met.
An erotic biderotic bidA subtle, usually wordless overture of physical desire — a touch, glance, tone, or offered closeness — that invites intimacy without the exposure of a direct…Glossary → is a touch, a glance, a tone, a particular closeness offered without announcement. This flag sits in the gap between Gottman's general bids for connection (#21, #27) and explicit sexual communication (#149): it is specifically about overtures in the erotic register, and mostly about the ones that are not spoken — the kind that can be made without the exposure of a direct ask and met without the awkwardness of a formal yes. It is the difference between intimacy that arises and intimacy that always has to be requested.
The bedrock is Gottman's bids research. In the Buehlman, Gottman, and Katz oral-history study, narrative variables coded from a couple's account of their relationship predicted divorce with about 94% accuracy 1, and Driver and Gottman's apartment-lab work found couples still together had turned toward bids about 86% of the time versus roughly 33% for those who later divorced 3. The reasoned extension to sexual overtures draws on a separate, directly relevant literature: Dobson and colleagues' 21-day diary study found an accepted advance tracked higher satisfaction that day and up to 24 hours later, while a rejection lowered sexual satisfaction up to 48 hours later 4. Crucially, the green flag is not "always says yes" — Kim, Muise, and colleagues found that how a partner declines matters most, with reassuring, affectionate rejection linked to greater satisfaction and hostile rejection to less, through perceived 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 → 5. Sexual communication broadly tracks satisfaction across dozens of studies 6, and Basson's nonlinear model explains why the received bid matters so much: much desire is responsive, igniting after an overture is met rather than before it 78.
Why it matters
Why it matters. When subtle bids are routinely returned, intimacy feels continuous rather than negotiated; missed bids teach the reaching partner to stop reaching, and rejections leave a measurable two-day residue 4.
How to cultivate it
How to cultivate it. Treat the soft reach as a bid even when the answer is "not now."
The honest caveat
The honest caveat. No one has run the Love Lab tally specifically on erotic bids, so the "86 versus 33" belongs to general bids 3; this flag braids that with the separate research on responses to sexual advances 45 — a clinically sound synthesis, not a single proven number. The wordless quality also assumes a shared nonverbal dialect, which neurodivergent couples may not share, the "double empathy problemdouble empathy problemThe idea that when two people experience the world very differently, misunderstanding runs both ways — so a non-autistic person can be just as bad at reading…Glossary →" running both ways 910.