Atomic Attraction: Laws for Making Love Relationships Work, the Importance of Communication in the Couple, Happy Life by John Chapman & Sherry Harvey

Author:John Chapman & Sherry Harvey [Chapman, John]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2019-12-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7:

Make It a Law: Towards Versus Away

When we talk about turning towards your relationship instead of away, it is a simple concept of connecting and making an effort to connect to your partner. Relationship guru, John Gottman, studied the relationship successes and failures of a series of newlyweds, with a follow-up after six years.

His results showed that when couples turned towards each other in their relationships, there was a higher success rate of their staying together through that six-year mark. The study demonstrated that those who had lasting success in their relationships turned towards each other approximately 86% of the time, while those who did not succeed, their marriages ending in divorce, only averaged a 33% ratio of turning towards each other.

This shows that the concept of turning towards your relationship partner has a very dramatic impact on your relationship. So, obviously, turning towards each other is beneficial to your long-lasting, thriving commitment, but what does it really mean, “Turning Towards” the other person?

When we examine the concepts of turning towards or turning away from our relationship partner, we are talking about something described as connection “bids.” Bids can be described as attempts by one partner to gain attention, affection, affirmation, or any form of positive connection from the other partner in the relationship.

Because of the natural differences in how men and women behave in relationships, women tend to make more bids for connection then men do. These bids can come in many, many forms… in simple ways… a smile, a wink, asking how your day went, a tilt of the head in question… all the way through to more complex levels… asking for help or advice, leading comments such as, “I miss talking.” When a relationship is in a healthier state, which is our goal, men can feel just as comfortable as women in making bids for connection.

Because of the nature of bids, and often the uncertainty of the other partner pursuing them, bids can easily be overlooked. When a partner misses the queues of a bid or ignores it, it is considered “Turning Away” from the relationship. This can happen early on in a relationship before you start fully understanding who the partner is and what they may be asking. But it can also happen in the later stages of a relationship, when one partner falls into a natural routine of being with the other, without really engaging.

Sadly, it is in the turning away from your partner, missing or ignoring those queues where trouble can start in a relationship. It leaves the other person feeling ignored, unwanted, uncherished—unimportant—to the other person. In essence, when you are turning away from your partner, you are “rejecting” their bid for attention, which easily translates into a rejection of them as an individual. It is important that each person gets what they need from the relationship, or it will inevitably be doomed to fail.

It is also worth saying, and this is not intended in any sexist way, but while women are

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