When my husband asked if I’d watched the video he sent, I said no — I’d seen it, meant to and then forgot.
“You should watch it,” he said.
So, I did.
He had sent a video on how basketball defense has evolved since the 1960s.
It turns out, these small moments — even a video about the history of basketball defense — may matter more than we realize.
Background: He has sat with me through enough basketball games to hear me go on and on about how I don’t understand how players get away with what they do. Like a broken record, I keep saying, “That should be a foul,” as players without the ball push and shove each other.
Perhaps he was gently trying to get me to consider that I can’t watch 2025 basketball with 1985 eyes — whatever his motive, he knew I would be interested.
Learning about the Gottman Institute research on “bids for connection” really resonated with me. “Bids for connection” are defined as gestures from one partner to another seeking attention, affection or engagement.
The research explains that the “bids” can be small — like a simple question or larger, like an outright request for help.
With decades of research as evidence, many believe that the way a partner responds to these bids determines the tenor of a relationship. When someone consistently turns toward the bid and acknowledges it properly, the relationship typically grows in a positive direction.
For example, if one partner says to another, “Check out that view,” a partner “moving toward” the bid for connection would look at the view and respond along the lines of, “Wow, that’s amazing!”
A partner who “turns away” from the bid doesn’t look up and responds with something along the lines of “mm-hmm.”
And a partner who “turns against” the bid responds with, “Really, you had me look up for that?”
Over time, the responses add up.
Not to paint too rosy a picture — my husband and I drive each other crazy sometimes — but scrolling through his messages, I realized these little nuggets he often shares are a part of the way he seeks connection.
The Weinermobile in front of BLDG 5 in Baton Rouge in March 2025.
For example, he sent a photo of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile spotted outside BLDG 5, a callback to the Route 66 road trip he and I took in September 2020, when we were on the same path as the Wienermobile for four straight days — at Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo, standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, at the Wigwam Hotel in Holbrook, Arizona and more.
We found ourselves at the same hotels and landmarks over and over again. We came to be on a first name basis with the drivers. The Wienermobile was a reminder of how shared experiences, no matter how quirky, continue to bind us. We laughed about it then, and we still laugh about it now.
Individual tiny threads of relationships bind together to make a stronger fabric.
Then there is the video he sent of the president of Mexico getting “la limpia,” a type of cleansing with plants and smoke considered a traditional healing ritual that aims to cleanse the body and soul of negative energy, illness and bad vibrations.
When we were in Mexico City in January, I got one too.
He also sent a story about the trunk of a dead 110-year-old cottonwood tree in Idaho that was transformed into a Little Free Library. He knows I adore Little Free Libraries and became friends with Todd Bol who started them in 2009. I wrote a piece about them shortly thereafter, and Bol made a trip to Louisiana and ended up coming to our house for dinner.
I’m not sure how my husband finds some of the things he sends me, but they help keep the conversation going 31 years into marriage.
Most of the time, I naturally “turn toward” the bid for connection, but sometimes I’m busy or have a lot on my plate or I just forget — and I don’t give those efforts the attention they deserve.
But when I do, I realize that he knows me well, and it makes my heart flutter just a tiny bit. Each bid, whether a quirky photo, an intriguing article or a shared memory, is a way of him saying, “I see you.”
Those moments are also a reminder that bids for connection can go both ways. Sending the note or tidbit to a friend or cousin or husband — because I know it strikes a chord that they will appreciate it — is probably a good idea.
The ways that we respond to the people we care about add up.
In my relationship with my husband, these little messages, as opposed to the grand gestures, help us keep liking each other.
These are the ways we turn toward each another, again and again.
