There's only so many rejected bids for connection I can withstand
Are you ignoring them or simply unaware they're floating by?
I’ve written a lot about the power and complexity of female friendship. I’ve spoken about those bonds that last a lifetime and the pain of having to grieve friendships lost.
But what has been bubbling away in my brain for some time is how despite our best efforts, sometimes we remain entirely oblivious to the bids for connection flying our way day in, day out.
In simple terms, a bid can be described as any attempt from one person to another for connection, attention, validation or affection. And while commonly spoken about in the context of intimate relationships—first coined by Drs John and Julie Gottman—bids build the fundamental point of emotional communication and connection in all our important relationships. They can be verbal or nonverbal, which is why it is both important to give our relationships the attention and nourishment they deserve so as to capture and respond to as many bids as possible—but also why it can sometimes be easy to miss unspoken bids that are conveyed through body language and behaviours that are silent.
In my own friendships, what I’ve found interesting to observe is how we all bid for connection in different ways. Similar to the concept of Love Languages—where we all give and receive love in different ways—I’ve noticed how while one friend might make a bid for connection by sending me a text or picking up the phone, another may stand close to my shoulder when we meet, her body language indicating the need for a hug or moment of contact.
Given these sorts of topics are endlessly fascinating to me, I feel that similarly to how I have developed different expectations for different friendships in my life—learning not to read too deeply into someone’s response (or lack of response as the case may be) as most often, it has nothing to do with me and everything to do with them—I have also learnt how to read my friends individual bids for connection. Or at least, I’m trying.
As an example, I have one friend who I would describe as someone who would like to be more interconnected than we perhaps are during this season of life. It’s not that I don’t also relish time spent with her—it’s the opposite in fact—but the complexities of life have meant that in the last few months I have observed a distance between us caused only by our individual circumstances, the needs of our families and work commitments. While I am happy to trust the ebbs and flows of our friendship and I look forward to a time when we are able to spend more time together once again, I can definitely feel her withdraw from my bids for connection. Unfortunately, the impact of this means that I become less likely to throw them out there in order to avoid that heavy feeling of rejection—but what she might not realise is that her response to my bids means that she receives the opposite of what she actually wants: more time together.
This dynamic has highlighted to me the importance of learning to receive our friends bids more openly. We need to zoom out of our own lives and like the expectations we set for our friendships, perhaps consider giving the women in our lives the benefit of the doubt more often. Their bids for connection may be more quiet than usual, but they’re likely still there—we’ve just got to look for them.
I know that for me, when life gets chaotic or I have a period of emotional trauma to work through, I withdraw into myself and my immediate family to try and simplify my life. I slow down, focusing only on the small elements of my life that are within my control in order to try and minimise the grief and anxiety that may be bubbling underneath in regards to the larger challenges I’m facing. For my friends, this likely looks like I’m pulling back from them—when actually, I’m leaving the door cracked open in the hopes that they see this bid for connection and step into the space I so desperately need them to fill. I may not be texting and asking how their day is going like I once did, but I am hoping that they ask me how I’m really doing, if I’m really coping with the huge challenges that have peppered my path forward and if they can support me as I try to find some steady ground once more.
So the question I guess I’m asking is this: how can we become better at seeing and receiving those bids for connection?
I think the answer is to turn towards each other, rather than away. This starts with recognising that a bid has come your way in the first place. It might not present itself in the way you thought it would, but recognising and learning to acknowledge bids from our friends is the most important step. And secondly, if we recognise a bid has come our way, do our best to receive it—rather than reject it.
For those of us perhaps tossing bids for connection out into the world and finding that they’re floating by those friendships we value the most, even if it’s tough, it’s always worth trying again. It doesn’t mean we need to stand on a street corner with a placard in our hands, but if we can muster the vulnerability, sometimes we just need to speak our bid out loud and say to our friends: I need you.