The Small Moments that Make or Break a Marriage

When most people think about strengthening their marriage, their minds usually go straight to the big things. Date nights, weekend trips, or anniversary celebrations. Maybe even the occasional grand romantic gesture that feels worthy of a movie scene. Those moments certainly have their place, and they can be meaningful experiences for couples. But after sitting with hundreds of couples in therapy over the years, I’ve noticed something interesting: marriages rarely thrive or struggle because of the big moments. Far more often, the health of a relationship is shaped by the hundreds of small, ordinary interactions that happen every single day.

In other words, the moments that make the biggest difference in a marriage are often the ones that don’t seem important at all. A quick comment in passing… a sigh from across the kitchen… a small story about something that happened at work… a partner holding up their phone and saying, “Hey, look at this.” These tiny interactions may seem insignificant in the moment, but they are actually some of the most important building blocks of emotional connection between two people.

In the world of couples therapy, we often refer to these moments as bids for connection. The concept comes from the work of relationship researcher Dr. John Gottman, who spent decades studying what makes marriages succeed or fail.

Making bids for connection

A bid for connection is simply a small attempt by one partner to gain attention, affection, or emotional engagement from the other.

Sometimes bids are direct, like when someone says, “Can we talk for a minute?” Other times, they are much more subtle, like mentioning something about their day or pointing out something funny they just saw online. In many ways, a bid for connection is a small relational signal that says, “Do you see me?” or “Are you with me right now?”

The fascinating thing is that most couples have no idea how often these bids happen. Over the course of a normal day, partners may make dozens of these attempts to connect without even realizing it. The success of a marriage isn’t necessarily determined by how many bids are made, but by how partners respond to them. Over time, those responses quietly shape the emotional climate of the relationship.

Researchers often describe three basic ways people respond to bids for connection. The first is turning toward the bid. This is when a partner responds with interest, attention, or engagement. It might be as simple as looking up from your phone, making eye contact, asking a question, or laughing at the story being shared. These responses may only take a few seconds, but they communicate something deeply meaningful: “You matter to me.” Over time, these small responses build emotional trust and reinforce the sense that partners are on the same team.

The second response is turning away. This happens when a bid for connection is ignored or missed. A partner might continue scrolling through their phone, remain focused on work, or give a distracted “uh-huh” without truly engaging. Most of the time, this response isn’t malicious. It often happens because people are tired, stressed, busy, or simply preoccupied. Life has a way of pulling our attention in a hundred different directions. Still, when bids are repeatedly missed, partners can begin to feel invisible or unimportant.

The third response is turning against the bid. This occurs when a partner responds with irritation, criticism, or defensiveness. For example, one spouse might try to share something lighthearted, only to receive a sarcastic comment or a frustrated reaction. Moments like these can feel especially painful because the person making the bid was reaching out for connection and instead encountered rejection. When this pattern repeats over time, it can create a deep sense of emotional distance.

In Gottman’s research, one of the most fascinating findings is that thriving couples tend to turn toward each other’s bids for connection far more often than struggling couples do. The difference isn’t perfection. Even healthy couples miss bids sometimes. The difference is that they consistently respond with warmth and attention, often enough to maintain emotional closeness.

In therapy, many couples are surprised to realize how these patterns show up in their daily lives. Often, the issue isn’t a lack of love or commitment. More often, it’s that the rhythm of life has slowly crowded out the small moments where connection used to happen naturally.

I remember working with one couple who described feeling like roommates rather than partners. They weren’t having explosive arguments or major crises. Instead, they described a quiet drift that had developed over the years. One evening, the wife shared a small example that captured the dynamic perfectly. She said that she had tried to tell her husband about something funny that happened at work earlier in the day. He responded with a distracted nod while finishing an email on his laptop. The moment passed, and the conversation never continued.

From his perspective, nothing significant had happened. He was simply finishing something urgent before shutting down his computer for the night. But from her perspective, the moment felt like another example of not being seen or heard. She wasn’t looking for a long conversation or a dramatic response. She simply wanted a few seconds of attention, just enough to share something from her day.

When couples begin to recognize these small moments, it often leads to powerful realizations. Many people start to see that emotional distance didn’t appear overnight. Instead, it developed gradually through hundreds of tiny missed opportunities for connection.

The encouraging part of this realization is that the same small moments that slowly erode connection can also rebuild it. When couples begin to notice these everyday bids and respond to them intentionally, something powerful begins to happen. The emotional atmosphere of the relationship starts to shift. Conversations feel lighter, and laughter returns more easily. Partners begin to feel like they are on the same team again.

Sometimes this looks incredibly simple. One partner pauses what they’re doing for thirty seconds to listen to a story about work. Someone laughs at a silly video instead of dismissing it. A spouse looks up from their phone and says, “Tell me more about that.” These small responses communicate attentiveness and care in ways that grand gestures never could. They create a rhythm of connection that quietly strengthens the relationship day by day.

I sometimes joke with couples that the most important moment in their marriage might not be their anniversary dinner or a romantic vacation. It might be the moment their spouse says, “You’ve got to see this dog wearing sunglasses,” and the other person chooses to look. That small decision to turn toward one another may seem trivial, but over time, those choices build a powerful foundation of emotional closeness.

To be honest, I’ve experienced this in my own marriage as well. There have been plenty of evenings when I’m sitting on the couch half-watching something on TV while also scrolling through my phone, convinced that I am somehow accomplishing three things at once. My wife will start telling me a story about something that happened during her day, and if I’m not careful, my response might be a distracted “mm-hmm” without ever actually looking up.

At some point, she’ll pause and say something like, “Did you hear anything I just said?” which is usually my cue that I have failed the small moment test. The truth is, in those situations, she wasn’t asking for a long conversation or a detailed analysis of the situation. She was simply inviting me into a moment of connection. The difference between looking up and engaging versus staying glued to my phone only takes a few seconds, but those few seconds matter more than I sometimes realize.

Marriage is rarely built in dramatic moments. Instead, it grows through thousands of quiet decisions to notice, respond, and engage with one another in everyday life. The small moments may not feel significant when they happen, but they are the threads that slowly weave a relationship together.

At the end of the day, most people don’t need a perfect marriage. They simply need to know that their partner sees them, hears them, and is willing to turn toward them in the ordinary moments of life. When that happens consistently, even the smallest interactions can become the strongest glue holding a marriage together.

And perhaps that’s the encouraging truth for couples who feel distant right now. Rebuilding connection doesn’t always require a grand reset or a dramatic change. Sometimes it simply begins with noticing the next small moment when your partner reaches toward you, and choosing to reach back.

If you’d like to learn more about turning towards or strengthening your relationship, you can make an appointment with Ross at this link.