Valentine’s Day Relationship Skill: Turning Towards

A gentle note:

Couple’s skills are meant to support healthy connection. If something in your relationship feels confusing, belittling, or unsafe, it can be helpful to first read Is Verbal Abuse Really Abuse? before practicing communication tools.

Each Valentine’s Day, I write about one relationship skill that helps protect long-term connection.

This song captures the regret that can follow repeated moments of turning away, offering a contrast to the relationship skill of turning toward explored below.

When I Was Your Man

by Bruno Mars

Turning Away From Your Partner

When you hear this song, how do you feel? I feel sad and empty, it's certainly a sad song.

How do you feel?

Do you feel vaguely annoyed, like the partner is too demanding? Just notice your impulse...

Do you wonder why he didn't dance with his baby when he had the chance?

I wonder what else was important to him and why he would ignore his partner's bids for emotional connection? She liked to dance and asked him to go with her and was it that he just didn't like dancing?

He also mentions that he didn't hold her hand enough. Holding hands is a very simple way to feel connected...to tirn towards your partner and is one of the repeated, small gestures that enhance emotional connection. She wanted more emotional connection. It doesn't seem he was not that interested...It sounds like he was just too distracted, too busy. Relationships need attention to thrive.

Do you think he was he turning away from her or towards her?

Do you feel like she is asking too much?

Couples Skill: Turning Towards Your Partner

"Turning towards" your partner is a very simple skill that you can learn right now and is a significant way to strengthen your relationship. "Turning towards" is a relationship skill identified by John Gottman, Ph.D., whose research consisted of the study of literally thousands of couples over long periods of time, years, in fact.

Turning toward one another is a powerful and well-studied relationship skill. Research by Dr. Gottman found that couples in healthy, lasting relationships turn toward each other’s bids for connection about 86% of the time, while distressed couples—many of whom later divorce—do so only 33% of the time. Over time, these small moments of response or non-response quietly shape the emotional climate of a relationship.

The important thing to know is that these skills can be learned. If you grew up in a home where family members stayed to themselves—retreating to separate rooms, separate screens, or separate worlds—you may not have seen turning toward modeled very often. In homes that felt emotionally lonely, bids for connection were often missed or ignored, and eventually people stopped reaching out altogether. Learning to turn toward is not about personality or effortlessness; it’s about developing awareness and practicing new ways of responding.

Signs Your Partner is Asking For Emotional Connection

"Let's go for a walk."

"How was work?"

"Want to hear something funny?"

"Do you want to go with me?"

"Can you take just one day off ..it's been months! ...and we go for a hike?"

"How about we get away, just for the weekend, just the two of us?"

"I feel overwhelmed at work...."

Ask yourself how you are in your daily relationship...do you tune your partner out? Or do you make an effort to have fun, to tease, to laugh, to cook together, to listen? Notice how you feel when your partner makes a bid for closeness, or when you make a bid for closeness.

Raise your awareness and become conscious about making bids for emotional connection.

You and partner can explicitly say, "I'm making a bid for connection here!"

Read about other Valentine's Day Skills

When conversations slow down and partners take turns speaking, the nervous system has a chance to settle, making real listening possible.

Both Sides Now

Foundational couples skills help partners pause, listen more accurately, and respond without defensiveness when emotions run high.

The Listening Door