Lesson 38
As your relationship blossoms and matures, being emotionally available will make you even more desirable to the man in your life. Said another way, making yourself emotionally available to your man by responding positively to his attempts to connect with you will make you immensely more attractive to him on a deep, emotional level. Whether a guy is falling in love or already in love with you, being receptive to him when he appeals for your attention, affection, solidarity, or support is an incredibly easy way to increase his emotional attachment to you.
World-renowned for his work on marital stability and divorce prediction, Dr. John Gottman, author of the book, The Relationship Cure: A 5 Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships, calls these appeals for emotional connection “bids”. In one of his research experiments, Gottman studied a group of newlyweds and followed up with them six years later to see how the couples were doing. Naturally, some of the couples had divorced while others had remained happily married. Gottman discovered that one of the strongest factors that separated the couples who divorced from those who didn’t was how often the partners “turned towards” one another when a bid for connection was initiated. These illuminating findings revealed that those who remained married past the six-year marker had the habit of “turning towards” their partner’s bid for connection eighty-six percent of the time on average, while those couples whose relationship ended in divorce only turned towards their partner thirty-three percent of the time.
What makes this information so remarkable is how easily a relationship can be radically improved and made better by simply responding positively to your partner when they attempt to emotionally connect with you via bids for your attention. What seems to be the tricky part of this process is consistently recognizing a bid when it is made. Depending on the guy in question, the appeals he makes for your attention could either be super obvious or super easy to miss.
His bid could be as noticeable as a request for your help, a random kiss and cuddle, him sharing a joke or a meme he found online, or a suggestion to hang out and do something with him. On the other hand, his bid for connection might be a lot more subtle, such as a complaint about his work (he needs someone encouraging to vent to), a flirty compliment (he wants you to flirt back or engage in some playful banter), a comment about an ache in his shoulder or being hungry (he wants you to meet a physical need without having to ask for it), or a probing question about that romance novel you can’t seem to put down (he’s lonely and wants your attention).
Things can get even more tricky depending on a man’s general way of communicating and how sensitive he is about being emotionally rejected. In other words, the more averse your guy is to being emotionally rejected (maybe due to past experiences being turned away or ignored by you, parents, friends, ex-girlfriends, etc.) the more subtle or downright sneaky his bids for emotional connection might appear.
This is why paying special attention to your man and being particularly mindful of the way he habitually seeks out love and connection is so important. The more you get to know him via conversation and observing how he interacts with you AND other people, the easier it will be to recognize his unique ways of seeking connection. This will allow you to position yourself as the one woman who genuinely understands him and receives him enthusiastically, thus strengthening his emotional attraction to you whenever you accept his bid to connect.
Of course, you won’t always be in a position to completely “turn towards” your guy, no matter how much you might want to. This is especially true in those moments where his bid for connection requires your FULL attention. In situations when your guy is trying to get your full attention, if you find yourself unable to focus on him, simply tell him. Instead of giving him a half-hearted, half-interested response, sweetly tell him that while you’d love to connect with him, you’re a bit distracted or busy at the moment. This is a much better approach than trying to hear what he has to say while your mind is focused on some other task or future task.
For example, let’s say he turns toward you to converse about something important or interesting to him (and only to him). Instead of just ignoring him or trying to listen to him while you’re doing whatever you’re doing, toss a sweet smile and simply say to him: “Hey sweetie, I’d love to hear what you have to say, but I’m really distracted/trying to finish this at the moment. Give me a few minutes and I promise you can have me all to yourself. Okay?”
Another example. Let’s say he simply wants to go and do something fun with you, like an impromptu date or something. If you can’t make that happen at the moment, toss him that sweet smile he loves and say: “Wow, that sounds fun. But I really can’t at the moment. I’ll be too distracted if I don’t _______ first. Maybe we can do something fun later?”
I’ll admit that, realistically, you won’t always be able to do this, as the logistics of day-to-day life will often get in the way of our attempts to sustain and deepen emotional intimacy with our loved ones. That’s life. With that said, your guy will take notice of those special moments when you take the time to stop whatever you’re doing to give him your full attention. Even the act of telling him that you want to give him your full attention as soon as you’re done with whatever you’re doing will earn you a ton of love points in his book. He’ll feel that you’re enthusiastic about being with him, even if you can’t at that very moment. Just remember to follow through and check back with him once you’re done with whatever you were doing.
Now, I know you’ve probably been told that you shouldn’t make yourself too available to a guy during the early dating stages. There is a lot of truth in this, but it requires some explaining. When relationship authors and dating coaches discuss the idea of being too available, this is simply another way of saying that a woman is unknowingly making herself appear desperate for attention. This is when a woman doesn’t have a life of her own, and therefore has nothing better to do than wait around for a guy to reach out to her.
In this context, being too available simply means you’ve put yourself in a position where you might become clingy or desperate because you have nothing else interesting going on in your life (if you have a life at all). During those first few weeks of dating, the practice of not being too available is an excellent way to ensure that men will pursue you and not take you for granted. However, if the guy in question makes a legitimate effort to get your time and attention, your best bet is to become more receptive to his efforts by making yourself available for him when possible.
While it’s usually in a woman’s best interest not to make herself too available to a guy during the early dating stages, this approach should change as the relationship develops. Look at it this way, as long as a guy makes a genuine effort to spend time with you, you must mirror his emotional investment by making time for him. But as I’ve explained throughout this lesson, if you can’t make time for him, simply rebuff him gracefully and flirtatiously tell him when you will be available. Try this out with the man in your life and see how he responds. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to make him feel received and more connected to you, even if you cannot fully “turn toward” him in the moment.