The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life

by David Brooks

A well-mannered conversation is shaped by what John Gottman calls the pattern of bids and volleys. Let’s say you are reading the paper at the dining room table and your partner comes up and says, “Look at the beautiful blue jay on the tree outside the window.” That’s a conversational bid. You might look up and exclaim, “Wow, that is beautiful. Thanks for pointing it out.” That’s a “toward bid.” With your remark, you are moving toward your partner. Or you could respond, “I was reading the paper; would you please let me finish?” That would be an “against bid.” Or you could just grunt and ignore the remark or change the subject with a non sequitur. The would be a “turning-away bid.” In marriages that succeed, Gottman has found, the couple experiences five toward bids for every one against or turning-away bid. The people Gottman calls “relationship masters” go out of their way to store up chits in their emotional bank account. “There’s a habit of mind that the masters have, which is this: they are scanning the social environment for things they can appreciate and say thank you for….Disasters are scanning the social environment for partners’ mistakes,” Gottman said in an interview with Emily Esfahani Smith for The Atlantic.