Your Partner Wants Your Attention Nonstop
How To Lovingly Communicate Your Limits
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I got a question recently that I immediately knew I wanted to dive into. The reader wrote:
There’s that concept from The Gottman Institute about bids for connection and how important those are to turn towards and not ignore. Do you have any tips for navigating a relationship with a partner who extends a lot of bids for connection? I feel like every moment we’re together, my husband is constantly bidding for my attention/connection. It starts feeling like an overwhelming stream of information, questions, observations, and opinions, each of which requires an acknowledgment and/or response. Most of the time, I barely have time to process a question or statement before he's moved onto something else. It feels like all I do is listen to and respond to him.
The reason this bothers me is that it feels really unbalanced. He seems to expect me to drop everything and pay attention to him dozens of times per day, regardless of what I'm currently doing, and to be happy about it. This is not something he reciprocates. It's becoming a daily occurrence that I feel more like I'm being talked at rather than talked to. No matter how I've tried to bring this up, he turns it around to being my problem. I feel like no matter how much I attend to his bids for connection, it's never enough, and it becomes his excuse for not attending to mine. He's noticed I'm more disconnected, but we can't really get into it because he sees it as 100% my problem. So it feels more unfair and unbalanced all the time.
I don't want him to feel ignored, but I don't think his requests are reasonable, and that makes me feel like a horrible partner.
I suspect some of you reading will relate to the partner asking the question...and others might relate more to their partner who so enthusiastically wants to share and connect that they might slightly bludgeon their partner with the sheer volume of their words and ideas.
We're going to break this long and nuanced question down and talk about:
- why the language "bids for connection" may be unhelpful in this context,
- how to talk precisely and compassionately about this dynamic,
- ways to compassionately set limits,
- and ways to ask for more air time and balance in the relationship.
Let's get straight to it.