Today we're talking about something so simple yet so powerful: turning into your partner’s bids for connection and communication. You know those moments—when your partner shares a random story, sends you a meme, or even gives you a quick hug in passing? These are all little bids for attention and connection, and responding to them is key. Sometimes we get so caught up in our busy routines that we forget to really acknowledge those moments out loud. But when we do, it strengthens our bond and shows our partner we truly see and value them.

It's all about being kindful and aware. Once we recognize the ways our partner naturally tries to connect, we can respond more effortlessly. Whether it’s a small comment about something happening in the moment or sharing an accomplishment, each time we tune in and respond, we’re building a stronger, more mindful connection. So next time your partner shares something—no matter how small—take a moment to really acknowledge it. Trust me, they'll feel seen, loved, and more connected to you!

About the Host:

Meet Crystal, your relationship and social health coach. Crystal is the founder of Sparked Forever Relationship & Singles coaching. She started her journey supporting the neurodiverse community in navigating this, sometimes frustrating, neurotypical social world. Lessons and inspiration from her earlier work drives Crystal’s passion for bringing couples and singles together through acceptance, understanding and big picture thinking to grow vibrant relationships. Crystal understands that the foundation for our social health and well-being starts with making connections to others. When Crystal is not working with couples, she loves to be out on adventures with her partner and bonus kids or spending time connecting with friends over good food and fun music.

Links:

https://sparkedforever.com/

https://www.instagram.com/sparkedforever/

https://www.instagram.com/sparkitsocial/

https://www.tiktok.com/@sparked_forever

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.

Welcome to our love space today. If you are listening to the episode as it drops, then you are probably enjoying some of the first days of fall, as I am. And you know for some of you out there, this also means getting back to that back to school grind, to that driving kids activity grind, or maybe you're just in that couple space where you're ramping back up your work from the break that you may have taken to soak up some of the summer right, getting that lighter work schedule. And I know I love to do that, but either way, I was just thinking about today how so many of us are kind of in this transition period, and we're really all running around and stressing out to get ourselves settled back into our routines, which is really kind of, you know, funny, if you think about that, we're all running around to get settled in, right? It's kind of opposite thinking, but there you go. That's where we're at with this. So that might also mean that some of that extra time and energy that we had for our partners and for making time to connect more, and even that extra time we had to hang out more as a couple with our friends in the summer, a lot of that might be suddenly less right. Our time for each other might be a little bit more on the back burner to, you know, getting up early for work again, right, so that we can all make that commute, right? It might be on the back burner to all the school drop offs. It might be on the back burner to, you know, getting back to our own hobbies and exercise routines or whatever that we might put a have put on hold for a little bit, you know, to soak up all that wonderful sun and get out there and in activities. I know, if you live kind of in, in my area of the world, it's great to get out for spring and summer, because kind of once, you know, fall and winter get here, it's kind of rainy and wet and soggy, not as great for, uh, getting our fresh air. But, you know, so that change in season, and even these big holiday celebrations that will be coming up for some of us in the next few months, that these are things that can easily derail our sparked relationship habits. So, you know, again, kind of funny to think about the things that we're getting excited for can actually, you know, derail that thing that's so foundational to our well being, right? Which is our our human relationship, especially our human relationship with the love of our lives, right? That's, that's a foundational piece to our health. And we don't want to forget that piece. We want to make sure we keep that piece of foundation in there, right? We don't want it to get derailed. So that's what brought my brain to thinking about that this is a great time to give us all a reminder about tuning up how we're going to turn into each other in these stressful times or in these busy times, they might not even be stressful, they might just be a bit busier, right? To think about all the little instances where we can turn into each other that take just like but a moment, right? Just take a one instance of our time. But these are the small moments. These are those pieces that are going to keep us connected, that are going to keep us sparked. So I know, if you've listened to, you know, a few of my episodes, you know, I've talked before on love quirks about bids, right? And probably there's a lot of information out there on bids. You know, those glassmans down in Seattle, they discovered the idea of bids for connection or communication between couples, or between partners in a couple and and the fact that, you know, and even if you've worked with me too, then you know also about how important bids are. So I want us to, I want us to take bids out of kind of this thing, about being about detail. I'm going to bring it out to this big picture, and then we're going to zoom it back into bit of detail. And hopefully this will give us all, like, just a few things to think about as we move through our week, as we move through September, as we get into our sweater sweater weather. I almost couldn't say that sweater weather, or if that's a big eye roll for you, then don't think about that. Okay, so, yeah. So simply bids are really when someone reaches out to with communication, so with a message, okay, that it's any sort of neutral or even positive. Positive, all the better positive response of one person in the couple acknowledging that the other person has sent a message has communicated has said something to them, and that can actually be enough of a predictor to know what couples are going to stay together long term, what couples are going to report higher rates of happiness and life satisfaction and those things, right? That's our big. Communication picture is just I sent a message and you acknowledged receiving it. That's our big picture of communication. That's the thing we need to keep in mind the other details we you can color in so the other person needs to express to you that they've received the message. So simple, right? Krista, why are you telling us this such a simple thing? Because we all forget to do it. But we all get caught up in everyday things, and then we are forgetting to do it. And now, as always, here you get to choose, as a couple, how you want to fill in that big picture communication detail, right? So, how you like to communicate with each other, right? How you like to send those messages, how you like to receive those messages, right? What words are positive or neutral for you as a couple, what tones set you off or make you annoyed or agitated as a couple or words? Right? Like, I'm a maybe I'm a bit old school, but I hate it when people text back, kk, like, I just feel it's so off putting and so like my man, but drives me crazy. So like me and my partner, we know, and actually, I think he also doesn't appreciate it. So we know from each other that we would never write to we never text back to each other. KK, like, that would just be a no go for us. You know, again, like, what kind of communication and messages are too wordy or not wordy enough. I mean, that's something that always comes up in my relationship. You can probably guess who has too many words and who wants less words. Who likes to give 100 examples of what they mean by their feelings, and who wants to give no examples? I'm sure you can guess the dynamic there Anywho. Those are the details that you get to fill in, that you get to talk about, that you get to share with each other and mold and tweak with each other, right how messages get sent and received, the best way in your relationship. Now, of course, as always, here, you know if you need support, if you need some help tweaking or discovering or finding out or exploring what those details are for you as a couple, what those details are for you and the love of your life, don't worry. We have you covered. You can come and talk to me. We can do some one on one. Work with you, with me, and you guys as a couple, we can do that. And I think I do have actually someone on one spot opening up. So, you know, as always, you can add direct message me, DM me on Instagram at sparked forever, that's where you can find me. Or you can find me on Tiktok at sparked underscore forever, you know, and send me a message if that, if that's you know, something that you want to work on, that you want to explore and get into this fall, right? As we have transformations with the leaves and the the seasons and everything outside, let's tweak and transform your relationship too, right? Why not so fun? I mean, I think it's fun. I love it, but that's just me. So anyway, so that's our big picture. But again, like I said, I was gonna zoom it. It was zoomed out. We reminded ourselves what that big picture of communication is. Okay, now we're gonna zoom it back in. Okay, so that's our big picture. We're gonna look at a few ways that people actually you know how they communicate like this throughout the day, how they put out their bids for connection throughout their day, because if you sort of know some of the more specific ways. And again, this might not fit you guys as a couple. This might not fit you as a person of how you put out your bids to communicate. But, but if you know some of the specific ways that that your your love of life, your partner, might be putting out a bid for communication, okay throughout the day, then you'll be able to tune in. You'll be able to tune in to the fact that they're putting out a bid, and that will allow you to turn in with responding right, with connecting back, with using your kindfulness to show them, to show them that you've received their message. Because if you think about it, if you're not responding, really, it's like leaving them on red. Well, right? Nobody likes to be left on red, right? We don't even like it in a text message. Let's pause and think about this. You're, you're leaving someone on red in real life, if they come, if they're like, you know, if you guys are cooking together in the kitchen or doing whatever you're doing after you've come home from work, and you know you're moving on to the next portion of the evening. We need to make dinner, we need to tidy up, we need to do whatever. And one person makes a bid for connection, for communication, and the other person is just

like they've got their earbuds in or their. Or AirPods, whatever we're calling them, the earplugs in right ink. That's horrible, leaving someone on red, right? In real life, in person, oh my gosh, we don't want to do that. It's hurtful. It's hurtful to be left on red, especially in person, right? It makes you feel like you haven't been heard. It makes you feel like you're not important enough for a response. It makes you feel like they're not paying attention, right, that they don't even care, that they don't even care to say, Aha, cool. Neat, interesting. Oh, right. No one wants to feel like they're not important enough for an O or an Aha. Okay, so, right, we would even, I mean, we would even do this with with strangers at the supermarket, right? Someone's looking for something at the supermarket, they go, Oh my gosh, I can't believe I can't find this thing. We at least go like, Oh, I know, right. We do some kind of response. So if we're gonna do with a stranger, please, please, let's respond to the loves of our life, that's the least we can do, right? Okay, so, again, I know this sounds simple, but sometimes it's the simplest things that are going to make the most impact, right? It's the simplest things that are easy, easiest to put into our new habits and our new patterns and our new routines with each other, right? But what happens, even though it's so simple, what happens is we get so habituated to people, right? We get so used to their constant presence. We get so used to them just being there all the time, that we end up taking them for granted, that we end up forgetting that I might have said an AHA in my brain or a cool in my brain, but it hasn't come out of my mouth yet. Okay, so I know it's crazy, right? So we're not going to leave anyone on red, especially the loves of our lives, not and when they're reaching out to us. Okay, so let's think of some of these details about how our lols might be reaching out to us during the day. So one way that people often do, and I've encouraged you guys to all do this. So hopefully, when you're cooking and tidying in the kitchen and making up some dinner or ordering some takeout and getting your Netflix set up, I don't know what you're doing with your life nowadays, getting ready to go the gym together, not going on your evening walk, that maybe they're going to share a story about their day. Maybe it sounds very similar to every other story about their day. Maybe you have a hard time envisioning what they do at work during their day, and it's as it's difficult to follow along to the story. But again, I know, you know, if we need to start at getting back to the basics on this, we're just going to show that we're listening to them. So that can be with our body posture, that can be our head nods, that could be our eye contact, right? That could be like, if we're chopping something, turning, being like, Hmm, okay, right? All of those things. So we're going to put some unhas in there, some cool, some whatevers, some we could even share with them, right? Like, if you want to go next level, you could even share with them, like, oh, like, I can't picture that. Or I actually, really don't know what that looks like in an office, right? Like, if I have friends, because I don't work in an office, office, right? I'm not like, a corporate girly. So if I have friends that are telling me, like, office things, it's really I have to ask a lot of questions, or I have to tell I, like, stop them and being like, I don't understand, because I don't live that life, right? But that's next level, that shows I'm interested, that shows I'm listening. That shows I have received their message, and I'm interested in knowing more of their message. I'm connecting with them, right? Right again, ask questions, right if you want, especially sometimes too, if you're neuro spicy, this is a little bit maybe for, well, probably for my ASD, Ma, ADHD, peeps out there, if you're a little neuro spicy, sometimes the share back is a cool way to also show you're connecting, to show that you've received that message. Because the share back, what that is, is that means you've heard someone's story, and you're like, Ah, I have a story just like that. And I'm going to share that back to show that they know I connected with their message. They know I've received it. Now, some people get a little put off by this, who maybe don't understand that that's not an overlooking of your message, or like a no, let's talk about me. Now it's actually like, Oh, I get what you're saying, and I can show you that I get what you're saying by you hearing me share my thing that's very similar, and then you'll we'll both know we're on the same page, and I'm sure if you're it. So if you did know that about people, and you're in a neurospicy relationship, and you had no idea, there you go. There's a key fact for you, and you should know that about your partner, that could be something these, these kind of different ways that are. Brains work, or these different ways we communicate and connect, we should be chatting about these with each other so we know, we know that, ah, when that that person shares back with me, that means they really heard me, not. They just want to talk about themselves, right? That's an important thing to know. Okay, another way that someone might put out a bid for connection is commenting on something, usually in an interesting or excited way, but it can also come out in a super boring, mundane way. So these are the comments where someone might say, look at that, or like, wow, or I can't believe we're out of milk, or something like that. Now, I don't know if anyone has this experience. I know I get this experience when I drive with my mom in the car, and she will point out something like, so mundane, like, we'll be driving around. She'll be like, Oh, look, Whole Foods. She won't be like, I didn't know there wasn't a whole foods there. She won't be like, Well, look, a new Whole Foods. I'll just be like, Oh, Whole Foods. Oh London Drugs, oh yeah, these are the stores we have up here. Oh, and before I realized that this was a bid for connection, like, hey, maybe no one said anything in the car. Or, you know, maybe she's just feeling like it's time for some words. And it's like, here's my words. You know, I would get like, so annoyed in my brain and be like, Why are you pointing that out? I know there's a whole foods I have eyeballs I could see, right? But really, if you understand that they aren't trying to annoy you, that they aren't just trying to say something mundane and silly, that they're actually just like, hey, let's connect for a second, then you're going that's going to change your respect, your perspective, right? You're going to respond in a different way. You're going to be like, Oh yeah, do you know I went in there the other day? Or you might be like, Oh hey, when I was grocery shopping the other day. I don't know what you could say. You could also just say like, Uh huh, yep, right. Anything to show that you've received that message, right? That's going to improve that overall. Just that small instance. Instead of being like, Oh, look, there's a whole foods. Girl, annoyed that you said something, I'll be like, Look, there's a whole foods. Oh, cool. You know, we love each other, right? You're gonna have that kind of more, I guess, experience with that small, small moment, right? What a difference that that, that that perspective change can make in that small moment. Wow, that always just, it's, you know, gives me shivers sometimes, or goosebumps, not shivers. Goosebumps show us what they can wait, okay, um, the next one is sharing accomplishments, right? So this is kind of like the adult show and tell. When you come home and your partner's like, oh, look what I did. Or like, look at this thing, or look at that thing. Or like, oh, I made this today. Or here's my craft thing, or whatnot. Or I'd like to make this. So this is definitely, you know, this may have a little bit if you know, if you've gone and done the languages of love quiz that I recommend, I can't remember what episode that is, but language of love quiz is great. It's very basic, but it gives you an idea of how you are expressing and receiving love with each other and affection. And so when people like to do the sharing accomplishments, like I said, that has, like, maybe a little bit of words of affirmation tied into it. But hey, this is the love of your life. Affirm away. Don't hold back if they go, Hey, look at this thing I made today. Look at this cupboard I cleaned today. Affirm it be like, Wow, that's super cool. Or you're always so organized, or, I don't know, just cool, interesting, neat. Good for you. Whatever you however, you can show that you are receiving that message from them. Another one is, oh, this is something that we are probably all doing nowadays, more and more and more, and actually avoiding real, not avoiding real conversations, but kind of like an easy go to is that we like to send each other, right? We like to text each other memes, tiktoks, hosts, links, things like that. To be like, Oh my gosh, right. Like me and my bestie, we love to send each other adorable animal things like, especially, we're on, like, the otter side of Tiktok a lot, but we're just sending otters back and forth. That's kind of funny, because maybe we could just call each other and have a chat, but, you know, that's a reach out for connection. Like, hey, this made me think of you, and now I'm showing you that I thought of you. And you know what we're going to do, that we're going to be kindful, and we're going to show them that we received their bid for connection, and that we acknowledge they thought about us and we're thinking about them back. How easy is that? Just respond whether you like it, don't like it,

respond, respond in a neutral, positive, lovely way. Thanks for thinking about me. Right? You can, even if you're doing this with you know, the love of your life. Um. You can even chat about that. You know, that Tiktok, that Instagram reel, that whatever, that link post, whatever you got going on at dinner that night, just because you texted back during the day doesn't mean you can't reopen, that it's okay if you've already texted about it. No, no, you might be like, Ah, well, we've already talked about it. Do you know what? But now it's an in person chat over dinner. You can just reiterate like that was so funny, that one you sent me, maybe I'll open up another line of conversation. Who knows? No, right? I've got a non verbal one for you now, so like a no talky one. That's if someone right, if your partner comes up and they make some sort of physical connection with you, right? So that could be as simple as a touch on the shoulder, as coming in for a hug, as putting their hand on your back when they're walking by you, right? Anything like that, to moving the air away from your face, I don't know, right? And then to this, you can respond with a word, right? You can respond with a physical connection back, something to show like, Hey, you reached out and connected with me physically. I have received that. I've noticed it right. Part of the part of this is just being like, Hey, I've noticed. I've noticed you, don't we all want to be noticed in our life 100% right? Acknowledge their physical connection with another physical connection and some words. You know, it's like when I went, I went to a concert the other day, and sometimes I turned to the person next to me, because everyone was being so quiet, and I was like, Well, you gotta Woo. You gotta Woo to show the bad you like it. If you're not wooing, they won't know, right? If we're all just kind of politely clapping, they don't know how excited we are. They're gonna think we're just politely enjoying it. If you want to show that you're really rocking out on the inside, you might have to woo a bit on the outside. Whoo, right. Okay, so no one can read your mind. Don't, right? We can't expect anyone to read our mind, even the love of our life. Don't make them read your mind, you know, show them with that you like it. Show them that you have noticed them all right? And my last little one. This is one that's a little bit more neuro spicy, but it's a favorite one of mine is people talking about their interest or a common interest, or telling you a fun fact, right? This is especially a narrow, spicy one where people love to share a fun fact. I love a good fun fact. If I've learned a fun fact in a day, probably everyone I run into for the next week is hearing my fun fact. If you bring up a topic that I have a fun fact for, you're probably going to hear my fun fact. So there you go. And I even saw my son was like, Oh, I have a fun fact. So there you go. So if someone shares a fun fact with you, that is a sign that they're reaching out to connect. That is a sign that they are interested in, you know, having affection from you. That they're interested in knowing that you have noticed them. They're interested in knowing that they're connected to you. Don't leave them on red. Don't leave them on red. On red, so I am sure there are other ways now too that are popping into your head where you're like, Ah, maybe we don't really do that, but this is how my partner reaches out. This is how my partner tries to connect with me. These are the kind of things that they say. These are the kind of comments that they make, or the stories they like to tell, or, you know, the physical things that they do when they walk by me, right? Some you're probably starting to to think of some of these ways, right, and when you can recognize that these are bids for actual connection, and not just simply conversations or observations, or, you know, them wanting to use up their words for the day, that you realize that these are, you know, really ways for people to connect with each other, right, that The love of your life is really trying to connect with you, and now that you're recognizing it, you're not going to leave them on red. Now that you're like, Oh, they're not saying that just to make noise, they're saying that to connect, you're going you're going to change your perspective on it. You're going to be able to be more kindful to them. You are going to respond to them. It's going to become more natural, right? You are going to show them that you have received their message that you have received. Their connection, that you have received their love, and you're going to stay sparked.