The Moments That Matter

Has someone ever pulled away from you and you genuinely didn't know why? A friendship that got quiet. A family member who keeps their distance. A relationship that used to be easy and now feels like work - and you can't put your finger on what changed. Here's the uncomfortable truth: most of us are doing things right now, in the relationships that matter most to us, that are slowly costing us those very relationships. And we don't even know we're doing it.

This Sunday we're going to get specific - not just about what's going wrong, but about the exact moments where connection is either built or quietly destroyed. There's a researcher name John Gottman who figured out how to predict, with 94% accuracy, which relationships are heading toward collapse, and which ones will thrive. Turns out it comes down to something that happens dozens of times a day in every relationship you have.

Come find out what it is — and whether you're doing it.

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Transcript

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We started a new series last week. It's a series. Yeah, it's a series. Um I started off by I guess trying to scare you straight or scare us straight. Is that a thing? I talked about this idea that says when we're in relationship with other humans and we're unskillful, we're toxic, we're something. That thing goes into the long-term memory of the people in our lives. I told a story about how one time years ago, I don't even remember what happened. I wanted to get something, I wanted Jeff to buy into something. And so I said, hey, we're gonna do this. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And then we'll do this. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we'll do this. Okay, yeah, yeah. Okay, we'll do this. Then a couple weeks later, he was like, Hey, why are we doing that? I was like, Oh. I snuck that underneath those things and got you to say yes to it almost by proxy. From that day on. Let's do this. Can you buy into this? I get this. That's what happens when you do something. I'll be charitable, unskillful. It gets stuck in somebody's long-term memory, and now their memory basically watches you against that thing and just keeps checking. Is it close to that thing? Part of your brain is called a primitive, it just keeps looking. Yep, wait, that's like that. Danger, stop. That was Jeff doing this. If you have a relationship in your life where there's no fly zones, you know, the topics you don't talk about, the things you pretend didn't happen, chances are that's a long-term memory, something stuck in there, and their brain's constantly checking against that, going, wait a second, we're close to that thing that hurt me. You hurt me. I said, if you were doing unskillful things in your life right now, you're sending the problems of your life to the future. You can you throw up the picture for me when you have a second? This is the part of me who most of my problems get taken care of by that guy, or at least get sent to that guy. He doesn't like me very much. Because by the time the stuff gets to him, he's looking at me going, You idiot, why didn't you just do it right the first time instead of sending it to me and making me deal with it? But somehow we think that future us, and we all have a future us, goes to the gym more than we do, eats healthier than we do, is more skillful in relationships than we do, is better with money than we are. He'll take care of it. I said in this series. Let's behave in a way that future us and future people around us say thank you. Thank you for being skillful. Thank you for taking care of things in a way that doesn't get stuck in long-term memory and then comes back and haunts us for 15 years. Me and Jeff fought about that one for 15 years. Everything was harder. Because I was unskillful. Future Vince was like, seriously, if we have to fight over this one more time, I swear I'm gonna cry. And yet, in moments of frustration, in moments of being triggered, in moments of anger, in moments of people pleasing, you can feel that. I'll just send it to future me. They can deal with it. I heard a story about someone just the other day. Long-term friend comes to them, says, uh, we're done. Like 30-year friendship. Walked up to the person and was like, we're done. We're not friends anymore. And you're like, What do you mean? I've known you for 30 years. There's like you don't just you can't just end that. The friend was like, no, we are done. Future me looks at you, and all I see is wounding, taking advantage of me, treating me like crap. And suddenly we realize there's a moment, there's there's part of it that sends us to future us, but future us also has that moment where relationships start to fail. Someone walks up to you and says, I don't want to be connected to you anymore. I heard um more often than you'd want to know. Parents saying, My kid no longer talks to me. There's now a saying, it's a classification. They go, no contact. The relationship has been damaged or unskillful for so long that now the kids are just going, even though you're my parent, I'm not talking to you anymore. As a parent, think about that for a moment. Not only do they not come to family gatherings, they won't even answer your text to say I'm okay. Why? Because of stuff that happened years ago. And now we're paying for it. It's sobering this stuff, isn't it? The amount of relationship damage that I see looking at my wife kind of out of the side of my eye, like the amount of unskillful things we've done, I have done in relationships and then spent years paying the price for. Last week was a punch in the gut. It's the like scare you straight. Like, if we don't fix this, we will lose relationships over this. We will lose connection with the people that we value and that we love over this. This week is the how do we make sure we don't do that? That was the like bad cop, this is the good cop. This is the how do we do this skillfully? And the way we're gonna learn to do this skillfully is to make you conscious of what you're doing that's not skillful. My friend whose 30-year friend came up to them and said, we're done, didn't even see it coming. How much of this stuff are we actually unconscious of? We're doing when we don't realize what we're doing. We just catch the blow up, we catch the fight, we catch the broken relationship, we catch the loneliness. At the end of this message, you will not be able to use unconsciousness anymore. I didn't know. You can use the ah crap. I screwed that one up again. That you'll have. But we won't be able to be unconscious of this anymore. To do that, we're gonna have to do a little bit of work. There's a couple, the Gottmans. Anyone heard of the Gottmans, Baby Ann? Great couple. They actually, many years ago, I don't even know if 70s, 80s, does anybody know when the love lab was first started? 70s, 80s, give or take 20 years somewhere in there. The other day. The other day they built uh a lab. So what they did is they at the University of Washington, they built a little looks like a hotel room with like a living room, kitchen, uh, bedroom, and they brought couples in. What they were trying to figure out is why do some couples stay together and why do some couples break up? Why do some relationships work and why do some didn't? We didn't know at this time how it worked. In fact, the the prevalent thought of the day was when you reveal a lot of intimate details of your life, it creates connection in marriages. Don't worry, I'm not just gonna stay in marriage. This translates into all relationships. But I need to show it to you this way first. And so what they did is they put cameras, it wasn't that creepy, in all the rooms but the bedroom, and they put on microphones with people, and for uh, let's see, everything but nine hours. They were allowed nine hours of mics off. They had sensors on them so they could tell if their heart rate got elevated. Again, what they're trying to figure out is when was the relationship working and when was it not? And so him and his research cohort sat there on video cameras watching these couples, and they were waiting for these moments of like, you know, what I was for this traumatic thing happened to me, and you know, I've always wanted this, and I've never been willing to share. That's what they were looking for. You know what they got? Pass assault. Did you see that cat video? What do you think about this news article? Sup. He has spent tens of thousands of dollars, he's risked his professional reputation, and he's watching couples watch cat videos together, and he's thinking to himself, I just wasted a whole lot of my life. Like I'm getting fired, my grants are getting pulled, this is the end of my career. This is done. Until he realized something so important that it's like he couldn't see, it was so obvious. The core idea of what creates connection and relationships isn't the deep sharing of things. It was actually the hey, have you seen this cat video? Hey, can you pass the salt? Whew. It's raining out there, isn't it? Yeah. What do you realize is there's a core thing that we all do called bidding. That is a bid right there. We'll talk about that in a second. And actually, mom's handling it very well. We'll talk about that in a second, too. When we're very, very little, we know how to do this. A bid is the core piece of how we create connection with another human. It's reaching out and saying, hey, hey, hey, hey, can I have your attention for a second? Now, when they started to see that, they realized there was bids everywhere. It was happening nonstop. The couples were bidding tens, hundreds of times per day. Little things. Did you like the soup? Not my favorite. Wouldn't order it at a restaurant. Yeah, I thought it was a bit salty. And then what they realized, they started to see the bids. Then they realized there's always, and again, this is couples, there's a bid, and then there's a response to the bid. And it's how we respond to a bid that will make or break our relationships. Let me say this again, because this matters. How you respond to the bid is what makes or breaks the relationship. Again, they got nerdy, so what they did is they started the catalog. They created three categories. They called it turning towards a bid, turning against a bid, or turning away from a bid. Y'all are gonna have an opportunity to experience this in real life in a few minutes. But before we go there, I want to just say one more thing. The Gottmans, after years, maybe decades of this work, got so skillful that they could sit down a couple in front of them, watch them interact for an hour, and tell you if they were going to be together in four years or not, with a 94% accuracy rate. Think about that for a second. They could watch a couple interact when they were together. They're like, hey, we're fine. We might be having a little bit of trouble, it's whatever. But they could watch that couple, and the Gotmans would be able to say, in four years, you're gonna be divorced. That's a bit freaky, isn't it? I don't think I would invite them to a dinner party. Don't look at me, you're judging me. Meanwhile, they're looking at each other going like they could look at you and watch how you responded. This bidding and responsibility, there's a few other things, but it this is the core of it. And say, in four years, even though you say you're in love, you say you want to be married, you say you want this relationship to work, they're like, nope, in four years you'll be done. If you get this wrong, if you choose to stay unconscious and do this wrong, you and your kids, you and your parents, you and your friends, the Gottmunds will look at you and say, in four years you will not be connected anymore. That's bloody sobering. When I first read that, I thought, that can't be. Then I read the really thick book called The Science of Trust, and I was like, they did the math. Could it be that we are currently behaving in a way that's destroying the relationships that we value? But we don't know it yet. That relationship is like the walking dead, and we don't know. Ouch! That sucks, doesn't it? Well, no, it's that's not sucks. It's scary. That's the word I want. It's scary. Could it be I'm doing the things that are gonna destroy my relationship today, and I don't even know I'm doing it. Before I learned this stuff, I was doing it wrong. That I can tell you for sure. I can go back into my life and go, yep, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. I didn't even know it was wrong. I didn't even know it was right. So today I'm gonna give you the opportunity to learn. Here's what I'm gonna do. We're gonna do this live together. Is anyone up for a live together? So I'm not sure I'm up for live together. So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna have Nathaniel. Nathaniel's back there, he's on multimedia. Give us a little wave, Nathaniel. He's gonna run the show back there. He's gonna throw up two lines on the screen. The first one's gonna be context. The second is gonna be the line. I'm gonna respond to the line in real time. Their second line that they're gonna say is the bid. I'm gonna respond to the bid. First, I'm gonna show you the different responses you can do, and then we're gonna start doing it live together where we're gonna, I'm just gonna like go to town and you all are gonna figure out am I turning towards the bid? Turning against the bid, turning away from the bid? What am I doing? So if you're up for it, I want someone to come to the mic and I'm gonna get you to read. There's a bunch of people, so just every time I'm gonna get a new person to the mic. If someone someone's willing to talk to the mic, please, please. Don't less. Thank you. Thank you, Les. Okay, so can you put the first line with context? And that's it. Feel free to go as creative as you want. If you want to act this thing out and get into character, feel free. Daddy, watch me. What are you doing, buddy? Let me see it. That looks awesome. See, this is called turning towards the bid. Do you notice what I did? I instantly went to he's like, Watch me. I was like, Yeah, yeah. The bid is daddy, watch me. The turn towards is what are you doing, buddy? Show me. There's actually a story in the Bible, a guy named Zacchaeus. Just stay there for a second, okay? Guy named Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus is a short guy. That's not really the punchline of the story. He is also short, but it that helps us get to the next part of the story. He's actually hated by everybody. He's a tax collector, which is um code for he's of the same culture, but he's working for the bad guys to screw over his own people. So whenever you read in the Bible, tax collector, just think everybody hates that person. So Zacchaeus, the tax collector, who everyone hates, is hears that Jesus is coming to town. So what does he do? He climbs a tree to be able to see Jesus. Jesus walks around the corner in the town. He sees Zacchaeus. The bid. Is Zacchaeus in the tree going? And Jesus turns to him and says, Hey, I'm coming to your house tonight. Changes Zacchaeus' life. Can you feel turning towards the bid? Okay. So let's do it again. Just one second, let me get into character. Hold on a second. Okay. Let's go. Uh there we go. Context parent to young child. Parent to young child. Yeah, that you're oh, okay, okay. Okay. No, same one. All right. Same one. Hey, Daddy, watch me. Oh, seriously, kid. Do you know how busy I am right now? Do you know how much I have going on? You suck, daddy. Turning against the bid. How many times does someone bid at the wrong time, the wrong tone of voice, the wrong way, the wrong something? And we're like, huh, what are you thinking? Uh, remember, I told you a story about uh Joseph a couple weeks ago. I said Joseph in the Tex Color Dream Coat, he's wearing the multicolored coat. I actually think a better translation is he's wearing a girly dress. I think he's wearing something that culturally wasn't common for a man to wear. It's my reading. I think it's well attested in the text. But think about it from this point of view. He comes to his brothers wearing the outfit that makes him feel fully himself. Is that not a bid? When your kids show up in your room and they're wearing whatever they want, even though you're thinking it's inappropriate and you want to go, like, go into your room and change, which is again against the bid. Joseph shows up in what makes him feel truly himself. And his brothers sell him to slavery. Talk about turning against a bid. Anyone ever turned against a bid? Don't put up your hand. I can see your faces. You're all like, shh. You know, when the Gottman studied this stuff, turning towards obviously built the relationship. Turning against damaged it, but it wasn't the most damaging relationship thing to do. Can we try it once more? Daddy, watch me. The cat's in the cradle, Daddy. It's called turning away from the bed. Can you feel the first moment when he said, Daddy, watch me, and I turned my back on him? There's this feeling of like. And then also you kind of feel that sick feeling in your throat where it's like, oh, that doesn't feel good, does it? Thanks, Les. Let's give Russ Les a big round applause. We're not done. We have a few more. So if any of you are okay talking on the mic, just like get your inner child ready and let's we're gonna do this. Let me tell you a quick story. Uh, there's two uh sisters, Martha and uh Mary. They're having a dinner party, they invite Jesus over. We actually don't hear the first bid, we hear the reaction to the bid. It seems that the bid first started with Martha saying to Mary, her sister, Can you give me a little help here? Or like hosting a dinner party. And Mary blows her off. Turns away from the bid. And just sits there. Ignoring her. The Gotmans found the turning away from the bid is the one that destroys relationships most reliably, most often, and most quickly. We don't see the bid. We don't want to deal with the bid. They've bid too often, and now we're sick of it. Sobering, isn't it? How many times have you been in the middle of something and you realize someone is trying to get our attention, trying to make that bid, and your first reaction is to just ignore it? I'm working. I got stuff to do. Okay. You guys now know turn towards the bid. You know, turn against the bid. And you know, turn away from the bid. Here's what we're going to do now. I'm going to have people. Can someone else someone else volunteer? Come on up. Come on up, Sean. Bryce, I'll have you happen next. Give me one second. I'm just going to get set up here. Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to get them to read the context line. Then they're going to read the the bid. I'm going to respond. And then you guys are going to vote. What response? What was my response to the bid? Was it turning away, turning against, turning towards? Make sense? Audience participation. Okay, Sean. Let's what's what we got here? Context spouses morning routine. This coffee is so good this morning. You know, it was really much better last week. But like, seriously, when you make coffee, can you partly use the other beans? Because these beans, like, they're just not, I think they're stale or something like that. Even Sean's face is like, I don't feel very good. Can you do one more for me? Okay. Context. Partners at a party telling some friends a story. Last week, Tuesday, we were driving downtown. It was Wednesday. What? We didn't go on Tuesday. It was Wednesday. I tell you every time it's Wednesday. It's not Tuesday. Isn't that one horrible? Sorry, buddy. Thank you. You're good. You're good. You can go sit down. How many? How many people have corrected somebody's detail of a story that they're telling? Just put up your hand to be honest. Isn't that brutal? And yet there's something so deep inside of us that's like, I can't not correct this. If you're on the stand in a courtroom and you've been sworn in, feel free to correct the person if they've made a mistake. If it's a bid, sweet Jesus, please, Vince, do not correct the details. It's not about the details. Can you see what it felt like for Sean? Can you see what it felt like when I turned against him? It's brutal, isn't it? And yet in our minds we're going, no, no, no, no, no, I'm just fixing it. Just got the detail wrong. Okay, let's try another one. Can I get some uh sorry, uh Bryce, do you want to come up? Okay, what do we got? Throw it up, Miss Annuel. Context, adult child-to-parent phone call. I've just been really tired lately. Oh, really? What's been going on for you, man? My horses got out. Really? Yeah. Were they? Were they like they you they got out of the pen? My yard, I live in suburbia and I wasn't supposed to have them. Oh my goodness. That's brutal. Did the bylaw guys come? Can you feel the difference though? Like, again, I went a little deeper into it with a little curiosity, but even that, like, oh should probably be curious if a man in suburbia's horses got out. I was like, I love that you came up with that off the cuff. But there's a side of you, even if he says, like, I've had a rough day, if you just go like this, oh like, oh, that's brutal. I'm sorry, man. Can you feel the difference? Okay, can we do you one more? Mm-hmm. Okay. Friends, text message, GIF of Garfield, ugh, Mondays. You can't make me laugh. Or texting. You can do whatever you want behind the phone. Here's my text back. You think you have a rough Monday. Have you heard of my Monday? Which one? Away? Feels like those are friends, aren't they? Is there anything good in those two responses? No. What's a better response? Yell it out. Sorry, I'm not gonna have to do it. Tell me about it. Does it start having a hard meeting? Yeah. You can even just be like, oh, sorry. That's brutal. Or even just be like, yeah, I think you have. Gif of Garfield running out of lasagna. Okay, thanks, Bryce. Anyone else willing to try? Come on. Come on, try it. Chantel, come on out. You guys are all like, there, no one told me I had to talk in church. There's like a rule at Friend Church. I do not have to talk. Okay, Chantel, here we go. Can you throw up the next one for me, Nathaniel? Context. Partners driving in the car. Look at that. The mountains are so clear today. Okay, somebody throw out a turn against bid. They're not that tall. What mountains? There we go. Another one. What else we got? Can't see them. It's gonna rain. We were on a trip in Ireland. I was driving on the wrong side of the road, and Ellie's like, look over there. I'm like, I got a driver when to die. I feel like that's a fair one, though, right? Like, we literally were gonna die. Okay, hit me up. Go back to it again. Go back to it again. Uh, look at the mountain. The mountains are clear today. Can say it all loud for us. Look at that. The mountains are so clear today. Turn towards what's a bid? How would you turn towards that bid? Beautiful. Snow cap. Snow capped. I love when you love mountains. I love. Oh, that was gonna be mine. You know what? Turning towards somebody, even if you don't know, like if what they're into, you don't even understand. Just connecting to their excitement. I love that you get that excited. My wife is a florist. She gets more excited about flowers than any other human I've ever met. Some days I just can't get that excited about flowers, but experiencing her get that excited about flowers. I love that you get that excited about something. Beautiful. Okay, thanks, Chantel. Oh no, we got one more. I only did one with you, right? Yeah. Okay, one more. One more. Context. Teenager to parent after school. My teacher said something kind of weird today. Okay, so this is written by somebody who only has 30-year-old stepchildren. Has has more like my teacher said something kind of weird today. Okay. Sorry about that. Take it one more step further. Take it, Emily, one more step further. Does your kid ever say that? Or did they just use something like, uh? They might do that because they'd be like angry at it or irritated or disgusted at their teacher. Okay. So can we try it again with your inner disgust, Allah Emily? My teacher said something so weird today. Now let's just say this. This kid has been skipping school. This kid has been not doing their homework. You're frustrated. You're annoyed. You're sick of their excuses. How do you want to turn towards the bid? Sorry? What was weird? What was weird? Beautiful. What's the rest of the story? What's the rest of the story? Love it. Tell me more. Tell me more. Even just. Yeah. Crazy. Teachers, man. Especially mine. Thanks, Shadow. Let's give her a round of applause. Okay, I want one more. One more. Come on. Someone be brave enough to come up. If you don't, I'll call you up. There we go. Emily, thank you. I feel it. Let's do this. Okay, Emily. Okay, I gotta tell you, I was hesitant because of this. Oh, yeah. That's totally my bad. Totally my bad. Now, Emily's gonna be preaching next week on this topic, so I'm gonna do something different with Emily. You get to bid without using the screen. You get to make any bid you want, and I have to try and respond to it. Okay. Hang on. Give me a second. I'm getting nervous. Did the dogs get fed today? Context, have I told you that I was gonna feed the dogs today? No. I'm just walking in and I'm noticing some things about the house. That's why I was like, I feel like I didn't have to feed the dogs and I didn't. Anyone else feeling horribly defensive right now? Anyone else want to be like, it's not my job to feed the damn dogs? That's right. That's my point. Because I'm like, maybe maybe the bit isn't feel comfortable all the time. Yes. Maybe the bit isn't about me all the time. Maybe the bid is to see. So there's the thing that we let's just even say, I'm gonna add context if I may. Let's just say I promised you, or it's my job to feed the dog. My job is to feed our cat to make sure it has food in its cat dish thingy. I have now not done that. You are in the feels a little close to home. Anybody else can see that as a bid, not a criticism? Isn't that the shift? Right? Because I want to go to it's a criticism, I need to defend, which will mean I will turn against, or I'll do something like, Well, did you feed the cat? Did you fill the car with gas? Did you cook dinner? Did you do right? It's just a turning against. However, I can do it to not see it as a bid, not say, What let's just let's play it out. What if I didn't? Oh, I totally didn't. I am so sorry. I know you always say, like, when you come home, the dog's fed. That's totally my bad. I am I I'm on it. Let me do it right now because like I see that. How does that does that feel like I got close? Someone make it better. No, that's good. Make it better. This is all hypothetical. Hypothetical. I love that you love the dog. Okay, does anybody else have a way to make it better? Was that? No, everyone's even just even just like a oh, I didn't. And then I might even jump in with like, oh okay, I'll do it. Like it wasn't necessarily to try and get you to do it. Even body language. It could be like, oh, I totally didn't, as opposed to like Yeah. Yeah. That was a good idea. Okay, I got another, I got another one for you. Ready? Oh my god. Yours are really hard. Oh yeah. Okay. This one you're all gonna answer. Okay, hit me. No, I wanted you to do it. Okay. Okay, I'll do it. All good. I just got this new dress. What do you think? How does it look on me? Okay, this one's too easy. Damn, you look good. Damn. That would be the appropriate one. You haven't, I've noticed you haven't really done any turning away ones. That one's it's I can I can tell you're right. I'm a little bit it feels kind of gross. Let's try it again. So we're gonna new dress. Okay, do it, do it like a turn. Well, I'm giving you the turn away. Okay. He's gonna turn away. Okay. I just got this new dress. What do you think? Do you think this tie's working for me? I feel like I I maybe made it a little short. That was good. How's that for? What's that one? Turn away, turn against? Turn against. Can you see in that the number of times you probably did it? You turned against. Or you turned away. That one where who did the Ug Mondays? Who did that one? Bryce. Anyone ever have someone go, Wow, my Tuesday's certainly brutal? Right? We think the response is, oh, they're sharing. I should share back. But what you did is you didn't see their bid. You just played off them and ignored it and went off on your own tangent. Can you see now how this stuff impacts relationships? How often we've done it where we turned away, we turned against. But the details were wrong. It doesn't count then, right? And yet that's getting stuck in their long-term memory. And their primitives in their brain are looking at us going, you do not see me. That's what the Gotmans can watch. And say, you will not be together in four years. The other side of this is this when you turn towards, you will be amazed at how much that impacts your relationships. With your kid, kids make noise so that there it's a bid. We do the same thing. Right? It's a bid. It's not don't be huffy. It's a bid. Walking in in a new outfit, especially little kids, you know, is there at that age where they're transitioning away from my parents dressed me to I'm gonna dress myself? That's a bid. How dare you wear that? We walk through our world and we just see now I can see bids everywhere. And the question we have to ask is, do we want to turn against them? Do we want to do that horrible damage of turning away? In an age of cell phones and TikTok and busyness, that turning away one is easy. It's too easy to just be focused here, isn't it? May we be a community that is conscious, that is awake, that sees the bids coming towards us and chooses to turn towards them. Unless the person's evil, then I feel like we can turn against them. Does that work? Is that a thing? No, you're right, Trevor. Damn the Christian story. May we be a community that sees the bid and turns towards them. If you have been, like me, unskillful, if you have a pattern of turning against and turning away with someone that matters to you, here's what I want you to do this afternoon. Apologize. I am so sorry. I am so sorry I turned away from you all those times. That's an excuse. I am so sorry. May we be a community who builds incredibly healthy relationships here and with everybody else in our life. I'm gonna skip the amen and just go to hell yeah. Hell yeah? Thanks everyone. Have a great week. Thanks to everyone who was able to come up on the mic.