 Married couples responded positively to emotional bids 86% of the time and those that did not respond positively to emotional bids 33% of the time or less ended up in divorce. In 1999, Dr. Gottman designed a lab at the University of Washington that looked like a bed and breakfast and he invited over 130 newlywed couples to spend the day in his retreat where he would observe how they would interact with each other. He discovered that throughout the day, partners would frequently make requests for emotional connection with each other and he called these emotional bids. After six years, he followed up with these couples and discovered that there was a big difference between how couples behave that stayed married and those that were no longer together. So he surmised that the secret to fulfilling relationships is responding well to your partner's emotional bids. It actually is the fuel for longevity of those relationships.