Have You Heard Of The Bird Test Theory?
It sounds silly at first, but keep going.
by The Candidly Team
Right, so there’s this test making its way about the internet at this very moment commonly called the “Bird Test.”
And it pretty much involves doing one thing:
Try to attract the attention of your partner (or anyone you have a relationship with for that matter) by bringing up something not terribly significant. For example, you might say, “hey, look at that bird over there.”
If they perk up with curiosity, you’re in the clear. You two may as well be Scarlet Macaws or Whooping Cranes (yes, we googled which birds mate for life). But if their immediate response is to fluff you off, there might be trouble brewing.
Sound dumb? Too easy to fail?
Well, stay with us here, because there’s actually a solid point at the heart of this exercise, and it could say a lot more about that state of our relationships than what meets the eye.
So, what does it all mean?
Before we tell you why this test actually matters, for anyone dying to see it, this is the TikTok video from @alyssacardib that kicked off all this buzz to begin with.
Doesn’t sound too painful, right? I mean, isn’t it always heaps of fun putting a relationship to the test? Sort of like taking one of those Seventeen Magazine quizzes about whether you and your crush are soulmates.
Ok fine, maybe it’s nothing like that.
In fact, the idea of a 3-second test determining the success or status of a deeply important relationship probably sounds incredibly stressful.
But here’s why the Bird Test has a point.
It recognizes the fact that small acts are what predominantly build the foundation of a solid, loving relationship.
It speaks to the importance of the bids we make for connection to our partner.
All of this by the way is not just coming from our own heads (or from TikTok) but from decades of research done by The Gottman Institute on couple relationships.
A bid for connection is “any gesture, verbal or non-verbal, from one person to another that invites or requests the other person’s attention, response, or engagement,” said Gottman Institute trained therapist, Dr. Vagdevi Meunier. According to Gottman’s findings, couples who ignore each other’s bids about 50-80% of the time are more likely to divorce.
For couples to thrive, they have to get good at both responding to their partner’s bids and at sending out those signals themselves. Here are some really good examples of what these bids can look like and what they can represent. In other words, it’s not just about the bird.
An unenthusiastic or vapid response to a bid can chip away at the sense of on-the-same-pageness we feel with our partner. We’ve all felt that dejected feeling upon being ignored, even over something small.
And let’s face it, we’ve all had those moments of distraction ourselves, staring blankly at our phones instead of glancing out the car window at our partner’s request, especially when we’ve been with that partner for 1,000 years.
But there is good news. We can get better at bids.
As Dr. John Gottman himself puts it, “couples often ignore each other's emotional needs out of mindlessness, not malice.”
The flip side of feeling completely bummed out about getting less than stellar results on the Bird Test is that awareness itself is the entire solution. All of those lively little moments where we attune to our partner hold so much more significance than we think.
Tiny things can turn the tides of a dynamic and make people feel seen.
You’ll notice it in that itty bitty spark of excitement that flushes your partner’s face when you respond to a bid. And you might even feel it in a gesture as small as a lift of the head and the saying of “oh yeah, is that a blue jay?”
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