When my husband asked me if I had watched the video he had sent, I said no – I had seen it, supposed, then I forgot.
“You should look at it,” he said.
So I did it.
He had sent a video on how basketball defense has evolved since the 1960s.
It turns out that these little moments – even a video on the history of basketball defense – may be more important than we think.
Context: He sat with me through enough basketball matches to hear me continue again and again how I don’t understand how players run away with what they are doing. Like a broken record, I keep saying: “It should be a fault”, while the players without the ball push and push themselves.
Maybe he was slowly trying to make me consider that I cannot look at basketball in 2025 with the eyes of 1985 – whatever his pattern, he knew that I would be interested.
Learning research on the Gottman Institute on “offers for connection” has really resonated with me. “Connection offers” are defined as gestures from one partner to another who seeks attention, affection or commitment.
Research explains that “offers” can be small – like a simple or larger question, as a request for pure and simple help.
With decades of research as proof, many believe that the way a partner reacts to these offers determines the tenor of a relationship. When someone regularly turns to offer and recognizes it correctly, the relationship is generally developed in a positive direction.
For example, if a partner says to another: “Discover this point of view”, a partner “evolving towards” the connection offer would examine the view and respond in the direction of “wow, it’s incredible!”
A partner who “turns away” from the offer does not look up and responds with something in the direction of “MM-HMM”.
And a partner who “turns against” the offer answers: “Really, did you make me look for that?”
Over time, the answers add up.
In order not to paint a too pink image – my husband and I are sometimes crazy – but by scrolling down his messages, I realized that these little nuggets that he often shares is part of the way he seeks the connection.
The Weinermobile in front of BLDG 5 in Baton Rouge in March 2025.
For example, he sent a photo of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile spotted outside BLDG 5, a reminder of the road trip from Route 66, he and I took in September 2020, when we were on the same path as the Wienermobile for four consecutive days – at Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo, standing in a corner in Winslow, Arizona, at the Wigwam hotel Holbrook, in Arizona and more.
We found ourselves in the same hotels and landmarks again and again. We have become on a first name with the drivers. The Wienermobile was a reminder of how shared experiences, regardless of the way in which the quirky, continue to bind us. We laughed at that time, and we are still laughing at it now.
The small sons of individual relationships bind together to make a stronger fabric.
Then there is the video he sent by the president of Mexico who obtains “Limpia”, a type of cleaning with plants and smoke considered as a traditional healing ritual which aims to clean the body and soul of negative energy, disease and bad vibrations.
When we were in Mexico City in January, I had one too.
He also sent a story to the 110 -year -old cotton chest in Idaho which was transformed into a free little library. He knows that I love the little free libraries and I became a friend with Todd Bol who launched them in 2009. I wrote an article about them shortly after, and Bol made a trip to Louisiana and I ended up coming to our home for dinner.
I do not know how my husband finds some of the things he sends me, but they help maintain the 31 year conversation in marriage.
Most of the time, I “naturally turn to” the connection offer, but sometimes I am busy or I have a lot on my plate or I forget – and I do not give these efforts the attention they deserve.
But when I do it, I realize that he knows me well, and my heart is beating a little. Each offer, whether it is an original photo, an intriguing article or a shared memory, is a way of saying to him: “I see you.”
These moments also recall that the offers for the connection can go in both directions. Sending the note or treats to a friend or a cousin or a husband – because I know that it strikes an agreement that they will appreciate it – is probably a good idea.
The ways we respond to the people we care for.
In my relationship with my husband, these little messages, as opposed to great gestures, help us to love each other.
These are the ways we turn against each other, again and again.