Bids for Vibing: mirror back, and thread-expand (& avoid thread-cutting)
Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on June 6, 2021, 8:17 pmAnd "yes" to all the rest of your message.
I posted mine before, and we both ended up to the roots of evolutionary psychology and overlapping self-interest.
Does "yes" mean that we are on the same page on a general level?
I think the father-son relationship does not have to be so "active" after the son becomes independent.
Because the father has sort of maximised his chances of his son surviving.
The exact dynamics also depends on what both bring to the table too.
What I described for building intimacy between a father and son is more for a typical, healthy relationship.
Sometimes the son can bring a lot to the table even while growing up, and that influences the relationship a bit.
After the son becomes independent, I think the relationship becomes
- Father would like to see the son do well
- Son would like the father to be happy for him doing well on his goals
Not so "active" in the sense of regular interactions.
I have my limits of understanding the dynamics because I only have one father so personal experience is limited.
Maybe veering off-topic from bids for vibing.
But I think the parent-child relationship could be interesting to discuss in other threads.
I'm ready to change my mind on this though if I saw either some study showing most parents being envious, or if my personal observation started showing me an endless stream of jealous and competitive parents.
I could tell that my mother sometimes wanted my companionship more often.
So subconsciously she was a bit envious that I spent time with other people.
I made sure to give a call on important dates like birthdays, mother's day.
And communicated to her my goals for my future.
This addressed the need for intimacy and also touched upon the evolutionary instinct of a mother wanting her offspring to do well.
I enjoyed the book "Will I Ever Be Good Enough?".
It helped me glean into other sides of the mother-child relationship.
Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on June 6, 2021, 8:07 pm
Well, maybe I'm being too optimistic, but I'd consider that parents cheering for their children's success is the norm rather than the exception.
It's not just a belief held on what "ought" to be, but ties back to evolutionary psychology and what's good for the selfish gene as well. Kins' success is partially also your success.
Exceptions do apply, of course.
If there is a big shared identity I can see how this would play out.
Whenever those 2 different identities that have been overlapped have conflicting interests or values however, these instances might be when attempts to take control could strike, where strenght of such attempts would depend on severity of the difference.
And one of those conflicting interests might be that the child doesn't leave the frame of reference of the parents, for example when the parents are of the proud hands-on type workers with several generations of having their own shop like a bakery, and the child wants to work something completely unrelated and theoretical/academic.
At that point the interest of the parents work or even life identitiy is challenged by the childs interest and devalues their life decisions and family history, and the success/happiness of the child would have not much concern in this instance, or even go against their own identity because it would further "prove" their own life decisions and that of their ancestory to be faulty (from their control-freakish fragile-ego-perspective of course). But no idea how common or rare that is at this point.
or if my personal observation started showing me an endless stream of jealous and competitive parents.
I think it could be common but in many cases more subtle and not always will there be significant action. Often it might be simply a "concerned comment", a snarky remark or the deprivation of validation, and that's it. In other instances it might be a lot more.
Or the child doesn't "go against" the parents identity in the first place (for whatever reason).
Though I see no way to really prove this either way, so it's simply a theory I consider to be reasonable, but it might be biased and wrong.
Yeah, those are great points, The_Critic.
I probably focused too much on "general success", and you correctly pointed out that of several ways of achieving "success", some parents may have "their" preferred way.
And when those two ways don't align, one parent might find it more difficult to validate and vibe back.
The identity part is also a good note on the topic -and I'd say, more valid for fathers than mothers, by relating to general gender psychology and men generally being more into "ideals" and "identity"-.
And @Matthew, yes, the "yes" meant we were on a general same page.
Lucio: And @Matthew, yes, the "yes" meant we were on a general same page.
Thanks, because I thought you may have a different view on some of the points.
Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on June 7, 2021, 1:05 pmI probably focused too much on "general success", and you correctly pointed out that of several ways of achieving "success", some parents may have "their" preferred way.
And when those two ways don't align, one parent might find it more difficult to validate and vibe back.
The identity part is also a good note on the topic -and I'd say, more valid for fathers than mothers, by relating to general gender psychology and men generally being more into "ideals" and "identity"-.
I think this is an interesting point.
To vibe well with people, it's good to not hold on too strongly to any idea or identity.
I guess this is what people mean by being open-minded.
Building your self-esteem around any specific idea or identity becomes quite fragile as well.
You can have concrete, specific goals but build your self-esteem upon something more general.
For example, building your self-esteem around doing your best towards goals that you set out for yourself while sometimes failing and slipping up is a good, general self-image to have.
Then vibing with people becomes easier even though you may have a different point of view.
This is how a non-religious person can vibe with a religious person on the topic of religion for example.
And you can go deeper to build a connection because meaning and purpose are things most people consider important.
On the contrary, quite a few troubles arise when people hold on too strongly to certain identities and ideas.
There's why there are religious wars.
We can partly blame the leaders for group identity manipulation but also the followers for not seeing through the facade.
It's not a fundamental conflict of interest like fighting for the last slice of cheese.
But it is from the leader's point of view because their power stems from people's belief in the ideology.
An example from Guy Winch:
Winch: "There's something called 'bids'. Bids is [are when] you're sitting with your partner and your partner reads something in the paper and goes, 'Oh, wow! This is really interesting.' That's a bid to connect because you're then supposed to say, 'Oh! What is it?' and they tell you and you go, 'Oh, wow!'...If they say, 'Oh, wow, this is really interesting,' and you're like, 'Can't you see I'm working?!' Not so good.
So, the couples that offer bids and respond to them have a great prognosis. It's a very positive sign..."
I think bids for connection and bids for vibing should be defined as different terms here at TPM (if they're not already).
In the example Winch gives above, there's a bid for connection from your partner — an attempt from them to deepen your relationship by getting your attention, affirmation, affection, or any other form of positive connection.
But, I believe that there can be a connection without a "vibe".
I view a connection as being more surface-level (such as faking an interest/enthusiasm in whatever your partner is reading to feign good, collaborative relationship behavior or lying about there being common ground). But, vibing back requires an honestly shared experience of good feelings, which is more win-win and improves relationships better.
One can fake a connection, but a vibe is much harder to fake (which is why it can be so easy to tell when two actors don't have any real chemistry on screen).
Yeah, that concept originally came from John Gottman.
I agree with you, there are different forms of "bids".
Not sure whether we defined them already or not, but did discuss them in different terms here -and we will define them as different and in different ways-.
I personally see vibing as more surface and connection deeper, but that's more a question of associating the concept to the name, rather than about meaning -for which we agree-.