Something I think about a lot is social interaction. The whole stack—how we meet people, get to know them, connect deeply, and evolve our relationship. In the past, I’ve written bits and pieces of my thoughts, but I keep coming back to the topic because it’s never the whole picture.
This is everything I have to say (for now) about talking to people. A manifesto of sorts.
It’s hard to pick where to start, so I’ll lead with a personal observation. When I meet someone for the first time, I’ll often keep a running note of things to talk about with this person. If we have a conversation, I’ll write down anything notable that came up and points to follow up on. If I think of something I’d like to ask them or talk about, I’ll note that too.
I did this with the last person I dated. I kept a list of things I wanted to know about her and things I wanted her to know about me. I remember checking in the bathroom during one of our early dates.
More recently, when I met my friend Manansh, I kept a note with interesting blog posts and ideas I came across that I thought he might find interesting.
There’s no point to this story, but it’s actually a very good case study for many of the subtopics within talking to people that I want to explore.
First impressions
Meeting people you care about for the first time is scary. First impressions are scary because the stakes are legitimately high. Part of my motivation for keeping a note is that I want to be prepared and keep the conversation running smoothly—no awkward silences or confusing monologues. But as you get more comfortable with a person, you become more okay with sounding dumb and taking your time to form ideas.
When you know someone well enough, there isn’t anything to prove about yourself. With close friends and family, there isn’t much you can say that will make them not like you, let alone change their opinion of you. They already have a strong sense of who you are and will interpret your words through the lens they already see you through.
You don’t have the luxury of charitable interpretations with less familiar people. Sure, they can be charitable in the sense they won’t assume bad intent, but we can’t control how their mind subconsciously makes sense of our words and how they construct the narrative of us in their head.
Everything we say in initial interactions is used to calibrate the other person’s internal concept of who we are. And the stakes are high because after calibrating, that’s how they begin to view us.
Basically, first impressions are important and that kinda sucks. It’s tough because even “being yourself” from the beginning can backfire. It says something about you if you act comfortable around unfamiliar people. Imagine someone cracking some politically incorrect jokes the first time they meet you. Maybe you’d vibe with that, but it might also be off-putting—even if you’d do the same with your close friends. The context of an interaction colors how we interpret it.
Closeness
This is why the process of becoming close to someone is so tedious. It’s risky to be 100% yourself from the start, even if your true self would get along well with the other persons’ true self.
Instead, we resort to the most agreeable versions of ourselves and slowly find tune what we say until we find out matches. This is dreadfully unfortunate. It’s inefficient and there is so much room for error. For a long time, i’ve been looking for ways to supercharge the process of becoming close with someone. I wonder if there is a better way besides slowly peeling back layers.
I have some friends I feel very close to despite not having many one-on-one interactions with. I love these friends and consider myself close to them because I feel like I’ve seen their authentic selves—it was just revealed in ways other than conversation.
I really like the idea of sharing an authentic self and I think it strikes deeply at what it means to get close with someone. To see someone when they aren’t trying to impress or come off a certain way. When they reveal to you a side of themselves they normally keep hidden. You feel like you’ve been let in on a secret, and that they trust you and value you enough to share it with you.
Shared experiences
Shared experiences have been a way to supercharge the process of closeness. I’ve become close with many of my friends during group trips.
Low social optionality is a great concept to describe why certain experiences are better at creating closeness than others. The social optionality of a situation is how easily you can move from one interaction to another. On the high-end of the spectrum is a party or networking event where it’s perfectly acceptable, and often encouraged, to roam from one conversation to the next until you find someone you like. On the other end would be a long car ride with someone. In that situation, you can’t just decide to talk to someone else because there is no one else to talk to.
Low social optionality forces us to go beyond first impressions. When we calibrate our internal sense of someone, we rely a lot on pattern matching. Things people do and say that remind us of other people or types of people we already know.
For example, if someone says they’re an artist, there are probably certain personality traits and a general vibe you associate with that. You might attribute those traits to that person without them actually exhibiting any. It’s a useful way for our brains to process information, but it can be inaccurate. With low social optionality, if we decide we don’t want to just be alone, we have to look past our impressions and continue interacting with the person to truly connect with them.
Some other factors that make some shared experiences better at creating closeness:
Suffering
Going through an unpleasant experience seems to be better for forging close relationships than positive ones. I think part of this is that people like to complain about things. Conversation flows easier and you develop camaraderie around complaining about how bad something was.
It’s also boring to be positive about things. Being positive is the agreeable thing to do—the default perspective. You’re positive when you’re trying to be polite and not piss anyone off or disqualify yourself. When you say you don’t like something, that’s less agreeable. You run the risk of alienating someone or coming off poorly, and it’s this risk that gives people the sense you’re being authentic.
Alcohol
Maybe a hot take, but I’m a proponent of alcohol as a social lubricant and way to make friends. It’s actually a really effective way to achieve closeness. Under the influence, it’s easier to be vulnerable. We lose some of the inhibitions that keep us from revealing our authentic selves.
Being valuable
When we meet someone, we feel pressured to provide value via conversation. You want the other person to learn something, be entertained, or to just care about what you have to say. You want them to like talking to you and think it’s time well spent.
This might sound harsh, but if I’m having a conversation with someone I just met and I’m uninterested, I’m less likely to reach out and take steps to cultivate a relationship. So for someone you want to cultivate a relationships with, providing value feels really important (and it kind of is).
The notes I keep are a way to keep conversations around topics where I think I can provide value—either by sharing something interesting or asking about something the other person likes talking about. But I think this is a fundamentally flawed way to anchor a relationship.
Today, my conversations with Manansh are much more free flowing. We usually start with some catch up—little updates since the last time we spoke. After that, we just talk about whatever we’re thinking. I think we’ve reached a place where we have similar enough interests and thought patterns that we can think out loud and create a conversation out of it.
In close relationships, you no longer feel the need to share something about something. You can just say what comes to mind and the other person values you enough to pay attention. Not because they think they’ll get some novel insight or value, but because they care about you and want to give you their attention.
Wrapping it up
To go back to the observation I led with—every time I kept a note for talking to someone, there came a point where I stopped. I just felt I didn’t need to anymore.
The reason, I believe, is a combination and culmination of all the things I’ve written about. Once a first impression is set, there is to affect. As I got to know someone, I cared less about providing value. Closeness was built and I became comfortable with talking about anything or nothing at all.
This is the ideal place to be. Peak connection is when you can both sit in silence and just appreciate the other person’s existence.