Something I've learned is that you don't love and connect with people because of who they are; you don't often find people you magically feel close to or interested in right at the beginning. You can't hold out for that.
You love and connect with people because... you love and connect with them. The more time you spend, the more you share about yourself, the more moments you have together- relationships will usually become deep and meaningful as a result, almost regardless of where they started. If you ask questions that tug on the threads of a person's life, you'll find that almost everyone is interesting. If you take a leap and invest time and energy in people, you'll find life-giving connection you didn't even know could have been there.
It can be hard to bootstrap this process. Like financial poverty, it takes energy to invest in the interactions that eventually lift you out of the lack of energy, which can be a catch-22. But the advice is the same: scrimp and save at first, and then spend strategically until you can get the flywheel going.
But I can almost guarantee that the boundary you're facing is your own shortage of energy, not a shortage of opportunities for connection. Not to trivialize that; it's still a hard place to be in. But I think it would be more productive to re-frame things as such.
This is something that always bothers me. A lot of people forget that you have to work on relationships and then eventually they fall apart. I'm of the opinion that a belief in "soulmates" or finding "the one" or whatever is a big part of the problem: if they're your soulmate, then everything should always be perfect, right? and if its not, then that means they weren't actually the one, so end of relationship and move on hoping to find the true one... But it doesn't work like that in real life, no relationship is perfect all the time and both people need to work on them. Relationships are like gardens, they don't stay beautiful if they're neglected.
That's a big part of it, though I think it's fair to be a little more selective when there's only going to be one person in that role for the rest of your life
But there's no such constraint on other relationships. Those deserve an abundance-mindset; go out into the world, see what people are like, don't assume you already know what you're looking for, see which relationships stick. You have almost nothing to lose.
Edit: That said, lots of people are way too far on this end of the spectrum even when it comes to life-partnerships. The key is to dial in and not overestimate how much you actually know about other people, the world, and even yourself.
An analogy that might appeal to machine learning enthusiasts:
The quality of friendships and romantic relationships can be thought of as the dot product of two high-dimensional vectors. The elements of the vectors describe mutual interests, attributes that are important for relationships, etc... The dot product means that as your interests and personalities are more aligned, the relationship can become stronger.
(Aside: There is good scientific evidence that the opposites attract myth is just a myth. The converse is true. More similar people find each other more attractive.)
But here's the rub: by default the vectors are already fairly aligned by the simple fact that we're all human. We all have some baked-in interests, wants, and personality traits that align well with the same in the fellow members of our species.
Secondly, most people meet people that are physically near them, which means that statistically, their "vectors" will align significantly better than chance. Like... way, way better.
I can sympathise with the author of the blog article. I get it. I really do.
I'm a political refugee, and three decades later, I still don't quite fit in with the people in my new home. Combine that with esoteric interests and a shy personality, and I start to look like the author an awful lot.
But I've had surprisingly little trouble living with romantic partners from hugely different backgrounds. Literal polar opposites of the planet, different religions, you name it.
Turns out that they're just... human. They want hugs and romantic meals, trips overseas and back rubs. Same as everyone else. It really doesn't take much at all to "align". It's basically our wired-in default!
Essentially, the best we can do is optimise this dot product, but there isn't anyone on the planet that will reach 100%. Despite this, we can get a surprisingly good match without even trying, because we're all already set up for being a 90% match for each other. People like the author are complaining about being an 80% match, not a 5% match.
I got to my 90% by simply finding partners that were also political refuges and/or expats. That's all it took. I didn't have to change my personality or become a different person.
To put things in perspective: There are people that put up with abusive spouses. Seriously, think about that! If you don't think you can get along with a friend or a romantic partner, just consider for a minute that other people find physical abuse tolerable, because it's just one dimension in a high dimensional vector where everything else mostly aligns. I mean... sheesh... just... don't hit people? You're already way ahead of a surprising fraction of people just by doing that one thing.
> But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long, close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self: the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.
That has not been my experience at all. Of the many relationships I've had in my life (romantic, platonic, family, etc), I can count on one hand the number that became deep and meaningful.
Yes, deep relationships take time to develop. But there needs to be a lot more than simply time spent together; you need to be compatible as well.
But when you DO develop these deep and meaningful relationships, it's the best thing in the world, and something to treasure!
I was a LOT more strategic in my relationships leading up to my second marriage, and it paid off in spades.
This is spot on from my own experiences. I'm currently in that sort of a position where I'm aware my energy (which I've started to refer to as currency with my therapist) is low.
It refreshes every day (the amount depending on sleep quality) and even at the best of days it's not enough to do an iota of what I was previously capable of doing.
Personally, in my situation I believe the answer to be antidepressants and will likely be going on them soon. Once this "situation" becomes lived in, it becomes harder to escape from... especially whilst self-isolating. Antidepressants increase neurotransmitters (which ones depends on the class of drug) and aid in this positive-thinking and habit-formation. Psilocybin works acutely through this mechanism as well (increased serotonin -> neurogenesis -> escaping mental ruts + more easily forming habits).
(note: when people 'cure' depression through psilocybin it's typically by being exposed to an extremely different perspective of the world. For example, "I forgot how beautiful nature is" or "every stranger has an amazing story" or "the world is so big and so much to explore". Taking those learnings back with yourself is one way to help depression, but in that class the depression is usually sub-clinical.)
People who start Prozac, for example, and get positive results tend to report a much better ability to learn and to maintain hopefulness.
This situation is not always due a chemical root cause (i.e. passing of a loved one) but staying in that state for much too long will cause a learned depression that we will accept as our truth of the world. At that point, SSRIs and other medicines have a role.
You know what’s best for you. I’m wondering though if you’ve tried the non-pharmaceutical options already? Daily exercise, time outside, eating healthy, limiting screen time, sleeping well, and all that.
A lot of studies have found doing these things to be at least as effective as SSRIs. They can create hormonal and neurochemical changes that are just as strong. Check out some of Andrew Huberman’s podcasts for more on this. I wish you the best in any case with whatever route you take!
> "In essence, vulnerability engineers good conversation. Vulnerability appeals to our common humanity. In the real world, you and I may differ in every respect imaginable. But in the abstract world - in the world of beliefs and ideas and emotions - there is something fundamental that transcends all human division: divisions of language or race or culture or class. That something is the human condition. It is our primal beliefs in fairness and reason and competition, or emotions of pride and anger and revenge, all of which have been baked into our very existence over millenia of evolution. The common ground is there - with everyone; if you can’t find it, just go deeper."
Of note: bootstrapping is (potentially) hackable between two willing parties. At least per Aron’s study[1]. Who knows if it would replicate.
At least in my own relationships I have seen the pattern of escalating personal self-disclosure leading to deeper and more meaningful bonds.
Honestly I think this is why alcohol plays a role in so many early friendships - the disinhibiting effects make it easier to admit personal details to people you don’t already fully trust.
Doesn’t mean you need to get tipsy to make friends, but you’ll need to find other ways to open up.
I sympathize with the author. I'm in my mid-forties now and have recognized that I haven't been great at maintaining friendships. I think I've experienced something similar during the quarantining portion of the pandemic, where I didn't really interact with anyone directly, at least not in person.
I had a job, so did interact with people over Zoom, and I will admit that that helped. A few months ago, however, I quit my job and now I don't have that regular human interaction. It's been quite an eye-opener to realize that this situation (not having friends to spend time with) is something I've passively allowed to happen. Many friends have started families or moved away, but I do recognize there were some I could have continued to cultivate.
I've worked on learning more about myself in the last few months and I've come to recognize that a lot of this situation is due to social anxiety and other behaviors that I've developed over the years. I also recognize that it's something I can actively work on improving. It's important to believe that you can be flexible enough to change your own behaviors or ways of thinking that lead you to be alone.
So, I say to this poster, it's true that things like idle chitchat may not be your cup of tea, I think it's important to realize that many people don't enjoy it either but just use it as a social grease to move into more deep conversation or connection. I might be mistaken, but the post makes it sound like the author is already set in his ways and that it's unfortunate that the world doesn't adjust to his preferences. Anyway, my advice is to not give up on human connection and be flexible enough to recognize that maybe your own limiting thoughts are preventing you from connecting.
> So, I say to this poster, it's true that things like idle chitchat may not be your cup of tea, I think it's important to realize that many people don't enjoy it either but just use it as a social grease to move into more deep conversation or connection.
it took me probably 7 years after moving out of my parent’s place to learn that “smalltalk” and “idle chitchat” are not necessarily the same thing. the “aha!” moment was attending a conference with a much older coworker and seeing him strike up conversations with the people sitting next to him which in the course of 15 minutes went from surface level to incredibly personal, sometimes philosophical things that i would never have thought a stranger willing to discuss, prior to that.
in my taxonomy, “idle chitchat” is talking about things. “smalltalk” is learning about each other. “the weather sure is nice today, isn’t it?” => idle chitchat. you’re not likely to understand a person from that starting point, except that “wow look, we both like the sun”. “where are you from? what brings you here?” => smalltalk. you’re encouraging the person to reveal some small amounts of information about themselves which you can use to probe further and hopefully find something fascinating (about them, about a topic you haven’t thought much about, or about yourself and how you relate to something in contrast to them).
now i take conversations with strangers (or anyone really) as a sport, as a challenge. “how can i use these precious moments we strangers share to discover something new? to leave one of us pondering something novel later in the evening”. sometimes these lead to lasting friendships, usually not. but still frequently beneficial to my life. important to identify the situations where smalltalk has the possibility of going beyond surface-level things though. an elevator ride — probably not. a conference, a party, a group activity, anything where people have already put themselves out there more than normal — seems to select for people more likely to “get” smalltalk, or maybe it primes them to open up more, idk.
Your comment has inspired me to change my outlook when participating in “ephemeral” conversations (conversations with people that I likely won’t ever have a chance to see regularly)
A couple of people I’m close to have always relished these conversations and I’ve never understood why until now. Thank you!
> I think it's important to realize that many people don't enjoy it either but just use it as a social grease to move into more deep conversation or connection.
I disagree. I'm like the author, but I do make sure to always listen when I'm with a group or if I'm around people. And either they're really good at hiding the deeper conversation, more interesting from me, or they just tend to smalltalk for the sake of smalltalk.
You're not wrong. Chitchat often isn't started with the intent to move into deeper topics. Maybe a better way for me to phrase it is I think small talk is a social convention we use to open up ourselves to the possibility of more connection.
Talking about the weather to a stranger in the park is a low-risk way to connect. Once we're talking, maybe we'd both find something else we have in common and go from there, or one person isn't interested in going further, so we part and feel like we've lost nothing. It wouldn't be as effective, I think, to go in with the intent of talking about philosophy with a total stranger.
Quick aside: I went on a first date with someone once who told me she wasn't interested in small talk and preferred deeper topics. She broke out a notebook and started asking deep questions about me, which I found really off-putting. It didn't feel to me that we had progressed to that level yet. There's something about human nature where, to most of us, we feel the need for some ceremony of going from mundane topics to get comfortable, and then eventually deeper ones. It felt like she violated that rule, in a sense, which threw me off.
>> I cannot take seriously all these fleeting pastimes and bucket lists and ultra-specific cultural critiques when the world is a horrible place that is going to implode soon if we don't do something about it.
This seems to preemptively foreclose interest in any kind of initial conversation or meeting anyone where they are. And does so because there's something more important. Everything everyone does is a waste of time because the world is imploding and we should be doing something about it.
Well, what's the author doing about it? Volunteering? They might meet people they wanted to talk to, even agreed with and could have serious conversations about non-ephemeral things with, if they spent some time trying to be part of the solution, by helping any of literally thousands of organizations that could make use of their time and energy to try to prevent or reduce the severity of an implosion.
Otherwise how is sitting around feeling sorry for yourself any more noble than people doing their bucket lists or having stupid surface level conversations?
I agree, and I'm surprised to see so much positive feedback in the comments here.
Being disinterested in 99.9% of what other people care about isn't special or interesting. It's just refusing to meet people where they are. If someone is too special for you to connect with, I guarantee that ascending to the lofty heights that they think they inhabit to engage with them will not be worth it. Even if they could articulate where they want you to meet them, and then you went out on a limb to discuss supernovae collapses, or whatever big important thing, I think you'll discover that their special tower above all the fleeting pastimes and bucket lists of the normies would suddenly shift to yet another inaccessible place.
People who genuinely inhabit interesting or rare positions or have special life experiences still love to share their story with other people. No one lives in a tower because their ideals and life story are too special for anyone else to get. They build walls to keep people away. Of course it's never a good idea to tell someone else why they do something, especially a stranger on the internet, but in my experience with people that do this, it's not because they are special, but rather because they are not, and they like the game of making other people pursue them while they continually shift the field so you can never get to them. It's best not to play. If they get lonely enough, they'll do something about it. Hopefully it's a group activity, therapy, or a dose of humble medicine and going to talk about the weather with strangers at a language exchange meetup.
> going to talk about the weather with strangers at a language exchange meetup.
Or bars and cafes. I'm an absolute hound of places where people loosen up and start talking. Social circles don't have to be planned and managed through an app. On any given evening I know I can go somewhere to talk about politics, or about family, or about local happenings, and I'll know 80% of the people there and meet 20% new ones. There's absolutely no guarantee of having a unique high level conversation, but those do happen and inch by inch that's how we get to know each other, agree and disagree, and move forward in this huge experiment called life. The utter oversimplification of the occasionally stupid aspects of human interaction into something that someone cannot engage with is something I don't accept. A hundred or more years ago it would be the recipe for "Notes from Underground" or "The Stranger" - a capacious look at what happens to man if he retreats from society into his own brain, builds his own ideas on nothing. I'm a fan of man vs. society. I'd never want to tell anyone to be a member of society. But there's a new, special kind of alienation that comes along with all this message board posting. It's getting to hate your own kind before you really know them. It's what causes castout kids to pick up assault rifles and disregard human life. It's too easy; it's a lazy kind of hate.
So yeah the kid's on the floor and spewing nonsense. It's our job, more or less, to pick him up and dust him off. It's hard to ignore because it's a real societal problem.
That line revealed to me, as someone who has dealt with similar things, that his real problem now is depression. It's not just sadness, it's an inability to perceive a future where things get better, or even a future at all.
Sadly this mentality tends to make it more difficult to do the things you need to dig yourself out of a depressive episode. It's self-reinforcing.
> This seems to preemptively foreclose interest in any kind of initial conversation or meeting anyone where they are.
Everyone wants us to meet people where they are, yet no one wants to meet people where we are.
You see, if you do not understand what we are going through, you can not meet us where we are. It is hard, maybe impossible, for you to meet us where we are, harder than it is for us to meet you where you are.
I would no doubt be able to talk with this man and we would know where we both are.
I volunteer, but that does not do anything. Yeah, it helps others, but it does not help others meet me where I am.
It is like you are telling Aurê that he has to meet everyone where they are.
(If you think I am being condescending writing this then that proves you cannot meet where I am.)
I don't think it's condescending, I just think if you find yourself in a situation where you actually need to work with other people, it becomes impossible to view them as one-dimensional checklists. Maybe they don't like you or you don't like them, but you can no longer simplify each other so easily. And maybe in the end you think that wasn't worth it, but you still take something from the interaction.
For the record, I'm not telling you what to do or how you should feel about people. I've spent so many years in roles facing groups of people that, at times I love them and at other times I want to kill them. That's just how it goes. Hell is other people, said Sartre. Of course he also meant that being abandoned by them is hell, too.
I'm not trying to be opaque here. I'll say what I meant more plainly: If you have any humility or self-awareness, you will realize that nothing, absolutely nothing you are experiencing has not been experienced before. You are entirely unique, but your reactions to the world are not, and there's a great deal to be learned about how to be okay in the world which other people will be happy to show you if you don't deny your commonality with them.
I have been down this path before. The author might benefit from a healthy dose of Stoicism. Yes, everything is imploding. It always has and it always will be. Yes, nobody truly understands you, and we're all putting on a show to make it through the day. That doesn't mean there isn't something real that has value in this facade of a fleeting existence.
You can shut the world out if you like, but it is your choice. You can engage with it in all its horrid imperfection, and it will engage you back. Not on your terms but on its own.
> You can engage with it ... and it will engage you back. Not on your terms but on its own.
So true, instead of trying to survive like most of humanity has done in the past, we've reached a point where, in our comfort, we now expect much more from the world. We expect relatable movie plots, novel twists, Disney endings, and the ability to push 'reset' on bad outcomes.
Why is the world so messed up when everything looks so good on Instagram?
To the author (and to the poster!): Thank you. I couldn't have found this at a better time. I'm right now (privately) writing about things of a very similar nature and this has made me indescribably inspired and grateful. I know a lot of depressed people feel the same, but I have to repeat the cliché that it's as if he's writing about my life.
> That's why I love writing- it feels like I'm talking to someone who gets me.
Beautifully said. I keep ignoring this lesson for long stretches of time until my mind is in such a messy state that I sort of instinctively can't do anything else but write and write and write, which I've been doing for a few days now, nonstop, after months (years?) of self-neglect. The contents are usually very similar, repetitive, self-deprecating and apparently unproductive, but more often than not I come out of it reinvigorated and more hopeful about the future, and sometimes with slightly less messy thoughts as a bonus.
I've wanted to start a blog since I was a teenager and be as open about my thoughts and feelings as the author of this post is, but I still haven't gotten over the fear of judgment about letting my existence, let alone my boring, dumb, coward, pathetically self-loathing self, be available to an unboundedly large audience of complete and potentially hostile strangers. The voices in my head are right now telling me: “Almost no one cares about what you have to say. Of those who do, many will care only to the extent that they can use it to ridicule you, or worse; and, if people like that ever find you, it's all over.”
I guess this comment is, if anything, a gesture of appreciation for this person's courage to be vulnerable. But it's also a painful challenge against these voices.
They're now begging me not to post this comment, or to delete it as soon as possible. They're screaming, telling me I know I will regret posting this.
A man puts an anonymous blog out there with no way to be contacted. He wants to talk AT us. He doesn't want communication.
I came here curious about what people could possibly be commenting on. It's like you are all peering into a petri dish. This is a man's life. He's probably very depressed. The whole situation is just sad.
It's on the top of the HN page for whatever reason, and seems to have resonated with some here, and given others just something semi interesting to talk about. Certainly seems to have gotten you talking about it, even if it's to try and understand why others are.
I found it well written and easy to read. Was a little disappointed there didn't seem to be any conclusion or lesson "I'll try to get out more and talk to people". Perhaps the lack of a lesson was the main lesson.
I found this strange. I would have probably left an email somewhere (perhaps an ad-hoc one, not my usual one), just in case someone wanted to reach out. I would then decide whether to ignore the messages or not.
If by chance the author reads this, I’d recommend looking into whether he is autistic. This sense of not fitting in, of not enjoying small talk, and of feeling like an “alien” or very different than most others is common in the autistic community. If diagnosed, or even if he volunteers/makes an effort to meet other autistic folks, he may find some common ground he hasn’t found in the neurotypical world. I wish him the best.
I'd second this and also recommend looking into if he has ADHD. I've just gotten diagnosed and it explains huge amounts about myself, including why I've found it so hard to bond with people and even to find the motivation to go out and meet people.
My experience is both yes and no. Some people are so incapable of connecting with other people that it's even worse than a normal person because you have to both drive everything and compensate for everything (which you may for some reason know more about.) When you do meet people functioning as well or better than you though, then yes, of course you quickly identify common ground and can bond on that. It doesn't mean you'll necessarily get along in the long run though.
This took me too long to learn. We're told over and over to "be yourself," but sometimes you have to make an effort to be like everyone else. I see in the author and in myself sometimes a weird sense of pride in having unusual opinions and tastes. This isn't going to win you any friends or impress anyone. If you're just waiting for someone to show up that shares all your thoughts, then you're going to continue to be alone.
Most people trying to make sense of the instruction don't know themselves well enough to be that authentic self, particularly those perceived as unpleasant. They almost always turn out to be aping somebody they knew, read about, or saw in a movie, and never questioned whether there was a better way for themself.
The best ways to your authentic self are to make things and help other people. The worse off they are, the bigger the difference you can make.
This is so true. Friendship and connection really does take work, and a lot of it is just being visible so people become comfortable with you and you with them. A community where you're actively doing something together is helpful as well since it takes away the pressure of the "goal" of making friends.
I remember years ago wanting to increase my friendship network, so I started going to meetups to meet people. Specifically, a few were meetups for people to meet other people to make new friends. What I found was it felt so much like dating. The events themselves were secondary and to me I felt out of place, like I was trying to impress other people or else sussing out other people to see if they were friendship material.
A few years later I took up swing dancing and started going regularly to classes and eventually (it took a while) I started going to weekly social dances. With swing dancing, I wasn't there to make friends necessarily. I enjoyed the dancing aspect. After a while, I realized I did make friends and felt part of a community. I recognized other regulars and felt like I belonged. It took a lot of work to get there, but a lot of it didn't feel like work because I found an activity I wanted to do each week.
100%. I thought I was good at making friends becuase I always had a friend group I could do stuff with. Turns out I just had a hobby that forced me to show up at the same place 1-2 times a week with the same group of people. I continued that hobby in every new city I moved to and easily "made friends" there.
It's kind of silly but honestly a lot of friendships are just the people one sees most often.
Hells yeah. Show up. People will eventually start expecting you. Then inviting you to things.
Then you’ll make plans. To do things together. And when the time to meet up approaches, sometimes you’ll feel like you don’t want to go. And that’s when you say to yourself “oh, you don’t feel much like going. How interesting. Now get off your ass and go do what you said you were going to do.”
Readit News
You love and connect with people because... you love and connect with them. The more time you spend, the more you share about yourself, the more moments you have together- relationships will usually become deep and meaningful as a result, almost regardless of where they started. If you ask questions that tug on the threads of a person's life, you'll find that almost everyone is interesting. If you take a leap and invest time and energy in people, you'll find life-giving connection you didn't even know could have been there.
It can be hard to bootstrap this process. Like financial poverty, it takes energy to invest in the interactions that eventually lift you out of the lack of energy, which can be a catch-22. But the advice is the same: scrimp and save at first, and then spend strategically until you can get the flywheel going.
But I can almost guarantee that the boundary you're facing is your own shortage of energy, not a shortage of opportunities for connection. Not to trivialize that; it's still a hard place to be in. But I think it would be more productive to re-frame things as such.
You don't have a happy marriage/partnership because you met the person of your dreams and then both accidentally stay the same person forever.
Happy marriages exist because people continuously and mutually change each other in a positive way.
But there's no such constraint on other relationships. Those deserve an abundance-mindset; go out into the world, see what people are like, don't assume you already know what you're looking for, see which relationships stick. You have almost nothing to lose.
Edit: That said, lots of people are way too far on this end of the spectrum even when it comes to life-partnerships. The key is to dial in and not overestimate how much you actually know about other people, the world, and even yourself.
The quality of friendships and romantic relationships can be thought of as the dot product of two high-dimensional vectors. The elements of the vectors describe mutual interests, attributes that are important for relationships, etc... The dot product means that as your interests and personalities are more aligned, the relationship can become stronger.
(Aside: There is good scientific evidence that the opposites attract myth is just a myth. The converse is true. More similar people find each other more attractive.)
But here's the rub: by default the vectors are already fairly aligned by the simple fact that we're all human. We all have some baked-in interests, wants, and personality traits that align well with the same in the fellow members of our species.
Secondly, most people meet people that are physically near them, which means that statistically, their "vectors" will align significantly better than chance. Like... way, way better.
I can sympathise with the author of the blog article. I get it. I really do.
I'm a political refugee, and three decades later, I still don't quite fit in with the people in my new home. Combine that with esoteric interests and a shy personality, and I start to look like the author an awful lot.
But I've had surprisingly little trouble living with romantic partners from hugely different backgrounds. Literal polar opposites of the planet, different religions, you name it.
Turns out that they're just... human. They want hugs and romantic meals, trips overseas and back rubs. Same as everyone else. It really doesn't take much at all to "align". It's basically our wired-in default!
Essentially, the best we can do is optimise this dot product, but there isn't anyone on the planet that will reach 100%. Despite this, we can get a surprisingly good match without even trying, because we're all already set up for being a 90% match for each other. People like the author are complaining about being an 80% match, not a 5% match.
I got to my 90% by simply finding partners that were also political refuges and/or expats. That's all it took. I didn't have to change my personality or become a different person.
To put things in perspective: There are people that put up with abusive spouses. Seriously, think about that! If you don't think you can get along with a friend or a romantic partner, just consider for a minute that other people find physical abuse tolerable, because it's just one dimension in a high dimensional vector where everything else mostly aligns. I mean... sheesh... just... don't hit people? You're already way ahead of a surprising fraction of people just by doing that one thing.
David Whyte - Friendship
Yes, deep relationships take time to develop. But there needs to be a lot more than simply time spent together; you need to be compatible as well.
But when you DO develop these deep and meaningful relationships, it's the best thing in the world, and something to treasure!
I was a LOT more strategic in my relationships leading up to my second marriage, and it paid off in spades.
It refreshes every day (the amount depending on sleep quality) and even at the best of days it's not enough to do an iota of what I was previously capable of doing.
Personally, in my situation I believe the answer to be antidepressants and will likely be going on them soon. Once this "situation" becomes lived in, it becomes harder to escape from... especially whilst self-isolating. Antidepressants increase neurotransmitters (which ones depends on the class of drug) and aid in this positive-thinking and habit-formation. Psilocybin works acutely through this mechanism as well (increased serotonin -> neurogenesis -> escaping mental ruts + more easily forming habits).
(note: when people 'cure' depression through psilocybin it's typically by being exposed to an extremely different perspective of the world. For example, "I forgot how beautiful nature is" or "every stranger has an amazing story" or "the world is so big and so much to explore". Taking those learnings back with yourself is one way to help depression, but in that class the depression is usually sub-clinical.)
People who start Prozac, for example, and get positive results tend to report a much better ability to learn and to maintain hopefulness.
This situation is not always due a chemical root cause (i.e. passing of a loved one) but staying in that state for much too long will cause a learned depression that we will accept as our truth of the world. At that point, SSRIs and other medicines have a role.
A lot of studies have found doing these things to be at least as effective as SSRIs. They can create hormonal and neurochemical changes that are just as strong. Check out some of Andrew Huberman’s podcasts for more on this. I wish you the best in any case with whatever route you take!
https://alexpetralia.github.io/relationships/2019/02/22/what...
> "In essence, vulnerability engineers good conversation. Vulnerability appeals to our common humanity. In the real world, you and I may differ in every respect imaginable. But in the abstract world - in the world of beliefs and ideas and emotions - there is something fundamental that transcends all human division: divisions of language or race or culture or class. That something is the human condition. It is our primal beliefs in fairness and reason and competition, or emotions of pride and anger and revenge, all of which have been baked into our very existence over millenia of evolution. The common ground is there - with everyone; if you can’t find it, just go deeper."
Adding on:
- the perfect is the enemy of the good
- it gets easier, you just have to do it every day
- we forge the chains we wear in life - jibjab hotdogs
At least in my own relationships I have seen the pattern of escalating personal self-disclosure leading to deeper and more meaningful bonds.
Honestly I think this is why alcohol plays a role in so many early friendships - the disinhibiting effects make it easier to admit personal details to people you don’t already fully trust.
Doesn’t mean you need to get tipsy to make friends, but you’ll need to find other ways to open up.
1. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/014616729723400...
I had a job, so did interact with people over Zoom, and I will admit that that helped. A few months ago, however, I quit my job and now I don't have that regular human interaction. It's been quite an eye-opener to realize that this situation (not having friends to spend time with) is something I've passively allowed to happen. Many friends have started families or moved away, but I do recognize there were some I could have continued to cultivate.
I've worked on learning more about myself in the last few months and I've come to recognize that a lot of this situation is due to social anxiety and other behaviors that I've developed over the years. I also recognize that it's something I can actively work on improving. It's important to believe that you can be flexible enough to change your own behaviors or ways of thinking that lead you to be alone.
So, I say to this poster, it's true that things like idle chitchat may not be your cup of tea, I think it's important to realize that many people don't enjoy it either but just use it as a social grease to move into more deep conversation or connection. I might be mistaken, but the post makes it sound like the author is already set in his ways and that it's unfortunate that the world doesn't adjust to his preferences. Anyway, my advice is to not give up on human connection and be flexible enough to recognize that maybe your own limiting thoughts are preventing you from connecting.
it took me probably 7 years after moving out of my parent’s place to learn that “smalltalk” and “idle chitchat” are not necessarily the same thing. the “aha!” moment was attending a conference with a much older coworker and seeing him strike up conversations with the people sitting next to him which in the course of 15 minutes went from surface level to incredibly personal, sometimes philosophical things that i would never have thought a stranger willing to discuss, prior to that.
in my taxonomy, “idle chitchat” is talking about things. “smalltalk” is learning about each other. “the weather sure is nice today, isn’t it?” => idle chitchat. you’re not likely to understand a person from that starting point, except that “wow look, we both like the sun”. “where are you from? what brings you here?” => smalltalk. you’re encouraging the person to reveal some small amounts of information about themselves which you can use to probe further and hopefully find something fascinating (about them, about a topic you haven’t thought much about, or about yourself and how you relate to something in contrast to them).
now i take conversations with strangers (or anyone really) as a sport, as a challenge. “how can i use these precious moments we strangers share to discover something new? to leave one of us pondering something novel later in the evening”. sometimes these lead to lasting friendships, usually not. but still frequently beneficial to my life. important to identify the situations where smalltalk has the possibility of going beyond surface-level things though. an elevator ride — probably not. a conference, a party, a group activity, anything where people have already put themselves out there more than normal — seems to select for people more likely to “get” smalltalk, or maybe it primes them to open up more, idk.
A couple of people I’m close to have always relished these conversations and I’ve never understood why until now. Thank you!
Some people don't have strong relationships in their life and even strangers making an effort can brighten their week.
I disagree. I'm like the author, but I do make sure to always listen when I'm with a group or if I'm around people. And either they're really good at hiding the deeper conversation, more interesting from me, or they just tend to smalltalk for the sake of smalltalk.
Talking about the weather to a stranger in the park is a low-risk way to connect. Once we're talking, maybe we'd both find something else we have in common and go from there, or one person isn't interested in going further, so we part and feel like we've lost nothing. It wouldn't be as effective, I think, to go in with the intent of talking about philosophy with a total stranger.
Quick aside: I went on a first date with someone once who told me she wasn't interested in small talk and preferred deeper topics. She broke out a notebook and started asking deep questions about me, which I found really off-putting. It didn't feel to me that we had progressed to that level yet. There's something about human nature where, to most of us, we feel the need for some ceremony of going from mundane topics to get comfortable, and then eventually deeper ones. It felt like she violated that rule, in a sense, which threw me off.
This seems to preemptively foreclose interest in any kind of initial conversation or meeting anyone where they are. And does so because there's something more important. Everything everyone does is a waste of time because the world is imploding and we should be doing something about it.
Well, what's the author doing about it? Volunteering? They might meet people they wanted to talk to, even agreed with and could have serious conversations about non-ephemeral things with, if they spent some time trying to be part of the solution, by helping any of literally thousands of organizations that could make use of their time and energy to try to prevent or reduce the severity of an implosion.
Otherwise how is sitting around feeling sorry for yourself any more noble than people doing their bucket lists or having stupid surface level conversations?
Being disinterested in 99.9% of what other people care about isn't special or interesting. It's just refusing to meet people where they are. If someone is too special for you to connect with, I guarantee that ascending to the lofty heights that they think they inhabit to engage with them will not be worth it. Even if they could articulate where they want you to meet them, and then you went out on a limb to discuss supernovae collapses, or whatever big important thing, I think you'll discover that their special tower above all the fleeting pastimes and bucket lists of the normies would suddenly shift to yet another inaccessible place.
People who genuinely inhabit interesting or rare positions or have special life experiences still love to share their story with other people. No one lives in a tower because their ideals and life story are too special for anyone else to get. They build walls to keep people away. Of course it's never a good idea to tell someone else why they do something, especially a stranger on the internet, but in my experience with people that do this, it's not because they are special, but rather because they are not, and they like the game of making other people pursue them while they continually shift the field so you can never get to them. It's best not to play. If they get lonely enough, they'll do something about it. Hopefully it's a group activity, therapy, or a dose of humble medicine and going to talk about the weather with strangers at a language exchange meetup.
Or bars and cafes. I'm an absolute hound of places where people loosen up and start talking. Social circles don't have to be planned and managed through an app. On any given evening I know I can go somewhere to talk about politics, or about family, or about local happenings, and I'll know 80% of the people there and meet 20% new ones. There's absolutely no guarantee of having a unique high level conversation, but those do happen and inch by inch that's how we get to know each other, agree and disagree, and move forward in this huge experiment called life. The utter oversimplification of the occasionally stupid aspects of human interaction into something that someone cannot engage with is something I don't accept. A hundred or more years ago it would be the recipe for "Notes from Underground" or "The Stranger" - a capacious look at what happens to man if he retreats from society into his own brain, builds his own ideas on nothing. I'm a fan of man vs. society. I'd never want to tell anyone to be a member of society. But there's a new, special kind of alienation that comes along with all this message board posting. It's getting to hate your own kind before you really know them. It's what causes castout kids to pick up assault rifles and disregard human life. It's too easy; it's a lazy kind of hate. So yeah the kid's on the floor and spewing nonsense. It's our job, more or less, to pick him up and dust him off. It's hard to ignore because it's a real societal problem.
The fact that you think this tells me that you cannot meet me where I am.
> People who genuinely inhabit interesting or rare positions or have special life experiences still love to share their story with other people.
Appeal to purity.
>It's best not to play. If they get lonely enough, they'll do something about it.
Yes, it has led to at least one of my attempted suicides.
Sadly this mentality tends to make it more difficult to do the things you need to dig yourself out of a depressive episode. It's self-reinforcing.
Everyone wants us to meet people where they are, yet no one wants to meet people where we are.
You see, if you do not understand what we are going through, you can not meet us where we are. It is hard, maybe impossible, for you to meet us where we are, harder than it is for us to meet you where you are.
I would no doubt be able to talk with this man and we would know where we both are.
I volunteer, but that does not do anything. Yeah, it helps others, but it does not help others meet me where I am.
It is like you are telling Aurê that he has to meet everyone where they are.
(If you think I am being condescending writing this then that proves you cannot meet where I am.)
For the record, I'm not telling you what to do or how you should feel about people. I've spent so many years in roles facing groups of people that, at times I love them and at other times I want to kill them. That's just how it goes. Hell is other people, said Sartre. Of course he also meant that being abandoned by them is hell, too.
I'm not trying to be opaque here. I'll say what I meant more plainly: If you have any humility or self-awareness, you will realize that nothing, absolutely nothing you are experiencing has not been experienced before. You are entirely unique, but your reactions to the world are not, and there's a great deal to be learned about how to be okay in the world which other people will be happy to show you if you don't deny your commonality with them.
You can shut the world out if you like, but it is your choice. You can engage with it in all its horrid imperfection, and it will engage you back. Not on your terms but on its own.
So true, instead of trying to survive like most of humanity has done in the past, we've reached a point where, in our comfort, we now expect much more from the world. We expect relatable movie plots, novel twists, Disney endings, and the ability to push 'reset' on bad outcomes.
Why is the world so messed up when everything looks so good on Instagram?
> That's why I love writing- it feels like I'm talking to someone who gets me.
Beautifully said. I keep ignoring this lesson for long stretches of time until my mind is in such a messy state that I sort of instinctively can't do anything else but write and write and write, which I've been doing for a few days now, nonstop, after months (years?) of self-neglect. The contents are usually very similar, repetitive, self-deprecating and apparently unproductive, but more often than not I come out of it reinvigorated and more hopeful about the future, and sometimes with slightly less messy thoughts as a bonus.
I've wanted to start a blog since I was a teenager and be as open about my thoughts and feelings as the author of this post is, but I still haven't gotten over the fear of judgment about letting my existence, let alone my boring, dumb, coward, pathetically self-loathing self, be available to an unboundedly large audience of complete and potentially hostile strangers. The voices in my head are right now telling me: “Almost no one cares about what you have to say. Of those who do, many will care only to the extent that they can use it to ridicule you, or worse; and, if people like that ever find you, it's all over.”
I guess this comment is, if anything, a gesture of appreciation for this person's courage to be vulnerable. But it's also a painful challenge against these voices.
They're now begging me not to post this comment, or to delete it as soon as possible. They're screaming, telling me I know I will regret posting this.
But I won't be listening to them today.
A man puts an anonymous blog out there with no way to be contacted. He wants to talk AT us. He doesn't want communication.
I came here curious about what people could possibly be commenting on. It's like you are all peering into a petri dish. This is a man's life. He's probably very depressed. The whole situation is just sad.
I found this strange. I would have probably left an email somewhere (perhaps an ad-hoc one, not my usual one), just in case someone wanted to reach out. I would then decide whether to ignore the messages or not.
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Find anywhere and go there once a week at the same time.
The best ways to your authentic self are to make things and help other people. The worse off they are, the bigger the difference you can make.
I remember years ago wanting to increase my friendship network, so I started going to meetups to meet people. Specifically, a few were meetups for people to meet other people to make new friends. What I found was it felt so much like dating. The events themselves were secondary and to me I felt out of place, like I was trying to impress other people or else sussing out other people to see if they were friendship material.
A few years later I took up swing dancing and started going regularly to classes and eventually (it took a while) I started going to weekly social dances. With swing dancing, I wasn't there to make friends necessarily. I enjoyed the dancing aspect. After a while, I realized I did make friends and felt part of a community. I recognized other regulars and felt like I belonged. It took a lot of work to get there, but a lot of it didn't feel like work because I found an activity I wanted to do each week.
It's kind of silly but honestly a lot of friendships are just the people one sees most often.
Then you’ll make plans. To do things together. And when the time to meet up approaches, sometimes you’ll feel like you don’t want to go. And that’s when you say to yourself “oh, you don’t feel much like going. How interesting. Now get off your ass and go do what you said you were going to do.”