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Building fulfilling friendships & relationships

Challenges

  • Lonliness
  • Isolation
  • Scheduling
  • Breaking routines to try something new
  • Relocation / moving
  • Kids & pets
  • Social anxiety
  • No / Low money
  • Real and immediate responsibilities which have priority
  • Following up & reaching out can be a big blocker
  • "Friends who behave in a way that I don't like. Instead of talking about it I withdraw from the relationship."
  • "Someone is monologuing, and I'm listening, but I'm not very interested, and I don't know how to pull out"
  • Immigrant in a foreign country

Ideas

  • Message when in town
  • Invite others out to lunch
  • Sports
    • Padel
    • Pickleball
    • Volleyball
  • Established routines
  • Hobbies
  • Strike up conversations & Exchange phone numbers
  • Talk to people while waiting for train, coffee-shop lines, sports gear shops
  • Talk to people working retail - joke, have fun, make their day better
  • Share your preferences, fun activities
  • Get to know extroverts - more than one
  • Take the initiative, follow-up
  • Appreciate the people in your life, and let that appreciation guide you
  • Be reliable, true to your word - Don't flake out
  • Don't be a bummer
    • Complain / Whiny
    • Stubborn
  • Gap between commitment and behavior
  • Often one of you is more interested in the relationship than the other
  • Be willing to listen to each other, honestly and without defensiveness
  • Traditions are solutions for which we have forgotten the problems
  • Start group chats
  • Schedule video chats
  • Finding and build non-romantic relationships with women
  • RELAX
  • Late night / midnight cafes
  • Community - help out
  • Stay close to family
  • Meet people, share emotions
  • Get out of comfort zone
  • Cook
  • Compromise
  • Demonstate abilities, resources, loyalties
  • Have a curiosity for people
    • Be genuinely interested other other peoples' lives, families, stuff they like to do
    • LISTEN (2x more than you talk)
  • Offer your attentive ears and time
    • Help other process their emotions
  • Share what you're feeling, like / don't like, want / don't want
    • It's ok to cry to a sad song - let yourself feel, get it out
  • Try to connect on a deeper level, and with good intentions
  • Working with people on collaborative effort-intensive projects, working toward shared goals
  • Strike up engaging conversations with people you meet
  • Keep in contact on a regular basis
  • Shared major life events and formative experiences
  • Being confident and positive is a people magnet.
  • Be comfortable with who you are, do things on your own, work on new hobbies and interests, then you will attract the right people
  • Camaraderie in personal growth
  • Show up to the same place regularly to places where other people also show up regularly. School, work, dog park, gym, etc.
    • Engage with people
    • Follow up and schedule time outside of whatever place/activity where you met.
  • Proximity: You're around each other regularly.
  • Unplanned interactions: You see each other even without putting an appointment on a calendar.
  • Privacy: You're in a space where you can exchange confidences.
  • Be gregarious and outgoing in most situations
  • Be a friend to other people - show up and stay connected
  • Chat with random people
  • Go out of your way to form emotional connections
  • Have lot of patience, high level of tolerance.
  • Be willing and able to open up when asked questions (or even when not asked, as a follow-on to what the other person is saying).
  • Be the one to reach out to try to set up more meetings.
  • Put yourself in situations where you are likely to interact with people, especially situations where those people are likely to have similar interests.
  • Being a glue between people
  • Doing shared activities - basketball, hikes, going to sauna, gym
    • Next: vulnerability and honesty
  • Take the intentional-based approach
  • "Who is your ideal dinner guest?"
  • Treat your friends like they're unique people
  • Have conversations with lots of people and you should iterate through them quickly by making more intimate conversation and revealing something about yourself to deepen the relationship
  • Make a concerted effort to be more social and do a better job keeping up with friends
  • Making yourself vulnerable makes someone else willing to share too
  • To grow deeper connections you should cast a wide net and filter down based upon compatibility.
  • Ask people questions, genuine deep ones. People like questions. It allows them to talk about their favorite topic: themselves.
  • Go do things with the same group of people repeatedly

Tiers of friendship

  • Close
  • Shared group chat
  • Acquaintence

Problems

  • Make a list of problems
  • Give each one a lot of thought
  • What's the best thing I can do right now?
  • Family deaths, relationships, breakups, & make-ups, divorces, death of friend/colleague, arguments

Small talk

  • Weather
  • Mundane surface-level topics of conversation
  • Push past mundane small talk and ask deeper questions. Follow up with more questions.
  • Do you have a pet?
    • Name
    • Personality
    • Fun activities

Big talk ?

  • Deep personal problems
  • "What situations make you anxious?"
  • "What is a time you were really happy?"
  • "what things do you do for me, which you wish I appreciated more?"

Advice

  • Make two lists. One, an activities list. Every time you hear something fun to do, put it on the list. Eventually, after a couple years, you'll have nearly everything. If it's on the cheap side it's a good sign, although expensive things can be fun too.
  • The second list, is a content consumption list. Basically, building a twitter, but without the timeline. Write down categories you like, and people you like

Vulnerability

  • Problems
  • Woman/man left you
  • Problems with family - spread out
  • Lean on people emotionally in order to actually become closer.

Getting out of comfort zone

  • Dancing
  • Karaoke
  • Volunteering
  • Gym
    • Gym classes!

Fun activities to invite people to

  • Concerts
  • Casual sports
  • Volunteering
  • Photography classes - go on a hike, shoot pictures together and improve our technique

Activities that involve women

  • Dancing salsa, bachata, kizomba

Friend definition

  • Will hang 50%+ of the time an invitation is issued (schedule permitting), and both of us would enjoy ourselves
  • Trustworthy - won't betray confidences
  • A good relationship occupies the "right" amount of space in each person's life for that pair of people and also is, for each person, part of a larger healthier whole.
  • Ask advice to, and share good and bad news.
  • Being in places where people authentically share mutual interests and cooperate is a great place to make friends. Sports associations (team sports, climbing, hiking, with the added bonus of physical activity being awesome for mental health), community centers with activities (chess, musical groups, dancing)...
  • The transition from acquaintance to friend comes through a bonding moment where there was an emotional connection - either struggling through or achieving something together or vulnerability from one or both of you.
  • Scheduling monthly phone/video calls with friends
  • If we aren’t both excited about this conversation, do something differently
  • Series of entertaining experiences
  • Bring excitement and novelty into my life
  • Expose me to new experiences, and ways of seeing the world
  • Help me learn, point out my blind spots, and correct me when I am wrong
  • I can lean on when I need support, and who lean on me in turn
  • Friends who help me grow more into the kind of person I want to be.
  • Share mutual love
  • Live a social life
  • Engage in the community you live in, take on responsibility
  • "Going to a church regularly was the #1 thing that really led to lots of friends for me"
  • Paying more attention to questions that lets you better know people
  • Learning about other people's lives, or in telling others about themselves
  • Have room mates - cheaper and social
  • Arrange another meetup immediately with anyone you find cool - The chances of meeting up again is slim or unknown , so don't leave it to fate.
  • Do that '36 questions' exercise the New York Times published
  • Not in a rush, fully engaged in the conversation, and not afraid to talk about anything.

Contexts

Where you can hang out without intention - Meet people you like - Put effort into making plans - Time together frequent - School & classes

List of places you can find casual conversations that may lead to friendships: - Sports - Volunteer work - Gym - Public events - Hikes - Grocery shopping - Halking in the park - Library, cafe, bar, club, mall, in the checkout line at any store.

Keys

  • Find a common activity / interest
  • Consistent interaction
  • Learn the local language
  • Schedule well in advance / 1+ week
  • Attention with memory
  • Sharing, arises from mutual interest

Conversation

  • Where are you from?
  • What's your family like?
  • What are your hobbies?
  • What do you think and worry about?

Event ideas

  • Burger night
  • Start a regular happy-hour - invite everyone
  • Drinks & dancing later
  • Reach out to someone when fired / let go from job - listen, invite out to eat
  • Dad's Drinks at a local bar
  • Volunteering
  • Meetup.com
  • Classes

Things to say

  • "Tuesday is my go-out-to-lunch day, everyone is invited"
  • "It's Susan's birthday this week. I think it would be cool if we took her out to lunch. Anyone else in?"
  • "Did you do anything interesting over the weekend?"
  • "Want to grab coffee/lunch sometime?"

Skills

  • Charisma

Resources

  • "Intentionally Making Close Friends" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33774353
  • https://www.succeedsocially.com/ - uide on social skills and overcoming shyness and insecurities
  • Evolutionary psychology

Ask yourself

  • What are you trying to get out of this relationship?
  • Do you want a lifelong partnership?
  • Who are we and who do we want to be?

Wisdom

  • If you go out looking for friends, they are scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you'll find them everywhere.

Tools

  • Feelings wheel - help name emotions. - figure out why you have so much trouble accessing your own emotions, opening up to people, and trusting others.
  • Using these "Couples' cards" just to get to know each other, skipping the explicitly romantic ones