Intentionally Making Close Friends (2021)
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- I’d love to be friends with other introverts to enjoy quiet times together. but… int-to-int pairs will rarely form in nature, however extroverts are great for mediating the connections. Make friends with the talkative outgoing types, because through them you can meet the other quiet people they’ve befriended but you’d never meet in the wild.
- however, there seem to be some common pitfalls to introvert-extrovert friendships. From my (introvert) side, you can often find yourself getting insecure or jealous of all the other social connections that your extrovert friends have. There’s an asymmetry there that can feed lots of insecurities. I’m sure that there’s something equivalent from the other direction, but I dont know what it is
I wouldn't sweat this too much. Mathematically, most people have fewer friends than their friends have.
Pretty sure its just that they all have superior statistical intuition.
There's a risk of becoming a people pleaser or letting people down. People expect you to manage the party or the outing or whatever.
There's fear that the many relationships you have are shallow. Even in this post your suggestion is to simply use the extrovert to get to a real friend you actually want.
Direct insecurity of what people "actually" think of you is still there, I'm sure.
That said, people are usually thinking about their own problems and what people think of them a lot more than what they think of you so just relax a bit.
For example, EA/rationalist is not quite my kind of community (altough I think highly of many of their writings), but an ACX meetup looks like a good place for introverts of a particular kind to come together.
I guess the trick is to find the right kind of place first.
EA: Effective Altruism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism )
ACX: Astral Codex Ten; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACX https://www.astralcodexten.com/
LW (used at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43663979 ): Less Wrong
- extrovert
(/s ;))
But seriously, is this how some insecure introverts also bond around those charismatic sociopaths and then help'em ruin the world while quietly working for the XYZ agencies? /s
We had a few years' gap of not really being in touch during undergrad but that changed as we had a few months' overlap at post-grad university. It was easier to meet after that and we did keep in touch, but I felt that he was holding back somewhat and not really being free with his thoughts, letting the conversation flag at times.
So at a friend's wedding a couple of years ago, I opened up to him and plainly told him that it's a shame we don't talk as we used to as we both are clearly on the same wavelength when it comes to shared interests and sense of humour. And this worked - our degree of friendship has increased an order of magnitude since before that time. I would have lost a great friend to the vagaries of life had I not taken that step to become vulnerable for an instant then.
I met him in the server closet and asked “hey, I’m new here - do you mind if I look over your shoulder?” He turned around and smiled, “if you are here to help, then you should sit down and I’ll walk you through setting up Exchange mailboxes for these doctors.” Before he left, he walked me through a RAM upgrade and gave me his lucky red screwdriver “ you got this, just call me if you have any issues.”
Later in my career, I continue to learn lessons from this interaction; lately the lesson has been one of “don’t be awesome in a vacuum” - a little bit of encouragement to the new guy can go a long way to adding another person to your on-call rotation that you trust.
20 years later, I still have his screwdriver - and I bring it every time we have lunch every once in a while.
Life is too short to not let the people who make life enjoyable for us know so.
Mutual interest propels activity, but reliable sacrifice is the basis of trust and reliance.
But if you are perceived as welching on this, you will induce real and lasting anger, justifiably in my mind because you’ve just made it harder for people to trust for the rest of their lives.
And this is not limited to close friends.
A girlfriend’s mom’s advice: trust your man only after he’s crawled over a mile of broken glass, and your boss when he’s done it underwater.
Maybe that's why so few people have friends these days: they set some crazy/impossible conditions that you have to meet before they will trust you. As an autistic person it's impossible for me to guess what kind of crazy requirements I have failed to meet.
I absolutely feel moving around as a child a dozen times meant I never formed any lasting friendships from schools, which then had knock on effects in college, and then university.
The idea of forcing deep conversations might neglect the natural dynamics that make friendships work.
Strong friendships aren’t just about emotional sharing—they also require shared responsibility, common interests, and personal development.
Friendship isn’t just a checklist of deep questions—it’s cultivated through shared experiences.
True friendships form through shared hardships, common pursuits, and a natural alignment of values. There’s something profoundly meaningful about forging relationships through mutual struggle, rather than intellectual exercises in vulnerability. If someone wants deeper friendships, they might be better served by pursuing meaningful challenges alongside others, rather than structuring conversations.
This is the basis for fraternity hazing and it does work but the popular point of view is that it’s a bad thing.
A friend in college is sitting at a bus stop. Somebody sits next to him, says "hey I like your shoes", strikes up a conversation. Ends up inviting him to a business/networking seminar.
My friend goes, comes back with a book and is saying all kinds of stuff about passive income and how you gotta take control of your finances.
I google the book name, the second result is a reddit thread about how somebody at a bus stop had their shoes complimented and then got recruited for the same thing. Turns out it was Amway.
So, yeah. 'I like your shoes' works well enough as a conversation starter that it's literally in the pyramid scheme manual.
I can't think of a duller conversation. I'd prefer the one you're complaining about. At least there are feelings invested, if a tad bit one-note. The last thing I want to learn about a person is a laundry list of media they watched and liked. I only enjoy talking culture with someone who is in the industry or otherwise has a deeper relationship with it than just watching / reading one thing after another.
Just go join a discord if you want that.
No thanks. I have and never will use a literal spyware for messaging. I happily use matrix tho
Yeah continue on this journey of self-reflection.
Not that I watch a lot of movies, but when I do, they do make me emotional from time to time. I'm a sucker for a well-told, interesting good wins over evil tale, especially with a female protagonist. Not like Hollywood can do those anymore. Indies are usually the way. They gotta make Superman into basically a villain. Thankfully they haven't fucked with Spiderman yet. But I bet some dipshit will in the near future.
Anime is better, but you asked for movies.
How can you continue a conversation like that? It's insulting and the person is now way more disinterested in talking to you. Best way is to be curious about the other person, whatever they're into. Gradually you can find some shared interests and common ground for being friends.
SQUIRREL!
https://bookshop.org/p/books/sorry-i-m-late-i-didn-t-want-to...
It's the same thing with enemies. If you're an introvert like me, it's really hard to make true enemies, as opposed to people that just vaguely dislike you. You might have to go pretty far out of your comfort zone to do it. For many people, similar to what the author says, it will never even cross their minds. But it can be oddly rewarding.
I'm just frankly not sure I'll ever truly fully open up to someone again. I have been seeing a therapist for a couple of years now and I still go in with a pretty thick shell I have trouble piercing. I'm so slow to warm up to people, I just really doubt there will be another person in my life I'll ever be around enough to get to that point with. Work from home for the last five years has not helped that at all.
Being an adult just kinda sucks.
This is relatively common from what I've seen. People who just ghost a friend, or ghost an entire groups of friends. A lot of the times it's because they're unhappy with their life and trying to make a clean break from what they were connected to before.
I don’t know if it can comfort you but personally I’m trying to accept that it’s ok to be "vulnerable" with mostly everyone. Most of the time it creates interesting bonds with people. Sometimes you are being "vulnerable" to authentic jerks and so what ? Most of the time you can just ignore them.
I find that acting like this is actually an effective automatic filter for my social interactions.
The only place I’m more protecting myself (without being totally closed) is at work because, probably due to the environment, people aren’t acting normally at work.
In my case, I feel it’s just the wisdom of just being older. I also have the luck of having a stable life, a few friends and nice little family. I’ve never been more emotionally stable than today so of course it’s much easier not to care when people randomly betray me.
I hope you find someone you can connect with. I’m rooting for you man.
First step would be to widen your "funnel" of new people in your life before then filtering them down. Simply need to go to social events, meetups, etc.
Combine this with MDMA to supercharge the intensity and speed of connection. This can also be done with a group of 3 to create a tight group that instantly has each other’s backs.
1. Longevity. The longer you’ve been friends the more likely you’ll be friends in the future.
2. Trust. Trust in a relationship is anti-fragile. The more times trust is partially damaged but restored, the stronger it becomes.
3. Meaning. The story “we met while looking for friends to do MDMA with, and now we are attached” is cute when you’re 23. What those people mean to you is that you are lovable and able to form bonds out in the world. Good! But shallow.
TLDR; it may be an effective way to have intense but shallow and short-lived connections
MDMA + the 36 questions is deep intimacy, vulnerability, and often going through some shit together.
We’re also not seeking friends to do MDMA with. On a few occasions, we’ve met interesting people that there is a strong initial spark of connection with and let them know about the practice. These friendships are now very deep and loving even if only a year or 3 old. They are anything but shallow.
As for short lived, only time will tell, but even if they were to end tomorrow I will have deeply cherished the present experience of these connections. I have one 10+ year friendship that is fading and while it breaks my heart from time to time, I still love this person and would do it all over again.
I imagine it’s the kind of thing that has been studied!
It's not like that.
Roughly speaking, MDMA doesn't exactly create an artificial closeness, it's more like it breaks down artificial walls. The effects can last far longer than the high - if you're taking it in the right setting, with the right intention, etc.
> why not just be high on life and try it?
There's a lot to be said for living life drug-free. However, MDMA has genuine therapeutic potential. If a doctor prescribed your friend Prozac, would you say, 'Have you tried not being depressed?' - similar thing. (Yes, some doctors prescribe MDMA.)
There are 8.2 billion people alive on Earth ;getting drunk, high or otherwise taking psychoactive drugs is universal among human societies and you think no one has ever had a meaningful or enduring friendship result therefrom?
I am sure there are ways to test this but I wouldn't trust myself. Not to mention the illegality of it.
At this point, it is simply criminal MDMA is not available for therapy the way ketamine is.
There is also a history of cutting drugs with other substances to give them a unique effect which brings back return customers (i.e. cutting heroin with fentanyl).
And then there is the possibility that whoever produced the LSD screwed up and/or the end product is not pure.
Agree to some extent. Though isn't one more likely to find an actual friend in a 'mutual appreciation society'?
Those people that I now consider my family made me a better person and I would even argue made me into an adult.
I would simplify this in 1 don't be afraid to ask random questions 2 be sincerely interested in knowing about the other person's answer
I find this easier to do when the people are evidently interesting, but more often than not people are interesting after I exercise some curiosity about them.
I subscribe to the minority view as put forth by this saying: 'A friend in need is a friend indeed.'
Before trying to make friends, answer this questions. Most likely nothing interesting going on in your life, otherwise other people would try to hang out with you.