Moderate social competence: how do you go from "friendly acquaintances" to "actual friends who interact regularly" with someone?
(All answers given to MSC questions are addressed at all readers, rather than just the asker. So, if youâre reading this, then âyouâ here means, well, you.)
Depends on a couple factors, really
For one thing, do you have anything forcing you together? If youâre meeting up regularly for work or class or a club or because you both drink yourselves to death at the same pub each Friday, then itâs easy to get constant interaction. In that case, thereâs less pressure to work hard at it. If you want to build the type of friendship where you meet because you like each other, then you can do the things below, but more slowly.
If you donât have anything forcing you together - that is, if you wouldnât end up interacting were it not for actually putting in effort to do so - then you need to work harder and faster at getting the other person to feel close enough to you to put in that effort themselves.
So, the specific thing youâre doing is building a feeling of connection/intimacy/bonding/whatever. Itâs making the other person actively care about and think about you and want to be around you. To be honest, my brain optimises for this at a level that I donât directly observe, so Iâm not sure what my algorithm is here either. So Iâll just be dumping some introspective guesses about what Iâm up to:
Firstly, people generally like to feel important and interesting, so you want to give the impression of paying attention to them a lot. However, itâs important to balance this. Most people are offput by people looking like theyâre obsessed with them, either because it gives the impression that they could be dangerous or because it seems like they might be faking it to get something from you.
In my experience, you want to pay attention such that they think youâre completely focused on them while you two are interacting (eye contact, responding promptly, remembering what they say to you) but, until youâve built up some amount of intimacy, like you arenât thinking about them when youâre not interacting.
(If the friendship is progressing well then, in the early stages, youâre both thinking about each other a lot while pretending that isnât happening. Because human social games are weird.)
((Note for anyone reading this who speaks to me: You can feel free to skip the pretending-you-forget-about-me-when-Iâm-not-around thing in the event that youâre only doing it for social reasons, because Iâm hard to creep out.))
Once youâve established that youâre paying attention to them and think theyâre interesting, then you need to make yourself interesting. This mostly means using the conversational skills I talked about here and here, plus identifying what the other personâs interests are and talking about those (preferably ones you have in common).
Next comes the part a lot of people find most difficult: Sticking your neck out. After youâve determined that this is someone who listens to you, you have to start letting more of you shine through. Specifically, things that are likely to be interpreted as personal or vulnerable. This is the kind of costly signalling friendships are built on.
Here you should take the example of Draco Malfoy from HPMOR chapter 7 (ONLY ABOUT SHARING PRIVATE THINGS. NOTHING ELSE FROM THAT CHAPTER.) in telling the story of falling off the broomstick. Telling stories that reveal weakness, emotion, vulnerability, etc. However, itâs important to scale this. You start with the small vulnerabilities and work your way up. Throughout, you should be looking for the other person to reciprocate with their own personal details. From the referenced story:
Harry glanced away uncomfortably, then, with an effort, forced himself to look back at Draco. "Why are you telling me that? It seems sort of... private..."
Draco gave Harry a serious look. "One of my tutors once said that people form close friendships by knowing private things about each other, and the reason most people don't make close friends is because they're too embarrassed to share anything really important about themselves." Draco turned his palms out invitingly. "Your turn?"
âTMIâ is the thing that happens when you jump too far too fast and leave the relationshipâs Overton Window. You can generally assume that the window of allowable things encompasses everything up to the most personal thing the other person has said, plus a little bit more. The trick is to keep pushing it a little wider with frequent, small shoves. If the other person is also doing this then youâre succeeding and intimacy is being built.
However, if the other person isnât reciprocating, one of two things is probably happening. The more common one is that they donât actually want to be intimate with you. Not wanting to be connected to every human being ever is an alien preference to me, but I have heard about people being like that, so Iâll take this absurd desire at face value. Quite a few people will not actually shift their Overton Window, even if you try to, so trying to build intimacy isnât a good idea.
The other option is that they like you but are too shy to reveal anything about themselves even with a lot of opportunities and prompts. These people would want you to continue doing a friendship at them, even if they arenât giving any tangible signs of reciprocation.
The problem is that incredibly shy people and people who donât like you are really hard to distinguish from each other, because their behaviour is very similar. TBH, even I have a hard time distinguishing them, and probably over identify mega-shy people as people who donât like me. This sucks a ton for shy people, who already have a lot on their plate, but thereâs not much to be done about it, because you can only distinguish people who are visibly different. You canât actually see inside the shy personâs head, after all.
How long all of this takes can vary a ton. Iâve heard a lot of people say intimate friendships where you share secrets take weeks or months to build. Though, admittedly, that sounds crazy to me, as Iâve had people admitting stuff to me that youâd only tell a priest in just four hours of sober conversation. So, while a scale of months should be considered reasonable, do be aware that it can be massively faster sometimes.
(If you want to be taught how to take over the (social) world just like Draco was, then you can also have your daddy buy you tutors.)
