Wait, so you said that you can learn to trust others by building friendships, but how does one go about doing that? Wouldn't someone I don't know be creeped out or annoyed if I suddenly walked up and started talking to them?
Friendships are built of repeated low-stakes interactions and returned bids for attention with slowly increasing intimacy over time.
It takes a long time to make friends as an adult. People will probably think you're weird if you just walk up and start talking to them as though you are already their friend (people think it's weird when I do this, I try not to do this) but people won't think it's weird if you're someone they've seen a few times who says "hey" and then gradually has more conversations (consisting of more words) with them.
I cheat at forming adult friendships by joining groups where people meet regularly. If you're part of a radio club that meets once a week and you just join up to talk about radios, eventually those will be your radio friends.
If there's a hiking meetup near you and you go regularly, you will eventually have hiking friends.
Deeper friendships are formed with people from those kinds of groups when you do things with them outside of the context of the original interaction; if you go camping with your radio friend, that person is probably more friend than acquaintance. If you go to the movies with a hiking friend who likes the same horror movies as you do, that is deepening the friendship.
In, like 2011 Large Bastard decided he wanted more friends to do stuff with so he started a local radio meetup. These people started as strangers who shared an interest. Now they are people who give each other rides after surgery and help each other move and have started businesses together and have gone on many radio-based camping trips and have worked on each other's cars.
Finding a meetup or starting a meetup is genuinely the cheat-code for making friends.
This is also how making friendships at schools works - you're around a group of people very regularly and eventually you get to know them better and you start figuring out who you get along with and you start spending more time with those people.
If you want to do this in the most fast and dramatic way possible, join a band.
In 2020 I wrote something of a primer on how to turn low-stakes interactions with neighbors and acquaintances into more meaningful relationships; check the notes of this post over the next couple days, I'll dig up the link and share it in a reblog.
Very annoyingly I can't find the post. Some of that is covered in this post about affinity networks, but step-by-step here is how you make friends:
Be where people are. This can be online or in person, but you need to be in a social space around people in the same space frequently enough that you begin to recognize and get to know people. Maybe you are in a discord server for a game and you start to get to know names and avatars; maybe you go for a walk around your neighborhood and see people at their houses; maybe you go to the library and see the people there.
Exchange greetings. You might exchange a "Hi" the first time you meet someone passing them on the street, or you may wait to see them a few times before you greet them. But the first step toward being friends is saying hello (whether that's waving to a neighbor or greeting someone when they enter the chat)
Smalltalk. Smalltalk is a social script of exchanging trivial conversation about non-personal topics in order to pass a brief period of time together. Common subjects are weather, sports, local events, holidays, etc. If you're not sure how to initiate this a simple "How's your day going" is great; if you're not sure how to respond the answer should always be some variety of "pretty good, how about you?" If the other person brings up another subject ('how about this weather' 'did you catch the game' 'holidays are crazy') you respond with a polite and somewhat upbeat response on the same topic; you can continue in that vein and wait for the other person to introduce another topic or say goodbye, or you can introduce your own low-stakes topic. These are the conversations you might have with someone you've said hello to a few times while you are both waiting on a coffee order, or to someone you've seen a couple of times at the dog park, or someone who has showed up in the comments of a fic multiple times. This sort of conversation is about figuring out whether you want to get to know each other better, so it's kind of a behavioral test. It's assessing "can I have a pleasant, brief conversation with this person?" because people usually want to know if the answer to that question is "yes" before they share more details of their lives.
Slightly more personal conversations. Once you've seen the same barista twenty times and said hi, or you've run into the same person at your gym every other day for a month, or you've played on the same team as someone in your server for a while, you can increase the intimacy of the conversation. The way that you do this without seeming creepy is that YOU share something slightly more personal than smalltalk and allow the other person to guide the conversation from there. So this could be "hey, how's it going?" "Good! I had a nice conversation with my sister today, she got a new job. How are you?" (for example) and the response could be something like "Oh hey that's great, I'm good, what kind of job" or the response could be "Great, my roses are blooming" or the response could be something like "enjoying the weather." If the person speaking responds to your sharing of personal information with a request for more information (asks about your sister) or by sharing some of their somewhat more personal information (roses are blooming) they might be interested in continuing to gradually share more information. If they respond with more smalltalk, they probably aren't interested in becoming closer friends (though you should still continue to say hi and be polite and ask them how they're doing; maybe at some point they'll share something with you and it'll be your turn to decide if you want to get to know them better).
Deepening personal conversations. Once you've seen someone several times, you will begin to know little things about them. You will find out if they have pets or a partner, learn things about their job or their parents, and they will learn things about you. If you want to become friends with them, ask them about these things and offer information in return. Start casually and don't pry for more information, and be sure to share about yourself as well. Eventually you will get to the point that you can have a comfortable conversation on topics of shared interest for at least a few minutes.
Plan a time to hang out with this person intentionally. Maybe you've been randomly crossing paths in the server with this person for a few months and like them pretty well - that's a good time to ask if they want to get together for a planned game. Maybe you've been seeing this person at the dog park on random weekends; this is a good time to say "I'm going to bring Buster to the park on Saturday at about two, are you going to be around?" If they agree to meeting up for the thing, they are interested in continuing to develop the friendship. If they don't want to meet up then continue at the same level of interaction as before and perhaps later on down they line they'll ask you if you want to plan a meetup.
Begin to meet regularly. If the initial meetup went well, do it again. Don't make it a rigid scheduled weekly thing but periodically ask if they'd be interested in meeting up specifically like you did the first time. Once you have hung out on purpose a few more times you've got two choices: set a regular meetup, or hang out elsewhere.
Setting up a regular meetup is the relatively casual option here; it keeps things in the same location and keeps the context of the friendship the same while still increasing interactions and intensifying the relationship. You can have perfectly good, if somewhat casual friends, who you see regularly in one place and rarely outside of that place.
Hanging out in a new place changes the context of the relationship; suggest a hangout in a place that makes sense for the mutual interests you've learned over the previous months of getting to know the person (perhaps you've been meeting up in the library for a weekly crafting event and you've learned you both like scifi; ask if they want to grab coffee after the event and talk about a book or movie you both like. perhaps you've been hanging out and having fun conversations in a fandom-specific server; ask if they want to hang out in a private chat and talk about a non-fandom topic).
Do this over and over forever. Eventually it stops feeling forced and scripted, and the more you do it the better you get at it.
Some tips:
Most of what people mean when they say "creepy" is "overly personal" or "social interactions happening before both parties are comfortable with it." It transgresses the normal script and it makes people uncomfortable. That's why it's worthwhile to take things slow and keep things casual as you're getting to know someone. Sometimes people are *not* going to want to get to know you better and that's okay, just don't push for more intimacy once you know the other person isn't returning that same desire for increased closeness. If they never talk to you about anything more serious than small talk or casual interests, and change the conversation when you bring up personal stuff, they don't want to get closer (maybe they will at some point, but if you keep things chill they can make that decision if they get more comfortable.)
People like to talk about themselves, and if you give them the opportunity to talk about themselves, people will largely think well of you. Pay attention to what people are saying and ask them questions based on the topics that interest them.
People don't like to *only* talk about themselves, or talk deeply about themselves with people who they feel are strangers, so there has to be some level of exchange. Share information about yourself that mirrors the level of information that people share with you; if you want to know more about someone you can *gradually* begin to share more about yourself over time but don't over-share deeply personal information if most of your conversations have been casual.
Most friendships are pretty positive for the first several months at least; bringing up negative emotions with very casual friends might cause them to turn away from you. That doesn't mean you shouldn't *have* negative emotions, or that you should never, ever talk about them, but until you know each other better it might be best to keep your negative motions at the "had a rough day at work, glad to be off, how are you" level rather than "my boss is a raging asshole who fired my coworker for something stupid" level.
It takes forever! It can be very stressful! I do seriously recommend seeing if you can become friends with people in regularly scheduled group hangouts if you can swing it because it replicates the way we form friendships as children - frequent proximity and increasing intimacy because of time shared together - instead of the "this feels like dating" feeling of trying to make friends with people you see occasionally.
Anyway sorry that's a lot good luck.
This is incredibly helpful, holy shit.
In case it helps anyone else, I’m gonna try to add something I got from a book on social skills (it’s by Daniel Wendler, written by an autistic person who’s learned the rules for autistic people who haven’t yet, highly recommend!) on the flow of conversation.
If you’re like me, maybe you struggle with infodumping and talking too much and forgetting to ask questions. If people don’t share as enthusiastically as you without direct prompting, you’ll accidentally dominate a conversation. Don’t worry, I get it! I thought, I’ll share what I want to share and they’ll share what they want to share, easy—right?
As I’ve had to learn…nope. 95% of neurotypical people (and a lot of neurodivergent people too!) won’t feel comfortable sharing without being invited to.
So, that “natural” back-and-forth of neurotypical conversation goes something like this:
You talk for a little bit. The less you know this person, the shorter your individual “blocks” of conversation should likely be in most cases. So if you’re at small talk stage, you say maybe a sentence or two; if you know them better you can get away with more.
Then it’s on you to pass the ball back. Your job here is to communicate “hey, your turn, I’m interested”, and to give them a cue of what to talk about so they don’t feel stranded and like they have to “come up with” an answer.
Not giving any cues is where awkward silence comes from, and it’ll feel to them like you’re communicating “I want out of this conversation!” So if your conversations with people often awkwardly peter out, check if you’re giving them a cue every time you finish talking!
There are, broadly speaking, two types of cues:
Invitations: these are questions, or otherwise direct prompts for the other person to speak.
They’re very direct cues, and they’re the easiest for the other person to respond to. That means that the less you know someone, the more you’ll likely rely on invitations (but not exclusively! That makes people feel interrogated. 2-3 questions in a row are fine, after that you might want to throw in an inspiration or two to break it up and be less intimidating—more on that below!)
Try to always keep invitations at the same level of intimacy as the current conversation—don’t talk about the weather and then ask where this stranger grew up and what the weather was like there. These are such direct cues that it’s inherently awkward for the other person to dodge them, so make extra sure your invitations aren’t uncomfortable.
Inspiration: this is essentially referencing things that the other person can easily latch on to for their response.
These are more indirect cues, and a little trickier in my experience. Essentially, you want to make sure that you end your bit of the conversation with something that’s deliberately easy to respond to—avoid ending on something that’s very niche that people can’t relate to or that’s very unique to you. If you want to mention something like that, you can, but tack something more general on after as inspiration (or just end on a question). Inspirations are still cues, they’re still meant to give the other person an idea of what to respond with, otherwise the conversation will feel awkward and unwelcoming!
What the other post mentioned re: offering slightly more personal information of your own often falls under this category. For example, if you’re talking about the weather as in the first example, but you mention where you grew up and what the weather was like, that can be inspiration for the other person to also talk about where they’re from!
But, unlike with a question, if they don’t want to share that information they can usually dodge it without having to make it extremely obvious that that’s what they’re doing. They can ask you something else, or shift the topic, and it might not be super subtle but it allows plausible deniability, so they’re not forced to either a) answer a question they don’t want to, or b) expose their discomfort (which is personal in itself!)
The more you know someone, the more you’ll likely automatically rely on inspiration to keep conversation flowing. That’s because you two have context for each other, something you say might easily have a bunch of things they could use as inspiration just because of past conversations you’ve had or things you already know about each other—anything can be a cue if there’s context! But with people you don’t know well, you’re gonna want to be a bit more mindful of it.
Generally, every time you talk in a one-on-one conversation, you want to leave some kind of cue for the other person to respond to!
Don’t worry too much about it though—if they want to talk to you, they’ll deliberately look for inspiration. If you throw the ball badly, they’ll still try to run to catch it anyway! It doesn’t have to be perfect.
But the less you know someone, the less you’ll be willing to “run” (because hey, that’s a lot of mental effort for a stranger who hasn’t proven they’re worth it, for all you know they might be an asshole!) and the more intentional you want to be about giving cues and making the ball as easy as possible to catch.
I’m very much still learning to “practice what I preach” here, but thinking of it this way has helped me enormously, so perhaps it’ll help someone else too!
This is so fucking funny
The first time I remember feeling suicidally depressed because I was certain I'd never have any friends and would die alone because I didn't know how to talk to people and everyone who acted like my friend was actually doing so in order to make fun of me or get me to do things for them was when I was ten years old.
That continued on until I was eighteen and happened into a scene that was full of accepting diverse, neurodiverse, and queer people that was A) quite welcoming and B) met once a month and C) had extremely clear social rules.
Once I found that group, I got a lot better at making friends and being able to act like a normal-ish person who could do things like hold jobs and talk to my partner's relatives without immediately coming off as someone dangerously unhinged.
To this day I have problems with trusting it when people are nice to me (because it always feels like they're setting me up for a public humiliation, something that happened multiple times in my childhood and something that made me very dearly want to grow up to be Carrie) and I have problems with overwhelming new people with too much information and too-aggressive friendliness.
So this is a guide written by someone who has had to painstakingly learn from the ground up how to trust people and make friends without letting myself get too hurt too often and without scaring people away constantly by coming on too strong.
