I’ve been slowly realizing what is behind my difficulties in making friends, which is that I don’t express my interest in people when I’m getting to know them.
It sounds banal, and yet this is a conclusion I have resisted coming to over the years. I feel social anxiety and a related fear of vulnerability when I meet new people and this causes me to withdraw behind a bland and stoic facade. This style of self-presentation is safe and effective in terms of avoiding unpleasant social interactions but it also makes me seem aloof, uninterested, and uninteresting. While I quietly wish other people would just show interest in me and try to get to know me I fail to give the same to those people in return.
Most people will assume that I am not super interested in getting to know them if I don’t signal to them anything that would contradict that assumption, and not only is this a fair and reasonable thing for them to do, it is precisely what I do in social situations. I always feel sad and scared that people would never like me or be interested in getting to know me if I expressed interest, so I don’t unless they send super clear and consistent signals that they are interested in getting to know me. But what am I doing to make them not feel the same?
Getting to know people is like climbing a staircase of emotional intimacy. The first step is just talking to somebody for the first time. The next step might be revealing a personal-but-not-too-personal fact about oneself. The next might be expressing that you find the person interesting, and so on all the way to things like “best friend” or “romantic partner” at the top. The staircase of emotional intimacy can only be climbed with the energy and momentum of both participants. Each step must be reciprocal, at least, before the next step can be reached. In most cases, it can’t even be just one party that initiates the climb up to the next step. Perhaps it won’t be 50/50 alternation exactly, but only the most confident and sociable people will have the motivation to initiate every escalation.
For me, expressing interest in people who I don’t already know very well is terrifying. It opens the specter of rejection, of being seen as pushy or annoying. I am terrified that people might secretly find me to be annoying or a burden. But why should I find this so scary? Usually if people aren’t interested in getting to know you, it is pretty clear. The biggest risk is that I come off as a bit to interested in getting to know someone who doesn’t return that interest, but that just isn’t so bad. In that case, I end up right in the same spot, not knowing them beyond the level of an acquaintanceship.
I’ve noticed that the people who have the most friends habitually express interest in people. Interest in hanging out, interest in their ideas, their hobbies, and their experiences. The few friends I have made are with such people, or people who were actively looking for more friends when they met me.
The benefits of expressing interest in people seem to be huge. It can open up many more social opportunities, and allow friendships the rise to their natural level of intimacy given the two people involved. It allows you to weed out people who you might not ever want to be super close to without also weeding people who you might want to become close with.
What I want to do is get comfortable with saying, in many different ways, “I like you”, “you’re interesting”, “let’s hang out”.
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