Chapter 2: prioritize your favorite people

the friendship theory of everything: longform edition

Luc Tuymans, The Rabbit, 1994

Note 1: I’m doing a matchmaking tea party at Teance on Thursday, Nov 6 from 6-8 PM. It’s $15 (for tea and snacks!) and you can sign up here. We need more girls :)

Note 2: For anyone who’s confused, I’m doing a series on friendship (a serialized book, as it were) on Bookbear Express for the next many weeks. This is Chapter 2; you can find Chapter 1 here. Please become a paid subscriber if you’re interested in reading it!

i. Connection

As a kid, I had a recurrent fantasy of having a twin. Someone who from day one just got me, whom I could effortlessly share everything with. I loved reading about Valentine and Peter taking over the world via political forum. Kid-Ava was very sure she’d never get married (because why would you live with someone else when you could live alone?) but the thing she wanted more than anything was a constant companion, someone who was definitively on her team. So: I guess you could say the first thing I ever fantasized about was platonic connection.

Unfortunately, it didn’t come naturally to me. I found it so hard to do all the things that came so easily to other kids! I didn’t know what to talk about. I didn’t know what questions to ask. I couldn’t conceive of how you could possibly segue from “How are you?” to a comfortable conversation. Pretty much my only close friend was my cousin, Judy, who didn’t really count because she was a family friend and therefore forced to socialize me. I still remember the first girl who felt like she could be a Best Friend. We met in fifth grade; her name was Carmen and she had chin length brown hair. It was so embarrassing because I wanted the friendship so bad and I could feel that she didn’t need it the way I needed her. My desire for emotional intimacy repulsed her.

I read compulsively because I was so lonely. My primary experience of connection my entire childhood was through consuming fiction. I have never wavered from the habit—I’ve always believed helplessly in life on the page. It was only through digesting consciousness this way that I was able to learn how to connect with other people. Because books convinced me that there were many people out there who had very rich and interesting interior lives, even currently if I wasn’t able to access them. It wasn’t inherently a hopeless situation: I was sure that connection was out there, even if I hadn’t found it yet. So the question became: how could I find it?

ii. Hunting

From this wonderful Escaping Flatland essay on reading:

When I want to be transformed, I chase my reading, to use Robin Hanson’s phrase. “Hunting has two main modes: searching and chasing,” Hanson writes. “With searching you look for something to chase. With chasing, in contrast, you have a focus of attention that drives your actions.” Searching is when I’m reading without a clear aim and continue to read even if I’m unsure about what the author is trying to achieve. Chasing is when I have a question I’m pursuing.

Reading taught me I was built for the hunt. What applied to books turned out to equally apply to people: you have to learn what you’re looking for, and then you have to pursue it with great vigor. Because I so innately lacked the ability to interact with other humans, I learned from first principles what does not seem to occur to a lot of people who grow up with normal(-ish) social lives: great connection does not fall from the sky into your lap.

I’ve noticed a lot of people have this incredible learned helplessness around relationships. They literally think that if they do not pick up great friends over the normal course of their life (school, work, gym) they are doomed to not have friends. They think if they go on Hinge and the first five dates are bad that all dating is Bad forever.

Honestly, I find this attitude both entitled and incurious. I think it’s so much nicer to think about it this way: There are people out there in this Great Big World who I will really, really like, and they will like me back. How do I find them? How do I help them understand me?

i. Searching

Though this is the most basic question there is, you’d be surprised by how many people have a total inability to articulate what they like in people.

That’s totally okay. There’s no need to sit down and make a list. If you’re in your teens or early 20s, the best way to search for people you like is to meet a lot of people and see which ones you feel particularly alive in the presence of.

If you have met a lot of people, it might be productive to try to find the commonalities between them. So: take out a piece of paper, and write down the names of everyone in your life, past or present, who you felt extremely alive around. What do they have in common?

For the record, here are some things I personally really like in people:

• reads a lot, ideally reads fiction. But being interested in art or movies or even talking honestly can substitute for this

• curious

• self-aware, or at least trying to be self-aware

• astute and observant about other people

• deeply moved by who and what they love

• hardworking, loves what they do

• interested in emotional intelligence and social dynamics

• cheerful, enthusiastic disposition

• dedicated friend; has at least one friendship that’s lasted 10 years

• friendly and talkative, cares about your comfort over the course of the conversation

• makes an effort to modulate their affect so as to not hurt those around them

• appreciates nature

  and most importantly:

• I could easily talk to them for six hours at a time. And then do it again the next day.