Intentionally making close friends
IMO this is the #1 takeaway:<p>&gt; <i>I was trapped in a ‘normal’ mode of conversation - making small talk, being inoffensive, feeling aversion to being weird, respecting where I thought other people’s boundaries were.</i><p>If you want something else, you gotta let others know somehow! Everyone&#x27;s life is different and has differently shaped spaces for relationships, interaction, etc. It&#x27;s very common for people to be open to growing closer to some of their social circle, but be unsure about who to focus on. It can be you if you simply indicate you are also interested!<p>On the other hand, I think this is more wrong than right:<p>&gt; <i>A point I’ve made throughout is that this is a skill.</i><p>Calling &quot;Growing closer&quot; a skill suggests it is a craft that &#x27;you should&#x27; practice - but it&#x27;s not. Growing closer requires work and attention and you will get better at it over time - but to think of it as a skill &quot;you are doing&quot; instead of a mutual process that advances only at the shared pace you are getting into manipulation. &quot;Growing closer&quot; is measured by the combined &#x27;distance&#x27; by which you and the other person have adjusted your lives to be closer to one another.<p>Maybe OP means that having deep and vulnerable conversations is a skill - and THAT I would agree with, but it has nothing to do with growing closer! You can have deep conversations with strangers (in fact it&#x27;s often easier to have them with strangers).<p>People who discover the power of intimacy in our atomized world risk accidentally leading others to believe they want a deeper relationship than they have the capacity to maintain.