Instant connection.
Attraction is simply a finger pointing toward potential closeness.
A former client of mine who worked at a very large company — we’ll call him Julian — struggled to manage a strained relationship with his boss. He found his boss much too harsh. It wasn’t necessarily the critical feedback that bothered him — Julian simply didn’t like the tone in which his boss spoke to him. It was flippant, dismissive. Unfortunately, Julian felt his working environment wouldn’t allow for him to simply ask someone to be nicer.
As I worked with Julian to improve his relationship with his boss, I felt we were making little headway. Until, that is, I asked him this: “So, your boss doesn’t speak to you in a way you like. Who does speak to you in a way you like?”
He paused. A smile spread across his face.
“This is random,” Julian began, “but this one time I was in a restaurant with my wife and the waiter kept calling us ‘my friends.’ ‘More water, my friends?’ ‘Do you want ketchup, my friends?’ It sounds cheesy, but it wasn’t. He meant it. Everyone was his friend.”
That, my friends, is attraction. Julian was attracted to the waiter’s friendliness and openness. It was the smallest, simplest moment of meeting someone and thinking, “I like you!” Eventually, Julian came to the conclusion that he needed to be around people who were friendlier and more open, and he moved to a much smaller company.
Julian’s story demonstrates that there’s no reason why attraction can’t exist — as a powerful force, no less — in all realms, including friendship, family, and professional. Attraction is much more universal than we think. But how do you transition from meeting someone and feeling attracted to getting to know him?
Let’s look at Julian’s situation. He could have done a few things to initiate knowing with the waiter he liked. He could have:
• Come back to the restaurant another day and chatted with the waiter again
• Made up a pretense for planning to get together, perhaps under the guise of doing business together
• Made a straightforward statement that he liked how the waiter carried himself and would like to get to know him better
Do these advances sound odd. . .or even scary? They likely do. Which brings us to the final option. Julian could have done nothing — which is indeed what he did, and most of us would have done the same. It’s quite common to feel uncomfortable approaching someone with the intention of getting closer. But the thing to remember is that these really are the opportunities that lead to closeness. Opportunities can be large — like a lifelong bond with a sibling — or they can be very small — like a chance encounter with a friendly waiter.
Once you start looking at your environment through the lens of closeness, you’ll notice that these opportunities are all around you. Attraction springs up spontaneously. You might meet a new person or suddenly start seeing an old person in a new light. Attraction happens when it happens. Your job is to be brave and to seize the opportunity.
Knowing at First Sight
The unique quality that makes attraction a great starting point for finding partners — its feeling of potential — is also its biggest stumbling block. Attraction has great energetic power; it can feel like the pull of gravity. It’s not uncommon to hear someone say they were drawn to another person like a magnet. Attraction is exciting, no doubt, but its energy can also yank people right into a full-blown relationship before they’ve actually gotten to know each other.
When it comes to picking partners, start with attraction. But don’t stop with attraction.
A strong attraction makes it very easy to jump to conclusions, to fill in the blanks of who the other person is with your own assumptions. She started her own company, so she must have her head screwed on straight! He’s a single dad, so he must be really loving and affectionate! Well. . .you don’t really know that yet.
It takes some time and effort — detailed in the chapters on knowing — to get to know someone on a deep enough level to call it closeness. For now you need to hold fast to the reality that even if you really like this person, you don’t really know her yet. In other words, love at first sight may be real, but “knowing at first sight” is not. Knowing at first sight is at best wishful thinking. At worst, it’s a recipe for serious disappointment. Don’t let yourself get close to a fantasy.
You may be thinking, “I never do this. I know the difference between fantasy and reality.” But evidence shows that we start constructing our idea of who another person is on first contact. Just one picture on Tinder, one tweet we find hilarious or off-putting, and we think we know who the person is.
As The Bachelor proves, no activity is more ruled by fantasies than dating. Researcher Artemio Ramirez, who conducted a study of online daters to determine if the amount of time spent talking online affected real-life outcomes, found that the image we create in our heads about another person is a truly powerful force:
The results of the present study suggest online daters create mental constructs of their potential partners by reading their online dating profile, using that information to fill-in-the-blanks of who the partner might really be in the offline world. Daters who wait too long to meet in person, and therefore cross this tipping point, might find it difficult to accept any discrepancies from their idealized mental construct of their partner. Crossing the tipping point should be particularly harmful for daters who developed very inaccurate partner expectations due to the partner’s use of dishonesty, misrepresentation, or even exaggeration on their profile.
So how do you cross this threshold from attraction to knowing while avoiding the stumbling block of assuming? How do you successfully navigate the waters of liking-but-not-really-knowing-for-sure?
This is one of the biggest challenges you’ll face in your journey out of loneliness. Because the first few encounters in a new relationship can be a very uncertain time, I encourage you to hit a few specific notes before committing to pursuing someone as a closeness partner. If you miss any of these notes, there’s a chance you may be moving too fast from attraction to full-blown relationship. (And remember, this applies to all types of relationships, not just romantic ones.)
The notes I encourage you to hit when first trying on a new friend, family member, colleague, or romantic partner are:
1. Identify attractions.
2. Meet in person. If it’s a romantic relationship, feel free to ask him or her on a date. If it’s a business relationship, grab coffee together.
3. Ask a few deeper questions. Later in this book you will learn how to ask deep questions. But for now, simply make an effort to probe a little deeper. If your boss talks about enjoying sailing, ask, “What do you like about it?” If your acquaintance is interviewing for a new job, ask, “What do you want out of the job?”
4. Assess for certain skills. You’re not looking for any “right” or “wrong” answers to your deeper questions; you’re looking for skills that indicate whether or not this person will be good at knowing and caring.
Let’s discuss these skills in detail. The first four indicate proficiency in knowing; the second four indicate proficiency in caring. Let’s tackle the four knowing skills first.
Skill 1: The Ability to Self-Disclose
The ability to self-disclose
