to a business associate, for example — but when it comes to reducing loneliness, all relationships lie somewhere on the spectrum from distant to close. The closer any of these relationships are to “close,” the more stable and fulfilling the relationship becomes. The more stable and fulfilling it becomes, the less lonely you feel.
As mentioned, you create closeness through specific efforts. There are actually only two actions required of you (and your partner) for becoming closer. The first is increasing your understanding of each other. The second is increasing your investment in each other’s well-being. In this book, I call these two actions “knowing” and “caring.”
I wrote this book to help you understand what’s causing your feelings of isolation (spoiler alert: it’s not your fault) and to provide you with a practical, reliable method for reducing loneliness in your life. You will learn how to start creating closeness — and in turn, to start reducing your loneliness — right now.
We’ll start with the basics: understanding what closeness is and how it’s generated between people, getting a sense of the benefits of having closeness in your life, and identifying obstacles to closeness in our environment. We’ll then dispel some outdated myths about what alleviates loneliness and learn to identify good opportunities for creating closeness, including picking a long-term partner.
From there, we’ll learn about the actions that, taken together, constitute knowing. These include how to:
• Have deeper conversations
• Distinguish needs and values from wants
• Ask questions that foster closeness
• Find unifying commonalities while accepting differences
• Talk productively about the past and the future
• Comfortably disclose your inner world
We’ll then move on to the acts that, taken together, constitute caring. These include learning to:
• Feel and identify emotions
• Experience empathy
• Bond deeply with another without losing your identity
• Show someone explicitly that you care
• Handle disagreements while still communicating caring
• Maintain the bond of caring over a long period of time
You’ll then learn how the principles of knowing and caring apply in different situations: at work, in romantic relationships, and with your friends and family. Last, you’ll learn how to create closeness in the most important relationship of all: the one with yourself.
The loneliness that you and many others are experiencing is a new phenomenon and therefore requires a new solution. Closeness is that solution. The method laid out here will show you how to create closeness with anyone you choose, as long as the one you choose wants to create it with you too. You really can have fulfilling, long-lasting relationships. Let’s learn how!
Closeness is a fundamental yet little understood aspect of relationship health. It is instrumental in making a relationship feel satisfying and secure. In fact, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that closeness is the foundation of all stable and functional relationships — romantic, familial, platonic, and business.
Yet one of the beliefs our society holds most dear is that relationships are complicated. Not just romantic relationships, either — all relationships are fraught with intractable complexities. Watch any movie, read any novel, and you’ll begin to believe that even the best relationships are balancing on the edge. Your boyfriend becomes your husband, and suddenly you feel trapped. Your coworker becomes your boss, and now your relationship feels different. One wrong move, and your best friend could become your worst enemy.
We accept this notion implicitly, but isn’t it a bit odd, when you think about it? Why would we believe that all relationships, even the ones we perceive as most solid, are teetering on the brink of calamity? Are relationships really this confusing?
“I love him. He just doesn’t get me at all.”
“I definitely want to marry her. I’m just worried we don’t care about the same things.”
“My mom is my best friend. She just can’t really say anything nice.”
People from all walks of life struggle with this cognitive dissonance. Can I love my girlfriend but deeply disagree with her choices? Can family really be most important if mine doesn’t accept me? Can I care about my business partner but not fully trust him? These questions all point toward the same, bigger question: Can relationships ever be easy and simple? Yes, they can . . . when they are rooted in a foundation of closeness.
Closeness is a simple principle: it is the experience of having direct access to another person’s inner world. When you have this access to another’s inner world — and she has access to yours — you share the feeling of closeness.
A person’s inner world includes her thoughts, feelings, beliefs, preferences, rhythms, fantasies, narratives, and experiences. When two people are close, he knows her beliefs and can easily speak to them. She recognizes his rhythms and can easily move in time with him. He can feel her feelings. She knows what he’s thinking. Your inner worlds are — metaphorically — close enough to touch.
The more you gain access to someone’s inner world (and she to yours), the closer the relationship with that person becomes. The more closeness you generate, the farther you move away from feeling distant. And since loneliness is essentially sadness caused by distance, the more access you gain to another person’s inner world, the less lonely you will feel. In other words, closeness works as the antidote to loneliness by nullifying distance and the sadness that comes with it.
Knowing and Caring
Though it may sound like it, closeness is not magic. The process of gaining access to another person’s inner world takes place because of specific efforts: the work of knowing each other and caring about each other.
Here I’d like to note that I’m using knowing and caring in their verb forms (as opposed to the static “I know you” and “I care about you”). Knowing and caring must be done, over and over again. You can’t get to know someone well at one moment in his life and expect to still feel close to him ten years later. A long-term close relationship requires regular participation in the acts of knowing and caring.
Knowing — the kind that generates closeness — is the act of understanding another person from that person’s own perspective. It’s the ability to recount another person’s experience of the world in his own words.
