How to Un-Lonely
Her face twisted into anguish as she described a YouTube video about, about, of all things, a collaborative DIY group costume effort at an anime convention. “I guess it’s that sense of community. I wish I had that.” The pain of loneliness threads through my therapy sessions, just under the surface most of the time but still clearly part of the pattern. Finding your social foothold in a city as an adult is challenging. And yet, with so many others needing this free and plentiful resource, why can’t we get it together and connect?
The research is enough of a trope for us NPR-listening masses that I don’t want to spend much time rehashing it: a) Americans are less socially connected than ever, b) social networks are necessary for happiness, and this at least in part explains why c) Americans consider themselves to be less happy than past generations have (Putnam, 2000.) And yet so many of us have a gut echo of Sartre’s line, “Hell is other people” when faced with mixing in a new crowd. Other people, after all, can demonstrably be a real pain in the ass. This contradiction echoes Dan Gilbert’s book Stumbling on Happiness, which elucidates how woefully ignorant most of us typically are about what will make us happy. The best we can do is notice what has made us happy in hindsight, connect these dots into patterns, and try to replicate some of these conditions.
For a real life demonstration of this, think about the best moment of your day today. At the beginning of the day could you have predicted that it would be the best part? Often the answer is no. Similarly, the idea of talking to strangers on a given evening makes many of us scrunch with determination into our favorite sofa cushion. And yet, that simple act might not only make for the best part of our evening but might even lead to a long-term nourishing connection.
Many people find psychology writer and researcher John Gottman’s idea of social bidding to be a user-friendly demystified model of relationship-building. Gottman and his fellow researchers observed that connections are primarily formed via small gestures of asking for attention and the way these “bids” are received and reciprocated. The recipient of the bid can turn towards, turn away, or turn against the bid; which broadly represent reacting with interest, indifference, or irritation. For one example, see how Myrtle reacts to Philomena’s statement in the three different styles in the following example:
Turning Towards:
Philomena: I found the most interesting recipe today.
Myrtle: Oh really? What for?
Turning Away:
Myrtle: That’s nice. (continues doing what she was doing)
Turning Against:
Myrtle: Hush your chatter, I’m trying to read!
“If you want to build a deeper emotional connection with somebody, turn toward that person as often as you can,” according to Gottman. The more bids made and accepted, the closer the relationship.
There is a hierarchy of levels of intensity for bidding that two people work through when strengthening a relationship, the equivalent to dipping one’s pinky toe in the swimming pool to test the temperature before plunging in. For example, depending on how your coworker answers a simple question about office etiquette, you may or may not choose to stop by and chat some more later on. The most important relationships of our lives are often built up a series of rungs like these, proceeding from small requests all the way to spending birthdays and holidays together.
Forging new relationships is a process that can be partialized to a series of skills and steps like any other. To many people this is shocking and not quite believable. The narrative we were raised with is that some people have social skills and others just don’t. If you’re willing to suspend your disbelief, though, you might try out some light “bidding” with the people around you and see what happens. Many people, after all, are seeking exactly the same sense of connection that you are.
References
Gilbert, D. (2006) Stumbling on Happiness. New York, NY: A.A. Knopf
Gottman, J. & DeClaire, J. (2017) The Relationship Cure: a 5 Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships. New York, NY: Random House.
Putnam, R. D. (2000) Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
