Member-only story
Humans 101
The Art of Being Real With People
To forge great relationships, reveal your vulnerability
Here’s a puzzle: You’re sociable. You’re fun to be around. You’ve got self-deprecating stories and an archive of jokes that lighten the mood of any group. You’re spontaneous. You’re good-looking — so much so, in fact, that a night out often turns into a semi-romantic escapade. You’re genuinely interested in other people, and you always listen intently to their problems and offer advice.
In short: You’re friendly.
Yet, if you choked on your dinner this week, there wouldn’t be a need for a casket. By the time someone finally bothered to check up on you, you’d be decomposed and intermingled with the perennial filth and dust in your apartment.
In short: You have no real friends.
That’s the conundrum I’ve wrestled with for most of my life, from childhood to adolescence to my early twenties. I’ve provided great company, yet my interactions with my fellow classmates and co-workers have never gone beyond frivolous exchanges. I am not “one of the guys,” and I’m often only invited to large, impersonal parties — never to intimate gatherings of a few. For the life of me, for years, I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong.
