Playing sports with other people really helped me develop solid relationships! Can be something as easy as pickleball or something more competitive like soccer
Ask HN: What breakthrough helped you build and maintain better relationships?
91–97 of 97 posts
Re: Ask HN: What breakthrough helped you build and maintain better relationships?
#92The thing I always remind myself on this topic is from Dale Carengie's How to Win Friends and Influence People which is essentially you will make an order of magnitude more friends by being interested in other people than you will in trying to make them interested in you
This is good advice for salespeople who need to strike up a rapport in a short amount of time. Real adult friendships are far more complicated due to the time investment required to actually build a friendship.
How do you maintain rapport over a long period of time? By striking it up first.
Re: Ask HN: What breakthrough helped you build and maintain better relationships?
#93The thing I always remind myself on this topic is from Dale Carengie's How to Win Friends and Influence People which is essentially you will make an order of magnitude more friends by being interested in other people than you will in trying to make them interested in you
The problem is that this advice is missing one piece of crucial information - first impressions are everything. Imagine you start a job, and you meet a coworker, who is well groomed, well spoken, and he just starts small chat with you, doing all the strategies in the book of "building you up". You would probably feel good. Now imagine the same situation except you have a coworker who is socially awkward and speaks in…
A pessimistic, fixed mindset take.
Re: Ask HN: What breakthrough helped you build and maintain better relationships?
#94Doing hobbies that involve other people has helped me make a lot of friends- for a lot of men in particular, this is often really the only way to build friendships. Learning how to be emotionally vulnerable is key to actually connecting with people. The book "Models" by Mark Manson is a pretty good primer on the importance of emotional vulnerability to connect with people. It is sort-of a dating advice book, but I've…
Could you suggest some hobbies? I grew up an only child without any close friends so I learned to do everything solo at an early age.
Sports is one. I play in a regular pickup football game twice a week. I also took up golf, and now I'm older I have more time for that. That's a good social sport and can be played in coed groups.
I also do ceramics. I'm not terribly arty but it allows me to be creative. It's quite social - lots of chatter etc. I imagine the same for metal eork, painting, jewelry, glass blowing etc.
Re: Ask HN: What breakthrough helped you build and maintain better relationships?
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you suggest some hobbies? I grew up an only child without any close friends so I learned to do everything solo at an early age.
Sports is one. I play in a regular pickup football game twice a week. I also took up golf, and now I'm older I have more time for that. That's a good social sport and can be played in coed groups. I also do ceramics. I'm not terribly arty but it allows me to be creative. It's quite social - lots of chatter etc. I imagine the same for metal eork, painting, jewelry, glass blowing etc.
Thanks these are good ideas and fairly accessible
Re: Ask HN: What breakthrough helped you build and maintain better relationships?
#96I think I have some advice for you but I should clarify something first. Do your acquaintances agree to hang out when you invite them?
Probably less than 50% of the time. So I’m in the “mostly rejected” category.
Hey friend, sorry for taking so long to reply. Less than half is still really good, as the other commenter mentioned, try giving more lead time.
I think we’re kind of similar in that we are people who invite people places. That is our role. I look at this as being kind of like rbac - we have the role “organizer” which gives us access to the invite method.
If I were you, I’d stop worrying about reciprocation. Believe me, I know how hard that is because we’re kind of built to see reciprocation as success. But in this case, I worry that you’re trying to find problems that don’t exist.
Keep on inviting people out - you’re a good person, doing good work and you’re on the front lines fighting loneliness in other people. I don’t see an issue, in fact I just see a lot worth emulating.
If you ever get feedback that suggests the issue is you, feel free to write again. But I don’t see anything worth fixing, though I see a lot worth emulating.
Re: Ask HN: What breakthrough helped you build and maintain better relationships?
#97Doing hobbies that involve other people has helped me make a lot of friends- for a lot of men in particular, this is often really the only way to build friendships. Learning how to be emotionally vulnerable is key to actually connecting with people. The book "Models" by Mark Manson is a pretty good primer on the importance of emotional vulnerability to connect with people. It is sort-of a dating advice book, but I've…
>> Doing hobbies that involve other people This is something that doesn't really work for me. I've made a few friends through some hobbies (and we're still friends even though we don't participate in them anymore), but I think the problem is I'm not as into the hobbies as much as the other people are. I don't want to hang out with anyone at my gym. A lot of the ____ club people are _obsessed_ with that particular thi…
> being easy to talk to
What does that look like in practice?