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. Knowing someone well creates the cognitive component of closeness. It is the thing that, over time, allows you to sit next to your business partner and know exactly what she’s thinking.
This way of knowing is substantially different from how we usually “know” people. We tend to think we know someone when we’ve interacted with him a lot and formulated a theory about “how he is.” Howard is a pushover. Ashley is always late. Jenny can’t control her temper. Luke is a really nice guy.
This kind of false knowing will not generate closeness. It’s false because an objective, omniscient picture of “how Jenny is” doesn’t exist (or if it does exist, it’s unknowable to any of us). We only have our experience of how Jenny is. When you tell the tale of how another person is from your perspective, you’re making him or her into a character, a player in your own life story. This way of knowing does not bring you closer because it is really all about you.
Let’s consider Ashley, our friend who’s always late. You can think you know how she is because you know she’s late a lot. But you don’t really know Ashley until you can describe her experience of her lateness from her perspective. From her perspective, she often ends up running late because she tries to do too much. She thinks she can get that second load of laundry done or write that tenth email before heading out the door. Your version of the story is “Ashley is always late.” Her version is “I always try to do too much.”
Knowing in this way is a powerful tool for creating closeness, because once you’re able to see your friend’s experience from her perspective, she can trust that if she lets you into parts of her inner world — her beliefs, narratives, preferences — you won’t misinterpret them. The feeling of being misunderstood or misrepresented (“Ashley is always late. Howard is a pushover.”) is one of the main factors that drive people apart. Feeling truly known, however, brings people together.
Feeling truly cared about also brings people together and mitigates loneliness. Caring — the kind that creates closeness — means being able to feel and show that the other person’s well-being matters to you. Well-being encompasses the whole person, from his health and safety to his fulfillment and happiness. Caring about the whole person creates the emotional component of closeness.