I’ve made something of an interesting discovery about myself and how I make friends. It’s not a universal law, and I almost never consciously think about it, but there is a sort of rule that determines who I make friends with. I shall give it a catchy, yet generic name like: "The Rule of Two.”
The Rule of Two: I have to have at least two things in common with a person before I’m comfortable talking to or becoming friends with them.
[If you are a Ten, you've got one down already. If you don't know what the heck a Ten is, you should, and you can find out by listening to this show.)]
The two commonalities can be almost anything, but most often there is a shared recurring event (like we work at the same place, or go to the same church, or are in the same class), and a shared interest (we both like cycling, or we both like the same music, or we both like 30 Rock). Sometimes there are two shared recurring events (we work together, and we are in the same class). Two shared interests can be a little more iffy; automatic time spent together at a recurring event makes friendship a lot easier. I’ve just noticed this more and more recently. Until I find two commonalities, I am not usually excited to talk to other people. But usually, once the Rule of Two is satisfied, I’m really excited about my new friend.
It’s strange. In a new place, I make friends really slowly and I don’t know if it’s because other people don’t have the Rule of Two, or if they’re just better at finding commonalities than I am. Of course, once the Rule of Two is met, I often quickly find many, many more commonalities with the person. Thus, I’m sure that there are lots of people who satisfy the rule for me but I don’t know it yet, because I somehow can’t seem to talk to them until the rule has already been met.
This explains why I most enjoy meeting new people when I’m in a group of 5-10 people and a few of them are already friends of mine. Then there is no pressure on me to talk, but I can often quickly pick up commonalities from my friends’ conversations with the people I don’t yet know. Put me one-on-one with someone new, or in a group of people I don’t know, and I’m hopeless.
Leave it to an engineer to discover quantitative laws about the way he makes friends. Geez.
11 hours ago
3 comments:
The rule of two applies to us as friends because
A. We both went to Ichthus
B. we laugh at the same sort of videos. Like Trail Le Ausse, the mad scientist guy blog thing, and 30 Rock.
Hope kc is treating you well
i don't remember what made us friends.
...
maybe
1) ichthus/mutual friends/engineering
and
2) i feel like we have a handful of shared interests, but i just remember finding out that you played the bass and liked sound stuff. and i played the bass the liked sound stuff too.
i wish i were a ten.
maybe i'd be cooler.
Leave it up to an engineer's girlfriend to realize that he just described uncertainty reduction theory in a real-life interpersonal communication setting.
The article that originally introduced uncertainty reduction is available on Google Books and I was going to post the link, but it's 7 million characters long. Just Wikipedia it if you want the layman's version (their explanation reflects some of the key aspects your Rule of Two espouses, anyway).
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