Creating conversations

 What I discovered was this: shame leads to intimacy. The more weakness, failure, vulnerability, and shortcomings you display in conversation, the more close conversation partners become. Why? It’s because you can experience acceptance, unconditional love, and a common bond of shared weakness. You’ll have that moment I mentioned previously from C. S. Lewis in The Four Loves about how friendship forms. You think you alone carry some personal burden, but Lewis explains the connection when you can say, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.”

Our studies suggest that after people have conversations, they are liked more than they know.

People like you. They like you more than you know. When you speak to someone in conversation, you become your “own greatest critic” and truly “overestimate how harshly others judge [you]” when in reality, your conversation partner is rarely judging you or aware of how self-conscious you feel.