Friendships

Duhigg argues for three broad types of conversations: practical (What are we going to do?), emotional (How do we feel about it?), and identity (Who are we?), and that attempts to dialogue often derail when people don’t successfully synchronize this.

People expect their partners to be indifferent to them and to be bored by their self-disclosure. But people are far more interested in our innermost thoughts and feelings than we imagine. Self-disclosure requires a leap of faith, but when we make it, we tend to land safely.