"What would happen if I increased the vulnerability with one or more people in my life?" is a great question for starting this personal journey. There's a few

"What would happen if I increased the vulnerability with one or more people in my life?" is a great question for starting this personal journey. There's a few responses to this that determine what happens next. If your response is "I don't have any acquaintances," then you may want to concentrate on factors like isolation. However, if your response is along the lines of "I would feel uncomfortable doing that," or "I don't have any friendships where that would be ok," then there is a simple[1] set of concepts and skills development that anyone can do to improve the depth of their friendships or develop acquaintances into friends. The basic concept it to determine where your friendship/acquaintances currently lies in terms of intimacy, and decide to increase the intimacy level by one step. Repeated increases constitute a ratcheting effect that over long timescales cultivate deeply meaningful connections. Lynch's Intimacy Rating Scale[2] is a good tool for both identifying your current level as well as determining in broad strokes what you would need to do to increase intimacy. You may decide that one or two of among a few friends/acquaintances might be a good way to start. Depending on you or your social environment, a response to this may be "This goes against social gender norms," or more succinctly, "Guys don't do that." If that's the case, what a better starting point for curious questioning along the lines of that may be the case, but what if I was part of a group of people that changed that. 1. but not necessarily easy 2. pg 3/[171] https://caps.unl.edu/Creating%20Emotional%20Connection%20Handouts.pdf https://caps.unl.edu/Creating%20Emotional%20Connection%20Han...