Why People Like You More After Doing Slightly Embarrassing Things Together

Why People Like you More After Doing Slightly Embarrassing Things Together

Where I’m from, there’s an unofficial holiday called “Allston Christmas.”

I live in Boston, where an absurd percentage of leases turn over on September 1. This means that every year, the sidewalks develop a vibe somewhere in the overlap between Christmas morning, a thrift store, and a demolition site.

People moving out leave behind lamps, bookshelves, dishes, mattresses of extremely uncertain provenance, half-full bottles of cleaning supplies, and occasionally things that make you stop in your tracks and go, “Wait, maybe we actually do need a dining-room table with 3.5 legs?”

Last year, I saw someone dressed as an elf playing Christmas music while picking through the piles.

And celebrating Allston Christmas is also one of the best friendship accelerators I’ve accidentally discovered.

A few years ago, my friend Lee and I were still in the “we hang out sometimes and seem to like each other” stage of friendship.

Then one hot August night, I managed to rent a truck-- a minor September 1 miracle, because practically every truck in Boston gets claimed by movers-- and I texted Lee:

“Hey, wanna go Allston-Christmas shopping with me?”

They did.

Once it got dark, we drove around with the headlights on, scanning the sidewalks and shrieking whenever somebody spotted a promising pile.

At one point, a woman came running after us laughing because we had accidentally taken a folding table that she was, in fact, still using for her move. We sheepishly returned it.

We found an overturned piano and tried to play it upside down.

I came home with an amazing headboard pillow (yes, I will take upholstered furniture off the street; everyone has their own risk tolerance), a truly unreasonable quantity of cleaning supplies, and a Lord of the Rings tarot deck inside a plastic sandwich bag.

Lee got a completely functional mini fridge and a rolling cart.

Somewhere during all of this, our friendship changed.

After that night, we started seeing each other every month, then every couple of weeks. Years later, we still occasionally go Allston Christmas shopping together when the stars-- and our schedules-- align.

I’ve tried to explain this tradition to my out-of-state parents approximately twelve times. Their response is consistently something along the lines of:

“Huh. That’s... interesting.”

Which is part of what made the whole thing so fun.

Lee and I were doing something a little weird together. We were letting each other see a slightly embarrassing, very enthusiastic part of ourselves. And experiences like that can make people feel surprisingly close, surprisingly fast.

Why a little awkwardness can make us closer

There’s a particular kind of interaction in a friendship where you reveal something about yourself and then, for half a second, wait to see what the other person does with it.

You might admit that you are extremely invested in competitive birdwatching.

Or you could invite somebody to your community theater production.

Sometimes it even looks like saying, “I know this sounds ridiculous, but every September 1st I rent a truck and drive around Boston stealing furniture from the sidewalk.”

Then the other person goes, “Wait, that sounds incredible. Can I come?”

You get to be a little vulnerable

Doing something slightly outside the bounds of "normal"  adult behavior means showing more of yourself.

You’re giving the other person a chance to see your enthusiasm, your weird hobby, your terrible dancing, your devotion to Renaissance fairs, your inability to walk past abandoned furniture without examining it.

And you also get to see what they do with that information.

Do they get curious? Join in? Make you feel even more comfortable being yourself?

That response teaches you something about how safe it feels to be around them.

You usually learn something real about each other

During our Allston Christmas adventure, Lee mentioned that money was tight and that they actually really did ned some household stuff.

It wasn’t a dramatic disclosure. It just came up naturally because of what we were doing.

That’s often how closeness develops: you’re doing something together, somebody shares a little more than they normally would, the other person responds well, and suddenly you know each other a little better.

You definitely do not need to excavate your deepest trauma on Friendship Date #2.

Think more along the lines of letting somebody see a part of your life that they wouldn’t learn from exchanging LinkedIn-approved biographical facts.

Novelty gives you something to share

There are only so many memories you can form from sitting across from each other saying, “So, how has work been?”

Doing something new (especially something a little unfamiliar or a little awkward) gives the interaction more texture, because it pulls you out of scripted conversation and into moments where you have to react to each other as you actually are.

You're responding to things together. Making decisions. Laughing. Improvising. Discovering that one of you is extremely willing to take home a mystery lamp and the other has standards.

Novel experiences also make room for play, which adults are often tragically bad at making time for.

And play can be incredibly revealing; you get to see what somebody is really like when there isn’t a correct way to behave.

So, should you embarrass yourself in front of your friends?

Within reason, kind of!

The goal here is not humiliation. You don’t need to engineer some elaborate vulnerability exercise.

You can just invite people a little further into your actual life.

If you have a hobby you feel mildly sheepish about, bring somebody along. D&D, burlesque, aerial silks, stamp collecting, historical reenactment, whatever your particular thing is.

People often enjoy being around someone who is truly excited about something, even if they know absolutely nothing about it.

You can also ask questions that give people an opening to share something a little more personal (as long as the questions feel relevant to the situation; people usually feel a little "off" if you ask them deep questions out of nowhere), and then answer them yourself.

For example:

“Oh my god, I’ve seen Driving Lessons 136 times. Do you have a movie you always go back to when you need comfort?”

“What did middle-school you LOVE doing? Is any part of that still in your life?”

Or you can invite somebody into the less Instagrammable parts of your existence:

“True confession: my cat keeps puking on this rug and I desperately need to steam clean it. Want to come over while I shampoo it  and you distract Mr. Snugglesworth?”

You can also do something together that gives both of you permission to take yourselves less seriously.

Go see a kids’ movie.

Get your faces painted.

Enter a chess tournament despite being mediocre at chess.

Go to karaoke and choose something wildly outside your vocal range.

Try a craft neither of you knows how to do.

Drive around Boston at night looking for somebody else’s discarded sofa.

Friendship gets easier when you know you can be a little ridiculous around each other.

And sometimes when you think, “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” is exactly when somebody starts feeling like your person.