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blumenkraft | on: Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?
So what you're saying is you basically have to give. This is what I find real life is like. Unless I'm giving something, like a ride to some interesting place, people are not interested in me at all. They just want to get something from me, that's it.
virtue3 | parent | next
It helps to not look at this as zero sum.

A lot of people are more comfortable with a shared experience objective. This provides a means to do something and a reason behind meeting.

If you are always in the mindset that you are giving and everyone else is taking that can really impact how you perceive everyone. And 9/10 most people over estimate how much they give and under-estimate how much they take.

There is also something powerful with "I _get_ to take my new friend to a place I find cool" rather than "My new friend is using me to go to my cool place". Changing the way you internally frame things drastically helps.

I know it sounds absolutely stupid hogwash but it helps.

https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/gratitude-bed-every-morning...

I hope this helps!

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publicdebates | parent | next
I think of this all the time. What is the relationship between value and relationships? And what is the value of such a relationship?

It seems to me that every relationship is value oriented, even ones we consider absolutely perfect and pure.

Take for instance a mother's undying love for her newborn. She values that newborn for a few reasons. She sees herself in it. She sees pure innocence in it that needs to be protected and nourished. She sees all the potential good (i.e. value) this little child may one day bring to society. She sees her own personal fulfillment in the act of bringing this to fruition, which brings her joy, even amidst all the sacrifices she may have to make for it.

Is any of this selfish or bad? Does it in any way devalue her relationship to the child?

Extrapolate this to other relationships. A perfect friendship, where two people meet together regularly to find out about each other's recent activities, and encourage each other in life's difficulties, and foster one another's growth and good. They each care about the other, ask how the other is doing and what they're thinking and feeling, offer each other consolation, comfort, and help in times of distress or difficulty. Each gets this from the other, mutually beneficial. One may offer it exclusively at one time, the other reciprocates later, not out of obligation, but gratitude and personal desire.

Is this wrong? Is this selfish? Is this bad?

Underqualified | parent | next
Many years ago I read the classic 'How to win friends and influence people' and I was just hit with, according to that book, how little people actually care about other people and how fundamentally lonely our existence is.

I don't think that was the message the book was trying to give, but that's what I got out of it.

So yes, people will wonder, subconsciously or not, what's in it for them. If you can give status or if you are naturally entertaining, this might all seem a little less obvious.

unsupp0rted | parent
You have to provide value.

Unless you are pretty and young, nobody will automatically want to be around you unless you’re providing value.