curlicuecal:

galacticwiseguy:

curlicuecal:

h-oney-b-ones:

mentalisttraceur:

the-real-seebs:

So I was thinking about this and I suddenly realized I have an answer and I should post it before I forget it:

Social rules are complicated because they are based on instincts, which are formed by evolution, and evolution takes neither prisoners nor design notes.

Here’s the best general guideline I’ve learned for this:

People generally want to feel like you’re matching them – that you care about them about as much as they care about you.

One of the most effective ways to make a regular person feel like you care uncomfortably too much about them is if you respond to their texts immediately, and then send a few follow ups whenever you don’t get a reply.

One of the most effective ways to make a regular person feel like you don’t care at all is if you always take way more time to reply to them than they take to reply to you.

So if you want to optimize to their comfort with the interaction as the primary priority, try to match their behavior – which for your example of texts, basically means: try to match the amount and length of their texts to you, and the delays between your replies.

I just learn more and more every day

See: people like compatibility. :3

And to answer the op’s original question of _why_ is this complicated, and _why_ do people expect you to figure this stuff out without asking: I have a theory…

Carrying on an interpersonal relationship requires you to understand and respect people’s wants, needs and boundaries. It requires that you be able to learn what they want without them always telling you; most people simply don’t have the spoons to set out clear behavioral guidelines in words every second of every day (that would be a shitload of mental effort!), and instead have to offload that effort to body language and subtle cues and other people’s intuition.

If you don’t live in someone’s head, then the reasons for their wants and needs and boundaries will often be completely incomprehensible. They’ll seem totally arbitrary, but to be a decent human companion, you have to respect them.

By following pointless social conventions in your interactions with strangers and acquaintances, and following arcane or unnecessary standards of acceptable behavior, you prove that you are *capable* of learning and abiding by arbitrary standards: the exact same kind of arbitrary standards that individual people’s preferences will be if you get to know them better.

Social convention is just an audition for respecting people’s boundaries. Proving that you can learn “how things are done” or “how not to be creepy [to the general public]” is just proving that you’ll also be capable of learning how not to be terrible to *specific* people if given the chance.

Oh, I REALLY like this point.