Dealing with Social Friction, Part 1: What Is Friction?

Friction occurs in every complex system. If you want to date and socialize effectively, you must be able to identify it – and then adjust your response!

Every time you go out to socialize, message an acquaintance, or flirt with a romantic prospect, you have some goal in mind. Even if it’s only half-formed, rattling around in the back of your head, there’s still an object you’d like to achieve.

Sometimes everything goes smoothly and you meet your objective without even thinking about it. Your socializing nets you cool new friends. Your acquaintance messages back inviting you to a party. You seamlessly seduce that romantic prospect into a romantic conquest. When this happens you can feel like you’re walking on air.

Yet things don’t always progress as smoothly as you’d like. You go out to socialize but it suddenly pours rain; you discover you’re the only one out. You message that acquaintance only to get back a skeptical reply – or no reply at all. You flirt with a romantic prospect, but your prospect replies in a platonic way.

When things don’t go as planned, that’s friction. Friction is anything that impedes progress to your goal. Like friction in a physical system, it slows you down, increasing the amount of effort you must put in to push ahead, possibly even stopping you from getting there entirely.

Expert socializers come to have an innate sense of the social friction they’re facing, how to avoid it, deal with it, overcome it, or, alternately, when to take friction as an indication that a certain social objective isn’t worth it or won’t be achievable and that it’s time to change objectives.

In this series, we’ll take a close look at social friction: what causes it, how it manifests, and the most effective ways to deal with it.

Today, in Part 1, I’ll spell out exactly what friction is when it comes to social and romantic endeavors.