five guidelines for cultivating intimacy (Part 2)

How to Improve Your Conversational Skills

• the secret of being interesting is to be interested
• People come to counseling offices like ours because they know so few people who will genuinely listen to what they are saying.
• Good listeners listen with their eyes.
  
• When you talk to him he seems to shut out all other interests and hang on every word you utter. It is flattering to have people give you that much of their attention.
• prolonged eye contact to be the most important gesture of all.
• Good listeners dispense advice sparingly.
• When people bring you problems, they may appear to want your opinion. They may even say they need advice. But more often than not, they will thank you for simply listening. Because you help them get the problem outside themselves and on the table between you, the issues get back into perspective, and they are able to arrive at their own decision.
• Good listeners never break a confidence.
• Learn to zipper your lip. Nothing causes people to clam up and to abandon your friendship more quickly than to discover that you have revealed a private matter.
• So the way to be a confidant is: Let no one know that you are a confidant to others.
• Good listeners complete the loop.
• Silence can be described as negative feedback.
• So we need to get into the habit of completing the loop.
• Person A makes a statement. Person B acknowledges the statement. Person A confirms the acknowledgment.
• Good listeners are honored when someone lets down their guard.
• It is a great gift when others trust you enough to convey information with which you could hurt them, for they took that into consideration before telling you. If you freely show your gratitude, you will open the way for even more closeness.
• Learn to listen

When Tears Are a Gift from God

• Conversation with your longtime friends will indeed get sparse if you restrict yourselves to facts, as that couple evidently did. But when you and your mate get together in the evening and you talk about your feelings, there will always be plenty to discuss, for everyone of us has a hundred different emotions during the day.
• Conversation can be divided into three categories: facts, opinions, and emotions.
• New acquaintances usually restrict their conversation to facts. Then they begin to trust each other with their opinions, and finally, if they become genuine friends, emotions begin to emerge.
• Studies show, to one's surprise, that newly married couples talk to each other more than twice as much as couples married for years. But the content of their talk is even more telling than the amount. At first, it is the sort of talk that close friends enjoy - the subjective exploring and mutual revealing of beliefs and feelings, likes and dislikes, and the trading and comparing of ideas about aesthetic subjects, sex, beliefs, and plans for the future. Later the talk is more mundane - decisions about money, household matters, problems with the children.
• Talk freely about your feelings.
• Sometimes we develop the habit of wearing an emotional disguise because early experiences gave us the wrong start.
• Self-reliance is a valuable commodity and is much woven into the fabric of the American dream. But it can be carried so far that it not only makes people strong, it makes them hard. It can turn into stoicism, causing people to be isolated or appear arrogant.
• has found that men alcoholics outnumber women in part because men do not cry so spontaneously. As boys they are told to dry up their tears and be little men. Consequently they turn to alcohol as an aid. A few drinks provides them the license to express anger or sadness.
• Crying need not be a sign of weakness or an imposition on the person who witnesses it. Rather, we honor the person with whom we cry.
• Moreover, they can be the means by which our relationships deepen.
• "Shared joy is double joy, and shared sorrow is half-sorrow.

--- quoted from "The Friendship Factor" by Alan Loy Mcginnis.