Sonja Lyubomirsky

And actually, I had another date where the guy just went on and on.

And he's actually a storyteller by profession.

So he's a great storyteller.

And he went on and on telling all these funny stories.

And after 45 minutes, and it impressed me.

It did impress me.

I thought, oh, he's funny.

He's smart.

He's charming.

He's witty.

I did think that was true, but I really didn't feel a connection with him.

And after 45 minutes, I stopped him and I said, do you realize that for the last 45 minutes,

You have not asked me a single question.

Well, I think question asking is one of the most sort of underestimated social skill.

In fact, I tell my kids, you know, like, if you want to make friends, ask people questions about themselves, especially questions about things that their friends care about.

Yeah.

And in fact, Nick Epley, who's a professor at University of Chicago, has done these studies that show that people think that if they ask personal questions, that they are going to be perceived as kind of intrusive or too probing, too personal.

But actually, on average, we crave to be asked, like we want to be asked about our lives, our inner lives, what we really think about something, what our childhood was like.

Right, because we think that that person wouldn't love me anymore if they kind of knew about this weakness of mine, this fault of mine, or this bad deed that I made.

And, you know, we're not always wrong, right?