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Quick Take: We treat friendship like a series of interviews and wonder why we feel lonely. But real connection isn't built on conversation; it's built on environment. Here is why the most romantic thing you can do for your friends is to meet them where they’re at (literally).
I have a theory: we spend too much time listening to psychologists about friendship. We should be listening to spies instead.
Hear me out.
Psychology gives us theories about friendship. It treats connection like an internal, emotional puzzle to be solved. And there’s value in that. But people are complex, and they don't always fit neatly into theory. Sometimes, we don’t need to understand the connection. We just need a strategy to build it.
That’s where intelligence agents come in. They deal with outcomes.
If a spy needs a target to trust them with their life - or with state secrets - they don’t have time for theory. They need a method that works. Reliably.
Jack Schafer is a former FBI Special Agent who specialized in behavioral analysis and recruiting sources (or spies). He developed a formula that explains why adult friendships feel so thin:
Friendship = Proximity x (Frequency + Duration) x Intensity.
In university (or the army, or a village), it was easy to accidentally max out the first three variables. You lived across the street or down the hall from each other (proximity), you saw each other every day, even multiple times a day (frequency), and you often hung out for hours doing various things one after the other (duration).
Because the math was so high on the first three, you didn't always need a high level of intensity. You didn't need deep, soul-baring conversations every Tuesday, because you could keep up with each other’s lives as they happened. You could spend most of your time just going about your daily lives together and feel no less close.
In our modern, urban lives, we have broken the formula. We live 45 minutes away from our "best friends”, we see them once a month, or we only meet for a strict 90-minute dinner because we have work in the morning.
So, we try to hack the formula by maxing out intensity. We meet up and immediately trauma dump. We skip the small talk or spend the entire time unsuccessfully searching for a way out of it. We try to cram 30 days of emotional intimacy into one hour of high-stakes conversation, bingeing connection because we’re starving for it.
But the formula is not additive; it’s a multiplication. You can't make up for zero proximity with 100% intensity. A hundred times zero is still zero.
So, how do we fix this like an intelligence operative?
The FBI knows something we’ve forgotten: trust is built in the mundane, not the dramatic.
If an intelligence agent needs to get a target to trust them, they don't try to force intensity. They engineer an environment where connection is inevitable.
A spy will never ask to meet for a coffee catch-up in three weeks’ time.
A spy will be standing at the same bus stop as their target every morning. A spy will be waiting in line at the same coffee shop. A spy will be walking their dog at the same dog park.
They will exist in the same space, doing the same mundane thing, day after day. They let the target get used to seeing their face - until they start to let their guard down - before ever saying a word.
Spies know that scheduling “quality time” with a target makes them more guarded. They know that sitting across from someone in a cafe feels like an interview. And you cannot bond with an interviewee; you have to bond with the human underneath.
You can't lie to someone when you're helping them build IKEA furniture. You can't perform when you're both hungover in a stairwell.
The mask falls. The real person comes out.
In our hyper-scheduled reality, we have made our friendships compete with the rest of our busy lives for timeslots. We’re so rarely in the same physical space that when we finally make it, it always feels like an occasion.
But hacking the formula with special occasions doesn’t work.
Trying to be more proactive often turns us into desperate recruiters. We run around hosting dinners and organizing events, trying to force connection. It might work for a month, but sustaining that pace for every person who is important to you is a recipe for burnout.
We need to reframe our perspective and start thinking like case officers.
Don't ask: "When are you free for dinner?"
–> Ask: "Where are you having lunch tomorrow? Can I join?"
Don't say: "Let's catch up soon."
–> Say: "I'm going to the farmers market after yoga class. Come help me pick out some vegetables."
You need to lower the barrier to entry. You need to create spaces where your friends can be boring, ugly, tired, and quiet.
Where they can get used to seeing your face. In reality, not just in theory.
Rooting for the real you (and your new operation),
Hanna from Pulse
