We live in a world where every marketing job posted seeks to infuse AI into its marketing structure. There are a whole host of reasons why that is, but let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that cost-cutting is not the largest of those motivators. Most of the job posters, corporate recruiters, and applicant screeners likely do not fully understand what this buzzy integration of AI into the workflow even means. It reminds me of a time back in ~2009/2010 when social media was on the rise and students began to earn degrees in “Influencing”. We now call them “Content Creators”. They add zero value to the world and shuck trash for money. Influencers sounded bad. Because it was. It was immoral, and nobody wants to admit they were influenced into buying something they didn’t need by someone who got paid to tell you they loved it. If the mention of AI was a drinking game, we’d never legally drive again. Buzzword bingo. Trendy, yes. Timely, yes. Timeless, no. Call me crazy, but I want to live in a world where I can stand behind my actions and rest on integrity.

Here’s the thing: effective marketing breaks through the noise by being relevant, memorable, resonant, emotive, and ultimately drives action. That action can be a shift in perspective, a growth in awareness, a change in process, a purchase at the point of sale, or any other desired outcome. On the contrary, ineffective marketing is generic, forgettable, blasé, flat, and easily ignored. Often, that is because it focuses on the company and is crafted in the eye of the marketer, rather than the customer.

By my definition, AI is the homogenization of publicly available information. It is a tool to get to a solution; it is not the solution itself. Effective use requires training, understanding, strategy, and oversight to use that tool properly. AI crawlers and agents then scan the internet’s vast abyss to see what is out there that can satisfy a query. They read through that information and supply back the “best” possible result based on the inputs they have the ability to access (including the taste profile, uploaded documentation, and AI chat history of the seeker), and they go to work to deliver a suggested result to the user. Basically, they mine information and use what they find out there in the record of the world in order to provide the most likely answer based on what they locate. “Most likely” is another definition for “average”.

AI marketing results are not memorable, nor are they innovative. They are not emotionally resonant in the salient sense of the word. They do not highly target a consumer in any way that is avant-garde, outside-the-box, or truly innovative. They do not suggest delivering to a target audience via a break-frame or unique channel. As we did when solving an algebra proof back in our high school days, let’s swap out “AI” for “average”. Put next to each other, the words “average marketing” are oxymoronic. Marketing is intended to stand out, to be memorable, and to ultimately sway a consumer in the direction of (sometimes away from — considering the timeliness of this article and the current election cycle) the products, brands, platforms, etc. being marketed. We are witnessing firsthand the rise of average marketing as we witness organizations make the shift to AI at scale.

So, let’s play this out. Maybe to save time or drive efficiency, and definitely to enhance profitability, the vast majority of organizations today are laying off strategic thinkers, high-level creatives, and innovative brand leaders at an alarming pace. They are starting from the top. The most senior. The most tenured. The largest salaries. To save money and enhance bottom-line profitability, they are then supplementing this with more junior employees paired with AI at a lower cost to them. That is not my opinion. I did not make that up. This is happening. I can now research a marketplace and strategically position a product/brand in seconds, in the world of AI. While I was employed at Mattel Toys (2010–2013), this exercise in positioning diligence may have taken several months, depending on the product launch. Here’s the problem: Everyone has access to AI. Still, they continue down this path. Here’s the other problem: Everyone else is using AI, too. Need I speak louder for the buzzword bingo bean counters in the back?

The sweet fruit of this real-life AI migration tastes delicious today. Sweet as a mid-summer elderberry. Until it rots in your stomach and metabolizes into cyanide. Then it kills you. Elderberries, much like a memorable marketing campaign, must be thoroughly cooked before consumption. AI-generated marketing still requires ‘cooking’. Unfortunately, the trained chef de cuisine was the marketing leader they let go, and those elderberries are being plated and served. This shortsighted reduction in costs may lead to short-term profitability gains, but it assuredly will not be the path that leads to lasting marketing success, true product differentiation, or sustainable revenue growth. Pick your cliché. The early bird will get the worm. Agreed. The early bird might actually be the late adopter. Let that sink in and allow me to explain.

It’s mass-migration season out there. Organizations and marketing departments all over the world are fishing in the same AI agentic ponds, with the same bait, because the Publicly Available Information Shop only sells one flavor: Vanilla. It’s proof time again for the algebra nerds out there (I was pretty savvy in algebra btw, but many apparently slept). For the math haters, let’s instead call it “deductive reasoning”. This looks a lot like one of those multiple-choice candidate screeners I’m oh-too-familiar with, dancing through in my mind oh-too-often these days.

If Vanilla = Elderberry …and Elderberry = Cyanide …and Cyanide = Poison …then Vanilla = Poison.

Vanilla is poison. In time, vanilla marketing will kill your brand. The problem is that by the time you realize it, it will be too late. Maybe this is more relatable…

(Sidenote: AI models are actually only so-so when it comes to deductive reasoning. Their success depends highly on the structure of the question. Structuring the query properly relies highly on knowledge of the tool, understanding how to position the query, and (ironically this time) experience. Ask the right questions, and you find yourself in Boise, ID sipping heavenly elderflower cocktails in July. Ask the wrong question, fool's gold. It may taste delicious on the way down, then you die.)

“Hey Claude, create me an independent thought using nobody else’s previously cited information, no API connections, no sourced regurgitation and nothing but Claude code.”

AI may well be the quickest trip through the archives I’ve ever taken to write a research report. I use it too. Daily. It’s fantastic when I’m in a bind, resource-strapped, or need another perspective to proof my work. I use it to help, not to replace. But AI cannot deduce without human input. Read that again. Commit it to memory. AI cannot deduce without human input asking it the right questions. …And understanding how to do that requires perspective. …And perspective requires. You get it now? AI’s biggest challenge yet: it still cannot quite figure out how to fix stupid.

Chess, not checkers. How do we create break-frame, memorable, and differentiated marketing campaigns in a vanilla world? Independent thought. Yes, it is expensive to carry a team of seasoned marketers and strategists. Those years of experience come with a price tag. Yes, we can sprint to the finish line via AI tools, agents, and web crawlers. Yes, the results will be cost-effective, and some might even appear victorious. So victorious, the folks in the big corner offices will celebrate, and this year’s bonus payout will surpass all targets as a result of these new, smaller, more efficient AI-driven teams delivering results that make the Wall Street left/right pocket shifters dance naked through the streets on their way to sing happy hour karaoke. But then what? Maybe you took a course on Game Theory. I did, during my time as an MBA student at Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management. The same nearsighted victors will come to realize their misstep, and that the financial results were not lasting, because the corner-cutting software they used to get there is available to all and the results are commoditized.

AI output is algebraically, deductively, and factually a commodity (See Merriam-Webster Dictionary). We can all create the same result for an accessible monthly price, as long as we ask the right questions. Don’t ask the right questions — drink the cyanide. For marketing strategy, it’s a lose/lose. I’d venture a guess many of these organizations will then about-face and quickly scramble to rehire the types of strategic minds they previously traded in for their inexpensive agentic replacements. By then, it will be too late. Strategic thought, calculated positioning, experienced leadership, and innovative & memorable creative will win the marketing war.

When we find ourselves living in a world where strategy becomes electronic groupthink, and innovation is defined by writing best-in-class queries, who will stand out? Those queries (yes, even the best of them) mine available information and return shiny presentations & machine-optimized plans. Those plans are built by summarizing the prior successes achieved through the independent thought of talented creatives, seasoned strategists, and inspiring leaders. Without proper input, there is no acceptable output. The result becomes a bunch of homogenized ideas competing with one another in a world where intelligence is artificial and intellect has given way to fast-fact foraging. Let’s call those future-state results, “Elderberries”. I like that; it has a nice ring to it.

Who wins in the end? The organizations smart enough to see that time bomb ticking today and forgo the quick dopamine hit of a celebratory earnings report in favor of the understanding that marketing’s intent is to break through, to be interesting, to feel unique, to provoke thought and (most importantly) to be memorable. Give it time. Play the long game. Let them have the battle, win the war. …And for now, let the markets think they’ve won, watch them dance with their fucktrophies at GunBae Karaoke on Murray Street, and stay the course. There will come a reckoning. While everyone else stacks their checkers gamepieces taunting, “King me!”, keep inching that queen one. pawn. closer. Checkmate.

Corporate America, bootstrapped startups, Wall Street hedge fund brokers, and those who seemingly opted out of that Game Theory course are busy out there laying off executives, winning on headcount and salaries, saving on overhead, and staffing up organizations full of entry-to-mid-level query mechanics. They pump out cheap, forgettable, single-use, vanilla-flavored-elderberry-cyanide-toxic commodities. They celebrate their self-destructive wins, cash their bonus checks, and belt out the soul-crushing lyrics to Katy Perry’s “Firework” (arguably some of the worst ever written). No, Katy, I have never felt like a plastic bag, but congrats on at least being innovative and memorable. I guess. Average slop speaks to the masses. It’s easily substituted, here today and gone tomorrow. Fast fashion wears no logo.

With each sip these brands take of the invisible & odorless poison, I pay a bit closer attention to the calculated organizations who opt not to take the bait. They lie in wait, as they watch their competitors and peers sprint to hire cheap labor and buddy ’em up with a MacBook (while, idiotically, the 2006 satirical film Idiocracy plays out in real life).

Well, guess what? The emperor is not wearing ‘new clothes’. He’s fucking naked. I said it. Someone had to. Enjoy the parade. They teach that fairy tale to toddlers in order to teach them what happens when people abandon independent thought and blindly trust the people around them. Maybe we need to read it again as a collective group of adult marketers. The real alpha marketing predators out there see this as an opportunity to press their foot to the gas pedal. Best part, there is so much talent available for the taking right now. Stack the deck. I seek out campaigns that arrest me, plant themselves in my brain, and compel me to act. Being able to spot the difference between a campfire and a dumpster fire should be obvious. Turns out, it is not. Enjoy your s’mores, children; mommy loves you.

I personally identify with the products, brands, causes, and initiatives that spark my curiosity and evoke an emotion deep in my soul. They speak to ME. I see a little piece of myself, or who I want to be, in them. My hunch is that you do too. Then, we tend to stick with those brands, causes, and initiatives because they actually mean something (repeat purchase = CLTV).

ALSO, YOU CAN HIRE ME. Blind resume drops, automated AI screening tools, and ATS systems must hate me. I’m convinced of this because they feed me rejection letters like Pop-Tarts each morning with my coffee for roles I could do in my sleep. Poetically, those same tools are simultaneously feeding organizations the perfect candidates, appearing perfectly matched to each job description, and boasting the highest relevancy scores. Well, I hate to inform the hiring managers out there of the obvious (maybe it isn’t obvious…yet?).

The applicants are using the same tools your hiring teams are using to dress themselves up as the silver bullet you seek. Yup, the tools work — for now. At least, they seem like they work — for now. Let me know how that turns out for you, please. There is no substitute for experience, understanding, and effort. That goes for the hiring side as well. The AI slop machine took over the manual process of candidate screening long before it started packaging marketing strategy as a commodity and laying off executives.

Garbage in, garbage out. Garbage out, garbage in. If you only read the CliffsNotes, you will never understand the significance of Tommy Lefroy (not the band, but they are great also…so check them out) to historical literature,e and I am not going to inform you. Do your own homework. There is no substitute for creativity, human intellect, and the purview gained through experience. There is so much talent out there all around you, and yet so many companies sit there with their screening tools feeding them butt-ass-naked emperors and wonder why their revenue is down, their competitor’s share is up, and still they can’t quite figure out why their marketing is such sloppy, boring, recycled trash. There is no back door to innovation and ingenuity. That back door leads to the parking lot. Give it time. It might not be a popular perspective at the moment, in this AI climate catastrophe we find ourselves. It could take longer, and it might cost more. Knights take down kings all the time. Suprise. CHESS, NOT CHECKERS.

I grew up in a world where having all of the right answers signaled to a teacher the answer key was stolen. We used to expel for that behavior and call it a learning opportunity; now we encourage it, celebrate it on Wall Street, and stack companies full of people to teach it. WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE.

IF THIS MADE YOU THINK, PLEASE SHARE. Yes, this is an advertisement. I am the product. So, if you disagree with my take and comment, you are actually helping the reach. If you agree with me, awesome. But my goal is not to persuade you. If you read this far, I already proved my point. This is innovative marketing. Yes, of course I know how to use AI tools and integrate them into my workflow. I use them daily. I need to reiterate that because my job requires my use of AI.

Most recently, I took a company from the brink of bankruptcy back to profitability, and ultimately that resulted in a major acquisition. I did this via automation and AI tool integration. I also did this through mining the data and replacing transactional, time-consuming tasks with automated workflows, advanced CRM tools, automated reporting, modern digitization, and the optimization and reallocation of their marketing spend. They fought all of the above kicking and screaming. Until the check cleared. Guess what? That wasn’t the first time either. Two companies in a row.

AI did not help me to develop that strategic approach or interpret the data that set us down that path. Experience, understanding, and perspective did that. There is a place for AI in marketing. I’m not a dinosaur. However, AI will not replace strategic thinking in the quest for long-term profitability.

I took the time to write this out not only to share my perspective, but to provoke thought, spark a dialogue, and in the hopes that the exposure generated by your comments and shares will generate awareness (of me) and lead to an opportunity. The same automated tools that shortcut the hiring processes escort my resume into the dumpster, a whole lot, in favor of what must be a thriving nudist colony of inexpensive, inexperienced imposters by now (with exceptional, nearly perfect, probably, relevancy scores). That is called marketing strategy. See what I did there? To get results, we must think outside the box. Chess, not checkers.

To-date, I have personally applied for 2,562 open roles dating back to last fall (and those are just the ones I’ve managed to track). Yes, you read that right. Two thousand, five hundred, and sixty-two applications. Out of all the resumes I have dropped into that black hole, I can count on two hands the number of phone screens that have resulted. That’s just under four in one thousand, or .4%.

Would you keep completing online applications if less than 4 out of every 1000 would ever get seen? It is not that I am not getting jobs. That would assume I had a fair shot and lost. That happens too. That I can deal with. The fact of the matter is that I (and thousands upon thousands of others out there at this very moment) are not even getting the chance to get jobs. This system is broken, and this published article is my way of shouting, “Hey, look at me.” Either I have four heads (see profile photo) and suck at my job (see reference quotes, record-setting growth results, and two recent acquisitions), or applicant screening tools hate me. I don’t think I am alone in saying that these systems are overlooking an incredible number of talented marketers out there.

SO, WHY NOT HIRE ME? If you know of a connection looking to hire a proven marketing leader, or you have an open marketing/brand/growth leadership role in your organization, hit me up. I want to help, but you have to let me first. And to anyone else out there feeling this pain, you are not alone. Something has got to change. Unfortunately, something also tells me there are a lot of organizations about to learn that lesson the hard way, many when they go to file next year’s earnings report (and sober up from Katy Perry karaoke).

I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU. REACH OUT OR SHARE W/CONTACTS.
I’m open to anything and everything. FTE in-house, remote, fractional, freelance, even relocation for the right opportunity.
📧 justin.aston.hawkins@gmail.com
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👔 Find Me On LinkedIn

A RACE TO THE BOTTOM was originally published in Creative Passions 💖 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I was going to,
And then I thought,
But no one else thought it.

And I also heard it,
But no one else did.

So I started to wonder,
If probably, maybe, you know,
And then I came back to my senses,
What’s the sense,
So I stopped,
Even though it didn’t stop,
And kept ringing,
So I kept it to myself.

Isn’t that the way it goes?
Like, yes, you know,
We thought it,
But no one else did,
And when we heard it,
It was a little too late,
So we stopped,
If you know what I’m saying.

If You Know What I’m Saying was originally published in Creative Passions 💖 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Some people we see almost every day still have lives that remain largely unfamiliar. We know where they work, what they usually talk about, and perhaps something about their families. We exchange greetings, share conversations, and sometimes spend considerable time together. Yet we know only so much about them, and perhaps even less about what they know about us.

Then there are people we haven’t seen in months, sometimes years, whose presence in our lives feels entirely different. We may know very little about their current routines, but we remember how they think, what matters to them, and how they respond when something is genuinely important. When we finally speak, the conversation often feels less like becoming acquainted again and more like returning to something familiar.

This raises an interesting question about human relationships. If spending time together helps people become close, why do some relationships remain deeply meaningful despite long periods of separation, while others never develop the same closeness despite frequent contact? The answer may lie partly in the difference between having access to someone’s life and feeling that we have a meaningful place within it.

Familiarity Is Not the Same as Closeness

Frequent contact creates opportunities for relationships to develop. People who work together, live near one another, or share activities repeatedly exchange information, observe behavior, and build familiarity. Over time, those interactions can become the foundation of genuine friendship. But familiarity does not necessarily produce emotional intimacy.

We can spend years around someone without knowing how they experience disappointment, what they worry about privately, or which parts of their lives they rarely discuss. Our conversations may remain within the boundaries established by the circumstances that bring us together. We talk about work. We work together, talk about neighbors because we live nearby, or talk about shared activities. After all, those activities give us a reason to interact.

Nothing about these relationships is inherently superficial. Many are valuable precisely because they provide companionship, cooperation, and a sense of belonging within ordinary life. Not every relationship needs to become emotionally intimate to matter.

The distinction matters when we treat frequency of contact as a measure of emotional closeness. Seeing someone regularly tells us how often our lives intersect. It does not necessarily tell us how deeply we understand one another.

Someone we rarely see may know more about our emotional history than someone we see every morning. They may understand why certain situations affect us, recognize patterns in our behavior, or remember experiences that shaped our understanding of ourselves. That knowledge can create a familiarity that doesn’t depend entirely on continued physical presence.

Some Relationships Have Already Done the Work of Becoming Close

Building a friendship usually requires time. People gradually discover whether they enjoy each other’s company, can trust one another, and share compatible expectations for the relationship. They learn which subjects are comfortable, where disagreements may arise, and how much honesty the relationship can accommodate.

Much of this process happens through repeated experiences rather than deliberate conversations about friendship. Someone sees us during a difficult period and responds with understanding. We disagree about something important without losing respect for one another. We reveal an insecurity and discover that it will not be used against us. We experience disappointment, success, embarrassment, and change in one another’s company.

Over time, these experiences create knowledge that goes beyond remembering facts about a person’s life. We develop expectations about how the relationship works and what we can reasonably trust it to provide. Once we have that understanding, we may not need to rebuild it every time two people meet.

This helps explain why certain friendships can withstand long interruptions. The relationship has already established a history of trust and emotional recognition. Although circumstances change, both people may retain a sufficiently stable understanding of what they mean to one another.

That does not make the relationship immune to neglect. Trust can weaken, people can change, and years of separation can reveal that an earlier closeness no longer exists. But some relationships have a foundation strong enough that periods of reduced contact don’t immediately erase their significance.

Being Understood Can Matter More Than Being Updated

Knowing what has happened in someone’s life is different from understanding what those experiences mean to them. Someone who sees us regularly may know we changed jobs, moved to another neighborhood, or started a new relationship. Someone we rarely see may not know any of these things until we tell them. Yet that person may understand the emotional significance of those changes more readily because they know something about the history behind our decisions.

They may remember why leaving a previous job was difficult, why moving away from a familiar place mattered, or why trusting someone new required considerable courage. Their understanding gives new information context that another person might lack.

This is one reason emotional closeness cannot be measured simply by how much current information two people exchange. A friendship can contain frequent updates without much personal understanding, just as another can contain relatively infrequent conversations that reach important emotional territory.

Of course, knowing someone’s past does not guarantee understanding their present. As people grow older, they develop new priorities, revise their beliefs, and respond differently to experiences. A friend who assumes that nothing has changed may misunderstand us precisely because they believe they know us so well.

The strongest enduring friendships seem to allow both continuity and change. They preserve enough familiarity to make recognition possible while remaining open to discovering who the other person has become.

Distance Can Change What a Relationship Asks of Us

Relationships are shaped not only by affection but also by the practical circumstances in which they exist. People who see one another frequently may become involved in each other’s schedules, obligations, disagreements, and everyday frustrations. Their relationship must accommodate the ordinary demands of shared life. They may need to negotiate expectations, respond to requests, or manage differences that become visible through regular contact.

Friends who rarely meet may experience fewer of these demands. Their interactions can become more deliberate because time together is limited. Instead of discussing whatever comes up during the day, they may choose to talk about subjects that feel personally meaningful. This can make their conversations seem unusually satisfying.

However, it also introduces an important complication. A friendship built mainly on occasional conversations may be protected from some of the difficulties that come with sustained involvement in another person’s life.

We may feel especially comfortable with someone partly because we do not have to negotiate the same practical responsibilities with them. We enter the relationship under circumstances that let its most enjoyable qualities emerge. That does not make the closeness imaginary. It means the relationship operates under different conditions.

Sometimes distance preserves emotional connection. Sometimes it protects an idealized version of a relationship from the tests of ordinary life. Distinguishing between the two requires considering whether the friendship could accommodate disagreement, disappointment, and changing expectations, rather than judging it only by how pleasant reunions feel.

The Comfort of Not Having to Explain Everything

One of the most reassuring qualities of an established friendship is knowing we don’t have to give a complete account of ourselves every time we speak. We can mention an experience without explaining every detail that makes it significant. We can refer to a family situation, a familiar concern, or an old ambition and trust the other person understands some of its background. This shared knowledge reduces the effort it takes to be understood.

In newer relationships, even ordinary disclosures can require considerable explanation. We may need to describe the circumstances surrounding a decision, clarify why an event affected us, or explain why something that appears unimportant to another person carries emotional weight for us. With an old friend, some of that context already exists.

The result is not necessarily a deeper conversation every time. Sometimes the pleasure comes from talking about entirely ordinary things without feeling we must carefully construct an understandable version of ourselves. We can be less concerned with presenting our history because we already share part of it.

This may also explain why certain people remain psychologically important even when they are no longer part of our daily lives. They remember experiences that few others witnessed. Their presence connects us to periods of our lives that have otherwise become distant. They know something about who we were, and their continued recognition can help us feel continuity between our past and present selves.

When Memory Keeps a Friendship Alive

Memory plays an important role in maintaining relationships across time. We do not remember every conversation or interaction with someone. Instead, certain experiences become especially significant in how we understand the relationship. We remember who stayed during a difficult period, who understood an uncomfortable truth, or who shared an experience that remains meaningful long afterward.

These memories influence what we expect from the person even when we are apart. When we think of an old friend, we may not be thinking primarily about how recently we spoke. We may recall the relationship’s accumulated meaning, including experiences that continue to shape our feelings toward them.

Yet memory is selective. We can preserve a warm understanding of a friendship while forgetting disagreements, frustrations, or the reasons contact became less frequent. Distance can make it easier to remember a relationship through its most meaningful moments rather than through the full complexity of its history.

This becomes especially noticeable when people reunite after many years. Sometimes the emotional familiarity survives the separation. At other times, they discover the person they remember no longer matches the person standing before them.

Neither outcome is necessarily a failure. Relationships exist between people who keep changing, and shared history doesn’t guarantee lasting compatibility. The question is whether affection preserved through memory can make room for present realities.

Closeness Still Requires Some Form of Care

It would be misleading to conclude that meaningful friendships can survive indefinitely without attention. Even relationships built on considerable trust can weaken when neither person makes an effort to remain involved. Important changes go unnoticed, opportunities for support disappear, and assumptions about mutual affection may eventually replace evidence that the relationship remains active.

People also differ in what they need from friendship. For some, regular communication is essential to feeling valued. For others, occasional contact is sufficient because the relationship remains emotionally secure between conversations.

Neither expectation is automatically unreasonable. Problems arise when two people understand contact differently. One person may interpret silence as evidence of trust and independence. The other may experience the same silence as indifference. Both may believe the friendship matters, yet their different expectations can gradually create disappointment.

This is why the ability to resume a conversation after a long absence shouldn’t become an excuse to take someone for granted. A friendship may not require constant attention, but it still benefits from showing interest, responding during important moments, and recognizing when the other person’s needs have changed. Sometimes a brief message matters less for what it contains than for confirming that the relationship still occupies a place in someone’s thoughts.

What We Really Mean When We Say We Feel Close

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of these friendships is what they teach us about emotional closeness. We often describe relationships through visible measures. We know how frequently people meet, how often they communicate, and how long they have known one another. These details help, but they cannot fully explain why some relationships feel more significant than others.

Closeness also involves being recognized, understood, accepted, and remembered. It means trusting that another person knows your inner life in a meaningful way and that this knowledge hasn’t disappeared simply because circumstances have changed.

Such feelings can develop through regular interaction, but they don’t always match it. This helps explain why someone who lives nearby may remain a pleasant acquaintance while someone living thousands of miles away continues to feel like an important part of our life. The difference is not that distance creates intimacy. Once established, intimacy can remain meaningful despite distance.

And perhaps there is another distinction worth considering. We do not necessarily feel closest to the people who know the most facts about us. We may feel closest to those who understand which facts matter, why they matter, and how they fit into the person we have become.

Friendships that endure over time aren’t always the ones with the most conversations, visits, or shared routines. They are often the ones where both people keep recognizing something important about each other, even as their lives take different directions.

We may not know everything that happened since we last spoke. We may need time to understand the changes that have taken place. But when the relationship stays grounded in genuine affection, trust, and curiosity about one another’s lives, the distance between meetings doesn’t have to become the distance between people. Sometimes the most meaningful evidence of closeness is not how often someone appears in our daily life, but how naturally we can make room for each other when our lives meet again.

Further Reading

Aron, Arthur, Edward Melinat, Elaine N. Aron, Robert Darrin Vallone, and Renee J. Bator. 1997. “The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 23 (4): 363–377. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167297234003.

Fehr, Beverley. 1996. Friendship Processes. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. https://www.sagepub.com/shop/buy-a-book/friendship-processes-1-5337.

Hall, Jeffrey A. 2019. “How Many Hours Does It Take to Make a Friend?” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 36 (4): 1278–1296. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407518761225.

Ledbetter, Andrew M. 2009. “Family Communication Patterns and Relational Maintenance Behavior: Direct and Mediated Associations with Friendship Closeness.” Human Communication Research 35 (1): 130–147. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2008.01341.x.

Oswald, Debra L., Eddie M. Clark, and Cheryl M. Kelly. 2004. “Friendship Maintenance: An Analysis of Individual and Dyad Behaviors.” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 23 (3): 413–441. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.23.3.413.35460.

Roberts, Sam G. B., and Robin I. M. Dunbar. 2011. “Communication in Social Networks: Effects of Kinship, Network Size, and Emotional Closeness.” Personal Relationships 18 (3): 439–452. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2010.01310.x.

Why We Sometimes Feel Closer to People We Rarely See was originally published in Creative Passions 💖 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Some people make us become slightly different versions of ourselves. We talk more. We laugh more easily. Stories come to mind that we had forgotten, and we say things without rehearsing them first. A side of our personality that seems quiet around other people suddenly becomes effortless.

Sometimes the difference is noticeable enough that we describe it as something the other person does. We say they bring out the best in us, make us come out of our shell, or somehow make us more comfortable. But perhaps they are not adding anything to us. Perhaps they are simply creating a relationship in which we no longer feel the need to subtract so much from ourselves.

We Are Not the Same With Everyone

We like to imagine personality as something relatively stable. We are funny or serious, outgoing or reserved, confident or uncertain. These descriptions make it easier to believe one consistent self moves through all our relationships, but everyday experience complicates that picture.

The person who seems quiet at work may become animated at dinner with an old friend. Someone who carefully measures every sentence around one family member may speak without hesitation around another. A person who considers themselves shy may discover that shyness barely appears with certain people. None of this necessarily means we are pretending. Different relationships make different parts of us easier to express.

Every conversation contains more than words. We are also noticing how the other person responds to us. Do they seem interested? Do they interrupt? Do they misunderstand us easily? Can disagreement remain disagreement without becoming conflict? Do we have to explain the joke, soften the opinion, justify the feeling, or watch for signs that we have said too much? Much of this happens so quickly that we barely notice, yet it can shape which parts of us show up in the conversation.

Some Relationships Require More Self-Monitoring

Some people make us unusually self-aware. We think about how something will sound before saying it. We decide whether a story is worth telling. We soften an opinion before anyone objects. We monitor the other person’s face while we speak, looking for evidence that we should continue, clarify, retreat, or change direction.

Some of this is ordinary social awareness. Relationships require consideration, and speaking without regard for another person is not the same as being authentic. But self-awareness can gradually become self-monitoring. When that happens, part of our attention is no longer participating fully in the interaction because it is busy supervising us from the outside.

We may find ourselves talking while evaluating how we are talking, laughing while wondering whether we laughed too loudly, or explaining something while simultaneously deciding whether the explanation has become too long. The conversation may still be pleasant, and the relationship may even matter to us, but being ourselves in it requires work. Then we encounter someone around whom that supervision becomes quieter.

Comfort Changes What Becomes Available to Us

One of the most interesting things about feeling comfortable with someone is that comfort doesn't just make us relaxed. It can make us more available. Humor requires a certain freedom. So does curiosity. So does storytelling. Even disagreement becomes easier when we do not expect every difference to threaten the relationship.

When we spend less time managing ourselves, we have attention for other things. We can follow an unexpected thought, ask the question that occurs to us, tell a story with no obvious point, admit we don't know something, or change our minds halfway through a sentence. The conversation becomes less about maintaining an acceptable version of ourselves and more about actually participating in what is happening.

This may explain why some people seem more interesting. Perhaps we are not actually more interesting around them; we are less inhibited. The distinction matters because otherwise we can mistakenly credit another person with qualities that were already ours. They did not give us our humor; they made it easier to risk using it. They did not give us our curiosity; they responded to it in a way that encouraged it to continue. They did not create our personality; they created conditions for more of it to appear.

We Sometimes Discover Ourselves Through Other People

This complicates the idea that knowing ourselves is entirely an individual process. We often think self-knowledge comes from looking inward. We examine our thoughts, question our motives, remember our experiences, and try to understand why we behave as we do. Relationships, however, provide another kind of information because they show us what becomes possible in us under different conditions.

Someone may spend years believing they are not particularly talkative until they form a friendship where conversations routinely last for hours. Someone who thinks they dislike disagreement may discover they actually dislike how disagreement has been handled in certain relationships. Someone who believes they are emotionally guarded may realize that openness appears naturally when they do not expect vulnerability to be used against them.

The relationship reveals something that introspection alone could easily miss: sometimes what we call a personality trait is partly a response to an environment. That does not mean every uncomfortable version of ourselves is someone else’s responsibility, nor does it mean the people around whom we feel most uninhibited are automatically the healthiest people for us. Comfort can mislead us too. Still, the differences are worth noticing because they raise useful questions about who we become around different people and what each relationship seems to require of us.

Their Absence Can Reveal What Their Presence Was Doing

Sometimes we understand this only after a person is no longer part of our ordinary life. A colleague changes jobs. A neighbor moves. A friendship becomes less frequent. Someone who used to appear naturally in our week is suddenly missing. At first, we may think we miss the person, and of course we may. But sometimes another absence lies beneath that one: we miss who we were around them.

Perhaps we laughed more. Perhaps we complained less. Perhaps ordinary errands became conversations. Perhaps we were more playful, more thoughtful, or more willing to say what had been on our minds. A version of ourselves may have appeared so naturally in their company that we never recognized it as something the relationship sustained.

Their absence can therefore feel strangely larger than the amount of time we actually spent together. We didn't just lose access to another person. We also lost one of the places where a particular part of ourselves regularly appeared. What we miss may be inseparable from the person, but it may also tell us something about ourselves that we had never needed to notice while they were still there.

Notice Where You Require Less Editing

There is a temptation to turn this realization into a simple rule: keep the people who make you feel like yourself and avoid the people who do not. Human relationships are rarely that clean. We behave differently with a parent than with a friend, differently with a colleague than with a spouse, and differently in relationships that ask different things of us. Maturity sometimes requires restraint. Intimacy sometimes requires difficult conversations. Feeling completely effortless around someone is not the only measure of a worthwhile relationship.

But it is still important to notice where we continually edit ourselves and where we don’t. The goal is not to behave identically everywhere. The differences themselves can teach us something. Some people make us smaller because we expect little room for anything else. We perform around people because we have learned which version of us gets the easiest response. And with some people, we stop thinking so much about which version of ourselves we are supposed to be.

Those relationships can feel unusually alive, not necessarily because the other person is extraordinary, but because having less to manage can feel extraordinary. We leave the conversation thinking about what we discussed rather than reviewing what we said. We remember laughing instead of wondering how we appeared.

Maybe part of the answer is that we are not only looking forward to them. We are also looking forward to meeting the version of ourselves that seems to show up when they do.

Further Reading

Kernis, Michael H., and Brian M. Goldman. 2006. “A Multicomponent Conceptualization of Authenticity: Theory and Research.” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 38: 283–357. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38006-9.

Reis, Harry T., and Phillip Shaver. 1988. “Intimacy as an Interpersonal Process.” In Handbook of Personal Relationships: Theory, Research and Interventions, edited by Steve Duck, 367–389. Chichester, England: Wiley.

Snyder, Mark. 1974. “Self-Monitoring of Expressive Behavior.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 30 (4): 526–537. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0037039.

Why Some People Make Us Feel More Like Ourselves was originally published in Creative Passions 💖 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

First Thought

I didn’t mean to.
That wasn’t my intention.
I was only thinking out loud.
I saw what they did.
Sometimes it’s nice to look the other way.
What were you thinking?
I only thought, you know, just thoughts.
Who would’ve imagined?
Daily thoughts, you know.
Crossed my mind.

Second Thought

Is that what you meant?
What do you think they meant?
When did that change?
Is everything ironic?
What changed so fast?
How come they see everything differently?
Do we live in the same world?
Daily thoughts, you know.
Crossed my mind.

Third Thought

I saw what they did.
I was stunned.
Were you?
Who else was?
Did they care?
What did they say?
Did they do anything?
Could they’ve done anything?
What were they watching?
And the rest, what were they doing?
Did what happened matter?
What else mattered?
Who was “planning” to do anything?
I was wondering what “planning” meant.
What use is the project if it doesn’t resolve anything?
How many projects are futile?
But projects are inanimate objects.
What about the people who run the project?
What are projects anyway?
Did anyone else have such thoughts?
What were they thinking?
Daily thoughts, you know.
Crossed my mind.

Fourth Thought

I wondered.
Saw them wonder too.
I didn’t speak, though.
They didn’t either.
Although,
They insinuated.
And I felt it.
They showed it.
It was vibes.
Yup, there were vibes.
So vibrant, electric.
Wondering who felt them, too.
I was sitting,
Alone,
And then I thought.
Couldn’t help it.
Daily thoughts, you know.
Crossed my mind.
So I wrote.

Fifth Thought

How was I?
How were they?
Who did what?
For what?
Who?
The process of writing a book.
The process of thinking.
Thoughts, writing.
Research. Yup, research.
Not all from memory,
Or imagination.
Glimpses of, you know, a glimpse.
Of probably, I don’t know what,
And I’m sure you don’t,
Or do you? What do you say?
So we said,
Yes, we did,
Both of us,
And it was,
Yes, we wrote it,
And there, they saw it.
Some said something,
Others didn’t care,
And most didn’t even read it,
But it was out there,
Thoughts, and research, and glimpses,
Thoughts I wanted to share,
You know, just thoughts,
Crossed my mind.
So here I wrote.
And I wondered if anyone thought the same.

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Daily Thoughts was originally published in Creative Passions 💖 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.