The electric fence stopped working years ago

> I just stopped having a filter. When I think of someone, I just fire off a message

This.

I'm spending the week in my hometown with my 9-year old daughter to give her the chance of some time with her grandparents. We live hundreds of miles (and several countries) away.

While walking along I mentioned to her that an old college friend of mine also lived in this town along with her husband and their daughter.

For perspective: way back then we shared a house, during that time we both ground through our PhDs in parallel, later she and her husband came to our wedding, we went to their wedding, all that stuff.

I explained to my daughter that we've not been in touch for the best part of 20 years and I was a bit sad about that.

<my daughter thought for a bit>

my daughter: "did you have a fight?"

me: "no! of course not! why do you ask?"

my daughter: "maybe you should just write to her"

I've got some sort of facial blindness. It's hard to tell exactly how it works because I've got a bunch of unconscious coping mechanisms for identifying people.

One of the times I got it comically wrong was in college where I made a friend for a semester because I thought he was someone I already knew. So I can absolutely believe that attitude and approach makes a huge difference because I've been in at least one scenario where falsely believing I was friends with someone was all it took to be friends.

Did you like you classmates. What if you didnt. One of the great freedoms is you can pick your friends.

> The message doesn't have any warnings on it like "oh I know it's been a while" or "you might not remember me".

Yes. I do this too and wish more people would.

The qualifications, the "what have you been up to?"s -- such mind-numbingly boring conventions. Who wants to go through a "catchup" interview before talking about what's interesting. If that's the price, it's not worth it.

"Assuming rapport" is hugely important for developing and maintaining connections. People often are not sure how they feel about you or where your relationship stands, so they look for hints in how you feel about them. If you are polite and formal, you are telling them the two of you are not close. If you excited to see them and tell you about the hotdog you ate yesterday, you're taking the lead and setting a tone that's close and familiar.

We're basically wired to consider social cues and signals. Maybe 10% of the time we make a logical judgement of "I really do/don't want to be friends with this person because xyz" and the other 90% is just reading/sending vibes.

Thank you so much for sharing this! What you’re doing is honestly amazing. You skip the negotiation about whether we’re allowed to be human with each other. You just assume connection is the default.

The truth is that people mirror the energy you bring. Show up tentative, they’ll be tentative. Show up like old friends, and suddenly you are.

Just refusing to install the system default software that makes us all strangers. And teaching us that the only thing between us and connection is believing we need permission to care.

Wow. This is so simple it blows my mind. It’s obvious, now that I see it. Suddenly I simultaneously realize how much I make it suck to talk to me and how easily I could change that. Thanks for sharing.

Can recommend this. I have terrible memory so I make it a point to reach out and text (or even sometimes call, if it's a special occasion!) whenever people come to mind.

It can mean the world to people sometime. If you've ever had anybody making your day or week by just reaching out, remember that you can be that person too!

It's so easy for people to drift apart. Many people in my parent's generation didn't do a great job keeping in touch with folks and end up lonely or isolated. Avoiding that is as simple as taking a moment to let someone know you were thinking of them.

Commenting to say that I truly admire your attitude. You are the person I wish I was to my friends and hope to be some day again. I used to strive for this kind of approach to relationships but around COVID-19 it seems like I didn't have any gas in the tank left.

> Some people will keep tabs on when someone last contacted them, and hold it against them.

I don't worry about this because as soon as they let me know, I just don't reach out any more. Life's too short to waste time on those types.

If they're family, then I just ignore them or mock them for being creepy. Jokingly, of course, because I'm not stuck with them, they're stuck with me!

> I never had this fake sense of shame or embarrassment

It's not fake. Just because you don't experience it doesn't mean it isn't real

You're right, we see everyone else's fences perfectly while blind to our own.

Here's what helped me most, when I hit a painful thought, I try to think about it as, "What are you protecting me from?"

Usually it's something that happened once, often years ago. Next time you feel that electric fence, just notice it. Then take one tiny step towards it (Joe Hudson talks about this as emotional fluency). The fence will beep (your emotions). You'll feel the old pain. But nothing actually happens. And slowly, slowly, you realize you're actually free.

And that is exactly how it is in that dog's brain. In his mind, the electric fence is alive and well.

That is the whole point of the article.

That's true, but absent psychological manipulation or something truly devious and nefarious, a short text message is low risk, and is unlikely to open up a painful can of worms.

And I don't think the point of that statement was that you should be contacting anyone and everyone, just because they entered your mind. It's not saying you should get in touch to say hello to that abusive ex just because you thought about them. But firing off a quick text to someone you found interesting but lost touch with is pretty much always going to be harmless.

Chesterton's Fence applies to institutional/societal structures with unknown origins, not personal relationships where the history is known to you. The principle encourages understanding before removal, not perpetual inaction when reasons are already clear.

This can sometimes be the case, but barring something tangibly dangerous or concerning, talking is cheap and communication is hard. If someone really is a problem, I'd rather know and consciously decide to not associate with them than I would risk losing a potential great relationship because I was nervous about something I couldn't quantify.

YMMV. It'd be a learning experience either way.

Yeah. I went to my high school reunion. It was a nice evening, but ultimately, I remembered why I was an outcast back then. Recently I reached out to a few old friends. I spent an hour talking to one via phone, and at the end I was like... I don't want this. I set up a meeting with another guy and the moment he walked in I knew this was going to be a very long and very boring evening. Yet another dude called me and invited to visit him and god christ I was happy when it was over because I couldn't get him to smile even once.

Dead friendships should stay dead, unless they naturally come back to life because of other circumstances.

Do you not think that maybe those people care about you and would like to know how you are? I appreciate that you have your boundaries, but it doesn't sound like you're considering their point of view. Or maybe you are but it isn't conveyed in post well.

For bears, the advice we got from Fish and Wildlife was to bait the fence with aluminum foil smeared with bacon grease. That gets the bear to touch it with their sensitive nose. If they brush up against it with their thick fur, they won't notice. A good zap on the nose will teach them.

I can confirm your note about footwear mattering. I'm way too cheap (read: stupid) to buy an electric fence tester, so I just touch the fence. In dry shoes, it's noticeable. The one time I did it in wet sneakers, it definitely got my attention. For what it's worth, we have about the smallest fencer Tractor Supply sells (it just has to go around the chicken coop). I betcha a 50 mile fencer would just about make your hair stand up on end.

It does. That's a standard "party trick". You make people see how little the fence hurts and then you make everyone hold hands and the last person touches the fence and it hurts the people closer to the fence way worse

I once had an old High School friend contact me.

At first, I was glad to hear from him.

...then, he started talking...

I was never annoyed by people checking in for innocent reasons.

I was, though, when they immediately started asking for money or invited me to join some MLM scheme. Fortunately, that happened just three times or so.

Fair point! The irony isn't lost on me, writing about breaking free from systems while building another one. Sometimes we need training wheels before we can ride free. The goal is shifting the mindset, and ultimately making the systems unnecessary eventually.