You're always with yourself, always. Because of this, you can only experience another person in the context of you being there. Another way to say this is: you can’t know what someone is like when you’re not there. Every read you have on another person is a read on them-with-you. If your friend always complains, it might be that they’re a complainy person around everyone. But it might mean they only complain around you. How could this be so? We change social dynamics in ways we don’t realize. In this example, there may be things we’re unintentionally doing to incentivize complaining. Maybe you allow them to keep complaining while others cut them off abruptly or change the topic. Maybe you give great advice and they feel relieved when they talk to you. We just can’t know what people are like without us being there. And others don’t know who we are without them. In the reverse of complainy, when we’re hanging out with someone and it feels like flow—fun, funny, effortless—it’s a dynamic we should pay attention to (and be grateful for). There’s something the other person is doing that allows this chemistry to spark. And it really is chemistry. Sodium and chlorine make salt. Essential. Sodium and water violently combust. Water, in all its beauty, is like, “Fucking sodium, so fucking violent.” Little does water know it’s the combination. This relates to getting and giving feedback, which is always warped because feedback is given as though it’s universal, but it’s also highly context dependent.