Consciously Curating Connection

Image: The adopted friendship group: forty-five years of shared history, one newcomer.

At 51, I have brilliant friends scattered across the globe - people I've known for decades and others I've just met. Yet I still feel lonely at times. How can someone be both connected and isolated?

The answer lies in my patterns. I'm a serial retreater who disappears when life gets complicated, cutting myself off from the very people who might help. I learned early that admitting struggle could be used against me, so I vanish instead. Add in the hollow promises of social media (likes that nourish less than fairy bread) and connection becomes work. Hard work that I often can't manage when I'm already depleted.

I needed a new approach to tackle this loneliness, so I turned to research. Here are some thing I learned (and felt a little daft that I didn’t know).

Our brains didn't evolve to be thinking machines, they're social machines (Lieberman, 2013). When idle, your brain defaults to: What's Eva thinking? Is my boss annoyed? Why did that person look funny? This constant social processing is exhausting because we're wired for village life, not digital isolation with thousands of strangers.

The mismatch explains why modern connection feels so draining and why social rejection literally hurts. Did you know your brain can't distinguish between heartbreak and a broken bone (Lieberman, 2013)? Research shows (less surprisingly) that face-to-face relationships provide the most health benefits, with digital communication offering the least biological nourishment (Pinker, 2017).

Not great news for someone working remotely, building a business online, far from family. But there's hope.

A Reckoning That Comes with Depletion

After burning out and retreating yet again, I found myself in Athens rebuilding work, life, connections. This time though I decided to experiment. Instead of "social drift", taking whatever connections come your way, I became deliberately selective about where I invest my burnout sapped energy.

I met Deborah and we bonded over massive life transitions. With her, I can say "I'm sometimes devastated about feeling removed from my family, and other times acknowledge the need for distance" instead of just "I'm stressed", what researchers call "emotional granularity" (Brown, 2012). And this was in our first conversation! Alex, a gym trainer, turned casual gym salutations into philosophical discussions about overstimulation and literary fiction that somehow fuel my workouts. These exchanges satisfy what Lieberman calls our brain's "mentalising network", our need to understand others' thinking patterns in order to better connect.

Let’s compare this with the gym dude who talked at me during our first encounter, hunting me down in every gap in his training to tell me more about his view on anything, whether I cared about it or not.  This became a very short-lived connection as I promptly asked him not to distract me while training - something my former self wouldn’t have done for fear of ‘not being kind’. Oh no, we had to nip that dissatisfying spectacle in the bud, fast.

The Adoption Experiment

The most intriguing experiment involved being adopted by an established Greek friendship group, forty-five years of shared history, and I've spent maybe 45 hours total in their company. Research suggests joining existing networks provides different benefits than building from scratch because you inherit social capital and trust patterns (Pinker, 2017).

But integration is trickier than expected. I often feel left out of conversations rooted in decades of cultural context and school memories, delivered in their first language, my second. Local references fly over my head, inside jokes feel foreign. Yet I'm genuinely curious about their world, happy receiving their laughter, shared stories, and dialogue from smart, genuinely awesome people.

Being the perpetual outsider feels vulnerable, but I'm leaning into connection that doesn't always require reciprocal exchange. Sometimes witnessing others' lives with appreciation is enough. I'm discovering that the graceful periphery is its own form of belonging - not central membership, but a valued place at the edge of something beautiful that predates me by decades.

Conscious Curation Versus the Village

This raises a fundamental question: should we consciously curate a few meaningful relationships, or embed ourselves in larger networks of mixed-quality connections like traditional village life?

The research (again not surprisingly) suggests both. Quality trumps quantity with authentic relationships providing more neurological benefit than superficial ones, releasing oxytocin and reducing stress hormones (Lieberman, 2013). But Pinker's longevity studies reveal that even low-quality social contact provides health benefits. Those Sardinian centenarians weren't necessarily surrounded by their favourite people, and yet the gossipy neighbour, grumpy shopkeeper, and irritating cousin all contributed to a social safety net (Pinker, 2017).

This creates tension in modern life. Conscious curation lets us invest in nourishing relationships, but requires energy that might not be available during vulnerable times. The village model provides automatic social contact - you see people whether you want to or not - but offers no guarantee of quality.

Turn out we need both: carefully chosen intimate relationships plus regular, predictable social contact that doesn't depend on our emotional state.

My Recipe for Conscious Connection

We research restaurants for hours but leave our most fundamental human need to chance. My Athens experiment currently points to connection of a hybrid nature: conscious curation plus accepting whatever social contact your environment provides.

My recipe, for the moment, has three layers. First, the intentional relationships - friends like Deborah and Alex who satisfy my need for emotional intimacy and intellectual stimulation. These require energy to maintain but offer genuine connection where I can be real, not just smiley. Who doesn’t want to talk about last years Booker Prize winner before your next set of push-ups?

Second, the adoptive friendship group: being welcomed into forty-five years of shared history where I exist on the graceful periphery. Not central membership, but a valued place at the edge of something beautiful that predates me. Sometimes witnessing others' lives with appreciation is connection enough.

Third, the automatic interactions within my 1km radius: Spiridoula the baker, Nikos the green grocer, Elpida at the dry cleaner, Kari at gym reception. When I'm struggling, I still need bread, so I still get human contact without emotional labour.

This hybrid approach proved very useful during my recent three-day perimenopausal isolation. Conscious curation failed me and I couldn't summon energy to reach carefully chosen friends. But village-style automatic interactions forced contact regardless of my hormonal state. Sometimes survival connection comes down to grabbing bread and chatting with the local baker.

The recipe requires patience and understanding of the people in your life. Social connections develop slowly, especially from a depleted baseline. Some days you'll have energy only for automatic interactions, others for deeper investment. But for those of us rebuilding social architecture from scratch, the question becomes: will we approach connection with the same intentionality we bring to everything else essential for survival?

References

Brown, B. (2012). Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. Gotham Books.

Lieberman, M. D. (2013). Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect. Crown Publishers.

Pinker, S. (2017). The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier and Happier. Random House Canada.