Let Common Interests Be the Catalyst for New Relationships

Establishing new relationships can be difficult, especially when you’re an introvert. Shared interests can help you reach out and make the first move.

When my first wife Lois and I moved into our house in Bloomington, Minnesota in 2001, I spent most evenings sitting in a plastic chair on the front lawn, taking in the sights and sounds so that I could get a feel for the people and happenings in our quiet new neighborhood.

Just a few days after Lois and I had fully settled in, following months of stress in a then-frenzied housing market—and with Lois just weeks away from delivering our first child—I met Becky as she was walking past our driveway.

It was love at first sight.

Becky was beautiful. Friendly, outgoing, a ray of sunshine. I was drawn to her immediately. She so reminded me of a happy relationship from my past.

The feeling was clearly mutual. Whenever I saw Becky in the days that followed, she always seemed as happy to see me as I was to see her.

Get your mind out of the gutter.

Becky was a young and spirited black Labrador Retriever.

And I loved her because she was a physical and behavioral clone of my old dog Skipper, the black Lab we had growing up.

I also loved her because she helped me get to know her two owners.

Eventually.

Better Late Than Never

I say “eventually” because, in true form that only a dog-loving introvert like me could demonstrate, I asked what Becky’s name was on that very first night she was walking by with her owners.

But it would take me a year before I asked the owners what their names were.

(Linda and Dave, as it turns out. Before that, I simply referred to them as “Becky’s mom” and “Becky’s dad.”)

Linda and Dave became our first and closest friends in the neighborhood. In the years ahead, in fact, they would become rocks in our lives—an extra set of parents, really—as Lois battled metastatic melanoma. (She died of the disease in 2012.)

All during Lois’s long cancer fight, my beautiful Becky would happen by at just the right time, lifting my mood and—especially—snapping me back to the here and now, if only briefly, giving me respite from the dark future I was constantly imagining. And dreading.

For me, dogs are not only builders of new relationships; they’re the crucial new-relationship starters I need.

We introverts are pretty good 
at cultivating existing relationships, after all, especially in one-on-one situations.

It’s beginning relationships—taking a chance on a first encounter with someone new—that often proves so difficult, often stopping us from making the attempt at all.

A Ticket to New Relationships

How can we—you—make that initial interaction easier, and thus more likely to occur?

Leverage something you have in common with your new counterpart, whether you stumble upon it (as I stumbled upon Becky) or seek it out (as when you join a local professional group or special-interest group).

Dogs—namely, other people’s dogs—work great for me.

In fact, I used my dog strategy again not long ago, during a glorious 90 minutes my family and I spent on the eastern side of Lake Tahoe in Nevada, where we had stopped before driving on to San Francisco to drop our son Theo off at college.

Yes, the lake itself was stunning. So were the surrounding mountains. And the trees. And all the rest.

But you know what else made our day at Tahoe so memorable, for me at least?

The dogs upon dogs upon dogs people had there, a few of which sparked cordial conversations—including one with a man from San Francisco who reassured Theo about the wisdom of his college choice.

When you’re an introvert, your best connecting catalyst is the common interest—the mutual passion you share with someone else.

What is that for you?