Why this book exists
A focused place to understand what is happening
I want to tell you the two things this book is going to argue, because they are not what you expect and you should know before you commit an evening. The first is that you are already liked, considerably more than you believe, by people who are not being polite. This is not encouragement. It is a finding, with a name and a literature, replicated in laboratories and student halls and workshops, and it says that human beings systematically underestimate how much other people like them after a conversation. The sinking feeling on the walk home is not data. It has never been data. You have been making thirty years of decisions on the basis of an instrument that is not connected to anything. The second is harder. The reason you cannot feel any of that.
The writing is designed to reduce shame, bring the underlying pattern into view and give you practical ways to respond without pretending that every life follows the same formula.
