Well intimacy is created by honesty. Yeah you can try to make a bunch of objective fake friends by talking about some movie everybody saw. But your real friends are the ones as cheesy as it sounds 'get your heart.'

You only get somebody to accept the real you by taking risks and being open about what emotionally bothers you, not making witty quips about pop songs. Don't get me wrong I love stuff like that too. I have found close friends often share a lot of the same struggles and personal vulnerabilities, they are sort of 'weak against' and 'strong against' similar elements. And they feel a close bond.

But really they are just loving themselves, cuz all love comes from within and all love is narcissistic in a way. We really do love people who are like ourselves, and get our vulnerabilities. But ironically these are also the same type of people that know how to easily cut us when pissed off or going through something themselves. So that's why we all run and hide, and make jokes etc.

It takes a lot of bravery to be who you are. Katy Perry makes it sound easy but in truth, you know that it's also going to cause you pain. That's the ultimate question of humanity I think, is pain worth the trouble of love? Cuz another deep wisdom is that pain and love are so deeply integrated.

Anyway it's a step by step process. You don't just become vulnerable all at once. Maybe instead next time try complaining about something that irritates u, even if that is perceived by most people as playing the victim. Let's say you get punched in the throat by it by... 50 people. Okay that just means on THAT particular topic, you couldn't trust your heart with that person on that one itty bitty thing. But we just never know until it happens! And people can still surprise us, who we thought had our back actually didn't and the person who we didn't expect it showed us pure empathy in that moment. And you can use all this stuff, to better gauge your boundaries so you keep feeling vulnerable in the good way naturally over the time and not the creepy bad way.

I also think it's a gender thing. Women by nature need to be self-protective and mysterious and not give it all away. They can't be showy like men cuz it goes against nature from a scientific standpoint. My grandma always said men are like flamboyant peacocks. Women (perhaps primarily heterosexual women?) tend to be really reserved, and guarded. Even the extroverted ones. They don't really share any deep pain shit.