Whether we are 16, 22 or 42, whether the issue is friendship or intimacy, great relationships don't fall out of the heavens on a favored few. They depend on a number of very sophisticated but learnable skills.

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Some people absorb these skills effortlessly from skilled models, typically in the form of parents. They may not realize they learned how to "do" relationships, they may not be able to articulate what they learned, but somehow they learned a few essential techniques. The most important include how to:

1. Gracefully enter and exit the activities and conversations of others.
2. Read other people well.
3. Find common ground with others.
4. Defuse negativity.
5. Peacefully solve conflicts.
6. Enlist others in support of a goal.

The socially competent know that relationships are important and so they are willing to make time for being with others. It is impossible to maintain quality relationships, and the motivation for solving the inevitable differences that crop up, without investing time in them.

By itself, friendship is one of life's greatest sources of pleasure and happiness. Further, success in friendship paves the way for success in that most intimate of relationships, marriage.

Studies show unequivocally that it's the friendship part of marriage that makes marriage last. The skills that work among friends work between spouses — the ability to open a conversation, to join others already engaged in an activity, to resolve differences, to control emotions, to plan time together, to provide emotional support.

So create opportunities for hanging with others, with no agenda. Invite people to visit you at home. Extend an invitation to do some activity together with someone you know.

Learn to read others. Pay attention to signals from others that convey such information as what their interests are, or whether they want to be left alone.

Tune in to the situation. Mesh your actions with the behavior of others. Make comments relevant to ongoing conversations and activities.

To pay attention to and understand others, you must learn to modulate your own emotional states. Regulate the level of bodily tension created by intense feelings — especially the negative emotions of sadness, fear, anger and shame.

Learn the most difficult of all social challenges — how to join others already engaged in an activity. First, observe and listen. Search for an opening, a slowing down of the activity, a lull in the conversation, before jumping in. Or ask a question elaborating on something someone else has said. Don't wait and hover forever. This is not the time to shift the direction of the conversation, and especially not onto yourself.

Learn how to deal with social failure. Everyone's best efforts at acceptance will sometimes be rejected. Rebuffs are a fact of life even for the popular. It's crucial to not take all rejection personally (some conversations are just closed deals) and acknowledge your hurt feelings (a sign of how important social connections are), but it's equally crucial to try again.

Studies show that when faced with failure, people who are well-liked turn a negative response into a counterproposal. They rebound from a turn-down by saying things like, "Well, can we make a date for next week?" Or they move onto another group in the expectation that not every conversation is closed.

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