You can’t half-listen your way into being close to someone.

Closeness is built out of the small things people only mention once they can tell you are properly there. Half attention is detectable inside a minute, and what it does is not so much offend people as teach them to give you the short version. Keep it up long enough and the friendship is made entirely of short versions.

In the next conversation that matters, put your phone face down and out of reach, then ask the second question instead of moving on. Let a pause sit there. People say the real thing in the gap after the answer you already have.