Taken from The Social Lifestyle

It's quite common that you'll see the terms "comfort" and "rapport" being used interchangeably within discussions. I, too, used to think that they were both the same which made me assume that in order to create comfort, all I had to do was to build enough rapport. However, I noticed that with some girls I felt a connection with, there was no comfort--and vice versa. This got me thinking: are they really the same thing?

I will explain the differences. But first, let's define them (from dictionary.com).

Rapport (n): relation; connection, especially harmonious or sympathetic relation.

Comfort (n): a state of ease and satisfaction of bodily wants, with freedom from pain and anxiety.

I chose this definition of comfort because it is the best representation of the term to me. Now, let's explore it in terms of men-to-woman relationships.

Rapport

The purpose of creating rapport is to create a connection by teasing out commonalities and similar ways of looking at the world. People are able to build rapport from the get-go. There isn't much time needed except the amount of time the other person takes the warm up socially. Rapport is the foundation of instant connection. It's how charismatic people appear--well--charismatic.

In her book Off the Cuff, Anne Cooper Ready says that, "In the art of winning friends and influencing people, it is suggested, at first, to make no impression at all. That's because people are most comfortable with people they perceive to be like them."

While it make appear to counter my argument that they are separate things, it doesn't exactly do that. Building rapport creates "insta-comfort". They are not comfortable with you, they are just comfortable enough to share a little more about themselves with you--which still alludes to the primary motivation of creating a connection.

There are people with whom I enjoy talking to and who operate on the same psychological wavelength as I do, let I could never truly uninhibit myself and show my true self to them. I can talk about anything with them, but I couldn't, say, belt out in song randomly in front of them. Because discomfort.

Comfort

Comfort on the other hand is a "state of ease". I find that a lot of people that I consider good friends were never people with whom I had a lot of rapport. Rather, they were people I felt comfortable enough to "be entirely myself around". I didn't necessarily know their favorite color, their favorite foods, or what they did in their free time, but whenever we spent time together, I felt comfortable enough to just be silly and let loose.

Particularly, being around these people, I didn't feel judged. There wasn't an emotional connection (in an intentional sort of way), it just so happened that the more time I spent with these people, the more I instinctively trusted that these people weren't crazed axe murderers (to put it in one way).

Compared to rapport, which can happen almost instantly, comfort requires time and trust. You don't need a lot of trust to be able to have a conversation about a movie that the both of you happen to like, but it takes a lot of trust to be able to sing a duet from one of the soundtracks from the movie with that person.

To apply it to picking women up, rapport is useful in creating a connection on the approach and to power the interaction through during the date (when she doesn't feel totally comfortable around you yet), but as the date progresses and consequently you spend more time with her, the goal is to create comfort. A good indication of comfort is when you can sit with the girl, not say a word, and just enjoy the moment.

And that's the difference between rapport and comfort, where the former requires talking to form a connection and making her feel comfortable enough to reveal more about herself, the latter (comfort) requires the both to keep silent and just absorb each other's presence.