I’ve always struggled with is not knowing what to say when your in a situation where the other person is doing most of the talking. Like for example when someone is explaining something or telling me about thier intrests, I never really to what to do aside from find something to fidget with and kinda look at that instead of making continuous eye contact, and to occasionally react to what their saying. I feel like I’m being rude/akward or acting bored when I do that, but I feel like keeping eye contact for that long is also akward and I end up focusing on the eye contact rather than fully listening to what their saying. I also don’t know what to say when someone stops talking/pauses in a situation like that and I dont have any questions or know enough about the topic to continue the conversation. For example when my father talks about his photography, I know a bit that I can usually ask questions but a lot of the times he’s explaining things to me and I don’t really know what to say when he’s done talking exept “makes sense/ok/mhm” but I want to seem interested, and I genuinely am I just don’t really know what to say.
1 comment
First I want to reassure you: you may think you’re behaving awkwardly but humans are very self absorbed beings. Nobody is thinking about the things you do as hard as you are. I’m sure you’re probably not coming off awkward or rude.
For me, I try to find questions to ask them so that it becomes less of a monologue and more of a conversation. It seems like you do the same, so that’s good! And it’s totally fine to fill pauses with “mhms” and such. It lets the person know you are listening and are ready for them to continue.
I can’t relate to the eye contact thing though because my eyes will clamp onto yours like a hawk when you’re talking, I can’t help it haha.
Overall, I think what you are doing is fine! I wouldn’t think you were rude, awkward, or bored if that’s how you responded to me.