I think I’ve gotten pretty good at having both casual and deeper conversations over the years. I ask thoughtful questions, I listen to what they say, and I reply with well thought out answers that easily provide jumping off points to continue the conversation.
Sometime in the past few years, I discovered that there are exceedingly few people in my life who actually ask me genuine questions about myself and can carry such a conversation past a few quick exchanges. I think its a mix of them just not really caring that much, them just wanting to talk about themselves, and them simply not having the conversational ability to keep it going. People only ever want to talk about themselves and while I don’t mind this most of the time because I am legitimately curious about them and am interested, it gets so old hearing people drone on and on about the same topics.
People only ever want to talk about themselves. They don’t want 2-way conversations about both parties. They want to just ramble about themselves and have a silent audience.
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I couldn’t agree more. I find myself being more and more quiet, just listening and giving brief but supportive replies, sounding interested. I don’t like being crass, so I listen patiently and at times having some genuine interest, but most of the time, people, like you said, just want to talk about themselves, random occurrences to share without asking about anything.
Conversation has become “At you” instead of “With you”.
The older you get the more people have formed their own beliefs. It’s gonna be hard to convince a 60yr old to change his viewpoints because he’s already seen everyone and their bullshit 10 times over.
I think you can twist that.
Ive been the same guy as you, and had the same encounters.
But when i stopped just being a listener people stoped being only talkers.
Most of the time if you want a discution to be fluid and continue you have to micromanage it.
Yes, this has been bugging my mind for quite some time. Such a basic skill as conversation seems to be an art that is unavailable to most people, regardless of whether they’re introverted or extraverted. It’s funny and sad to observe how people long to hang out together, yet, when they meet, they try as hard as they can to numb themselves with alcohol, music, superficial offensive jokes, gaming, – all this for fear of a genuine, kind, undisturbed, straight face-to-face conversation about each other. When I meet people who are not afraid of conversation, who are able to share their thoughts and feelings with me, who are reasonably curious about my thoughts and feelings, it’s almost a miracle, which I’m incredibly grateful for.
You need to volunteer stuff about yourself or your thoughts. If you just ask questions, people will answer the questions. If you talk about yourself a bit then people will often get curious and ask about you during the conversation.
If you are tired of a topic, you can steer the conversation either discreetly or even forcefully.
If the majority of people around you are not so good at conversations, you might like to think about the common factor between all of those people.
Any tips on how to learn to be better at conversations? I’ve been shy most of my life and my conversation skills are not great. A good deep coversation is one of the most satisfying feelings for me but I don’t really know how to achieve that. I often don’t know what to say.
It’s something I struggle with, on the other side of the coin. Hanging out with a few mates last night, and we grazed over shallow conversations about the normal things – work, kids, weekend plans, a bit of investing talk (which I didn’t like, always feels like comparing dick sizes).
And I struggled to think of other things I wanted to bring up, to talk about. I’d be more than happy to, I just don’t have… much to add.
It would go like this – I’d ask a question ‘how’s the 3 year old been treating you lately, sleeping okay?’. They’d reply ‘yeah a bit of trouble getting her to sleep through, she’s been waking up and not getting back to sleep’. I’d say something like ‘ah that’s hard hey, nothing worse… etc’.
And it would stop, and I would have to think another question to ask. Perhaps because I hate to offer anything much further unless they think I’m trying to give ‘advice’ when none is asked?
Not sure I suppose, it is hard sometimes.
>People only ever want to talk about themselves. They don’t want 2-way conversations about both parties. They want to just ramble about themselves and have a silent audience.
Oh, what about the other side of that coin? The ones who clearly want a conversation, but they dont really contribute to it? Its like they just want to be entertained or something.
People have a hard understanding that conversation is back and forth, not hoping someone has a monologue ready to go.
Wish I could say anything other than….yeah, you pretty much nailed it.
Problem is, I grew up in NYC back in the 60’s, when adults actually HAD real conversations. I always dreamed that would be what it was like when I grew up…sitting around, talking about things both significant and trivial, hearing new ideas….not how it’s panned out, I’m afraid.
But I keep trying. What other choice have you got, other than silence?
This is the truth and I can’t help with that, but if you want a laugh about the situation the Me Monster skit by Brian Reegan is classic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vymaDgJ7KLg
I think it’s a mix of things, people often do want to only talk about themselves but people also run out of stuff to talk about as they get older.
People stop reading books and learning new things as they are using 100% of their time to work and raise kids.
You literally have nothing interesting to say if your days are mostly working and child raising. Just anecdotes that everyone understands and deals with and nothing of unique substance is in the brain anymore.
How would one develop such a skill, being able to have casual and deep conversation, thoughtful questions and well thought answers!?
> I discovered that there are exceedingly few people in my life who actually ask me genuine questions about myself and can carry such a conversation past a few quick exchanges.
From your short description it seems that you are uninteresting and arrogant. Mybe that is because no one shows interest in you?
get rid of those people and find those that are good conversational partners
people that dont have conversational skills wont appreciate it in you either, so who cares? why ~~waste~~ spend your time on people that cant keep a conversation going if its something you care about?
Your post makes me want to improve my conversational skills now.
It’s been my experience that if you want good conversation you have to put in more work. Good conversation is more than just asking questions and expecting a response. It’s asking questions in a way that your audience understands and in a way that will improve the conversation if you ask a question that can get a response without further in the conversation at all and of course the conversations not gonna go anywhere. If you ask a question with an easy answer you’re going to get an easy answer and the conversations not gonna go anywhere.
I think a lot of people think that being able to give well-thought-out answers to other peoples questions makes them a good conversationalist. It’s generally not the case. Good good conversationalist asks questions and gives answers that perpetuate the furthering of the conversation.
I have noticed that If you think the majority of people around you are bad conversationalist it’s probably not the majority of people around you…
You also have to remember that very few people want to talk about things they don’t care about and that’s 100% normal.
Op you never even asked how I was doing or what MY conversations are like! TERRIBLE conversation starter 😅 just kidding
Actually I have this issue with my partner, often I try to tell her about ideas I had or things that are interesting to me and she just doesn’t take the bait or know what to say. I’ve told her it makes me feel kind of bad when she doesn’t ask about my day or anything I’ve been up to and she says she expects me to just tell her stuff if I want to, but if she looks bored during that I stop because I’m not interested in boring her. Some people have different expectations of conversation and I think we’ve got to learn to live with it ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Sounds like you just want people to ask you about yourself so you can talk about yourself.
It’s also interesting to realize the lack of unique thought out there. Most conversations are people simply repeating something they read, or just restating something from the echo chamber.
This is somewhat ableist. 1 in 50 people are autistic and even more people are just depressed, traumatized, or anxious. Some people just don’t want to tell you about their life because they have a shitty life.
Dis true. People no good at talk.
Honestly, I’ve been noticing this a lot over the years, but most people don’t have “meaningful” conversations. They have brief salutations that end up being about nothing until they can safely flee from the other person. I find online and in reality, most people don’t like carrying conversations. It usually ends up being me asking questions about them, they answer… and that’s it. Back and forth seems to escape them. They don’t ask questions back, seldom elaborate. It’s tedious. Trying to find common ground or something they want to actually talk about, as opposed to just pointless greetings is very challenging. This is also one reason it’s so hard to make any meaningful friendships as an adult. I’ve found that extremely challenging and at times just untenable.
It’s become so common now that I just listen and only speak when I have a question- like I’m a talk show host or something.
> People only ever want to talk about themselves. They don’t want 2-way conversations about both parties. They want to just ramble about themselves and have a silent audience.
that makes things so easy for introverts like myself, actually.
i don’t mind having people carry the conversation, while i mostly pay attention and give follow-up questions. i rarely share anything on my end, unless i am asked.
and if i am asked, that means i’ve met someone who is actually interested in me, even if to a small extent. it’s a great way to gauge one’s character.
Yeah.. I’m having the same problem. The only person in my life I can have deep, even existential conversations and debates. I’ve also noticed that I dumb myself down cause the people in my life including my family just kind of have no.. common sense? Conversational skills? A mix of both, I guess. I hate it. If I were you I’d just interrupt them after they’ve been talking about themselves or their drama too long. Just be blunt. Have you tried talking to the people in your life about this directly? If not, try it. They may not even be aware they’re even doing it.
This will likely be a controversial opinion, especially reading the sea of “I agree” responses, but I vehemently disagree.
I disagree on a few levels, but most fundamentally I reject the line of reasoning that goes “The older I get the more I realize that other people are *bad people*.” Ultimately I feel this is a failure of perspective taking, and an example of fundamental attribution bias.
I also consider myself an excellent conversationalist, a few of my friends have reiterated this point, calling it the” gift of gab.” I rarely run into people who I would consider” bad conversationalists.” This isn’t to say I don’t have bad conversations, just that when they happen, I don’t attribute it to their failures as a conventionalist.
For example, I went on a date not that long ago and the conversation was very tedious. There was low engagement, low interest and the topics never moved past surface level. I felt like I carried the lions share of the conversation. Does that mean she was a poor conversationalist? Or was she just having a bad day, or maybe I rubbed her the wrong way, or maybe her conversational style was different from mine and it just misfire from “go.” All of those are OK, and I wouldn’t label her a bad conversationalist because of it.
The older I get, the more I realize that my generalizations are more a reflection of me than of others, and after I started made that observation I started working very hard on not generalizing at all. The old addage is as applicable here as everywhere. If you think it smells like shit everywhere you go, maybe you should check your own shoes.
Maybe it’s the spectrum talking but I genuinely am not interested in conversation. It’s hard to find the right words to be polite about it, but people try like hell to corner me with it. I’ll answer questions but I’m not going to reciprocate and I sincerely hope the other party takes the hint or loses interest and stops talking to me.
I know how that sounds but just don’t engage people like that. They’ll either get better at chit-chat if they’re interested or they will be glad to escape the conversation.
In recent years a friend of mine has gone from “talking about work a bit too much” to “only ever talking about work, regardless of what the other person says”. And I don’t know what to do about it – he’s become so boring and frustrating to talk to. You can tell when anyone else is talking he’s just waiting for a gap to talk about work again; he’s not actually listening to the other person at all. Sometimes to ridiculous levels, like:
“So they said I had to stay late and I said I’ve done my hours, I need to catch a plane! They laughed but I know they were pissed off.”
“Ugh, yeah, hate dealing with stuff like that! How was the holiday anyway? Must have been nice to have a break. What did you guys get up to?”
“Yeah, it was good to get away for a bit. But you know, you come back, and just have to work twice as hard to catch up with the work that didn’t get done because you weren’t there.”
“Yeah, shame people don’t take the initiative and see that the stuff needs doing. Anyway, did you go diving like you planned? How did your son get on with it? He’s enthusiastic, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, he liked it. But you can’t trust others to do it right anyway. This one time I was off for just two days, and when I came back you’ll never guess what they’d managed to screw up…”
Like, seriously, please talk about *anything* other than work for just a few minutes. It’s becoming frustrating even meeting up with him. It’s like I’m losing a friend…
My wife is gifted in getting people to talk, by that I mean – coming to a party at a stranger’s house and in a half an hour having Grandma sharing stories from the old country about her first love that she hasn’t even shared with her children type of drawing people out.
She will sit down next to someone and just want to talk and at times she’ll end up just seeing how much of their life history she will get without them even knowing/asking her name. Divorces, affairs, illnesses, all types of family drama laid bare to a total stranger who you never even bothered ask their name, at times it is astounding and heartbreaking to watch how completely self-absorbed (or lonely) people are as she will openly and honestly answer any question shes asked but most don’t ask anything.
Yes, she definitely feels as you do.
Well then the next challenge is learning how to use your conversational skill in such a way that it reproduces itself to others as you use it.
I’d recommend not making some active attempt to do it overtly. Instead you should just visualize that happening when you talk to people. Imagine a series of conversations, and as it goes on the other person’s skill is increasing and the conversations get better.
Your subconscious will find a way to do it.
I realized this as well. I am an introvert naturally but through work and having a social life, I’ve learned how to carry a conversation. It can be effortless with some people, where it just flows back and forth. However when I meet someone who can’t, its almost jarring. Our new neighbor is like this, she is great and we can talk easily on the spot. However, when I first met the husband, it was like talking to someone actively trying to leave the room. After saying something he immediately becomes silent and doesn’t elaborate or inquire. I have to literally jump to like 5 different topics in span on 5 minutes with him in order to keep the conversation flowing. It can be frustrating for sure, but luckily they only visit together so he can sulk in a corner or just listen to other people talk.
I’ll be honest and admit that I’m not entirely sure what you mean here.
For me, it really all depends on who I’m conversing with and what my mood is. If I’m with someone I know and trust really well, we can have very good two way conversations no problem. But if it’s just with a co-worker or someone I barely know, chances are I’m not going to contribute much at all to a conversation. I find most conversations, at least with people I barely know and I don’t care to get to know pretty pointless.
100% agreed. To build on what you’ve got here, one of my most frustrating things to experience in conversation is the person who is aware they suck at asking questions about you instead of talking about themselves and will ask you how you’re doing, then not continue the dialogue about what you’ve just said and quickly switch the conversation back to them as soon as you stop guiding the dialogue about what you think or what you have going on or whatever. It’s almost more insulting than someone who just doesn’t get it at all and just runs rough shot over the entire conversation. It’s very challenging to endure over a period of time.
So I find this fascinating as I’m stuck on the opposite end. I likely come across as not caring because I’m terrible at making conversation.
I genuinely try to work on things like maintaining eye contact and try to focus and think about thorough answers but struggle and look back on the comically numerous amount of social faux pas I make.
Would anyone recommend books, articles or general tips to getting better at conversation in your 30’s?
sounds like you need to befriend new people who are capable of having the kind of conversations you want. it’s not a “people” issue, it’s the circle you created.
As i a person who is bad at talking its because im tired you are catching me watching my son or on an errand.
The last five words of the title of OP’s post are unnecessary.
Oh wow I see you OP
The older I get the more I realize I don’t want to carry a conversation unless both parties are interested in it. We can sit in awkward silence for all I care.