I feel like i need to play 20 questions when i talk to people practically every time. I’ll give an example:
Me: hey! Nice to see you.
Them: yea nice to see you too!
Me: *after they didnt say anything else for a bit* What’d you do today?
Them: I did X and Y.
Me: oh damn I hate X, but what’s Y? I’ve never heard about it.
Them: It’s this.
Me: what do you do when you do that?
Them: oh, you do this and that.
Me: Ah, that sounds interesting!
Them: *silent*
Me: so, how’d you pick up doing Y anyways?
Them: my brother taught it to me.
Me: Ah
Them: *silence*
Me: *silence, seeing if they’ll say something.*
Me: Well what about X? Why’d you have to do X today?
Them: It’s just the day I do it today.
Me: oh, well that sucks.
Them: yea.
*silence*
Me: Well I did B today! It was super fun.
Them: Cool.
Me: *silence*
Them: *silence*
Me: Have you ever done B?
Them: no, but I’ve heard a bit about it.
Them: *silent*
Me: oh well let me tell you about it! It’s where you do W K and Z.
Them: ah, that’s interesting.
Me: yea
Them: *silence*
Me: *silence*
Like am I insane or does this feel like they have 0 interest in talking to me at all?? But it’s with everyone so it cant be that no one wants to talk to me, right?? How do I encourage a more naturally flowing conversation more often?
Edit: sorry about formatting. It looked fine in the editor. Fixed.
3 comments
There are two possible explanations for this:
1. They just don’t know how to talk to people
2. They don’t have any interest in talking to you
I understand that you are annoyed by that situation… but a conversation is always between the both of you. If one person can’t or won’t talk that you can ‘work’ with it, forget about them….
It’s not your fault
This is exactly the convo I had years ago when one of my highschool friend and I first met.
I was so fixated to befriend her that I asked question after question to keep the conversation going even though we were both super awkward lol
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from my experience, shy and socially awkward people tend to finish their reply short and stiff even if they don’t mean to.
and not every person can handle a few minutes of casual talk you know😔
oh and there is an askreddit post that talks about conversation starter; some can give you an idea👍
Some people don’t have much to talk about. They might find stuff they do are not worth to talk about.
You could also try to talk what you did instead of (fruitlesly) waiting for the to ask a question. Something in a story tou tell might prompt them to say something, give them inspiration for a comment.