i shared this in another subreddit but i guess it would be nice to reach more people! so here:
hello… i’ve just been made aware that i don’t contribute much to conversation. my best friend of four told me this. they said it’s usually them asking questions, and me answering, and i don’t ask them enough follow up questions. then i asked my other friends if i talked enough to them, and a few of them said i didn’t talk enough.
i’m devastated. i thought i talked a lot, and i felt like i was talking a lot about myself and also asking and learning a lot about other people. obviously this isn’t the case because multiple people have told me that i’m not speaking enough or starting enough conversations and that there’s a lot of quiet time between converstions which is awkward. it’s making me spiral into thoughts of “what’s the point of being my friend/bestie and hanging out with me if i don’t talk enough?” “what value do i even bring into a friendship if my half of my friends feel like i don’t talk enough?” i thought the quiet time in between conversations was normal. i thought i was asking people a lot of questions. it felt really natural to me.
just several days ago i hung out with that best friend (who mentioned i didn’t speak enough) and they said they had fun. today they let me know that i don’t contribute much to conversations. how can they have fun if they felt like i didn’t talk enough? wouldn’t that just mean they’d have the same amount of fun if i wasn’t even there?
i love all of my friends and i don’t want to find people who talk as much as me. they’ve all been my friends for many years. i’ve been told to just talk more… but i really don’t know how to talk more. sometimes i do have things to say, but i won’t say them because i know for a fact it’s not the right time or what i want to say would bring the mood down.
do you have any tips?
1 comment
I’m the exact same way. I find it difficult to find time in between others talking to ask questions of my own and often find myself just following conversations to be honest. Lately I’ve just been trying to bring my own thoughts into conversation and letting it flow from there but I still often bud into conversation as the other person begins speaking and occasionally speak out of context. I’m a work in progress still but atleast making some progress with it. I think my best advice from what I’ve been doing so far is to just say what your thinking after the other person finishes talking to further the conversation. Try not to think about what your going to say being at the wrong time because they’re friends with you for a reason and want to hear what you have to say just as much as you want to hear what they want to say! At least you are able to be aware enough to try and change, many people never can bring themselves to do that!