Title is misleading, but I’ve recently met someone who literally makes friends with people in 6-8 verbal exchanges. I realized that almost all of my exchanges with strangers are as follow: question->response->question, that sort of thing. I want to get to where she. I feel like I’m severely limited in my group social skills because I only know that format.
Does anyone have tips to improve this? Or even maybe a proper name for this so I can research ideas somewhere?
3 comments
This is usually the easiest for people with various interests, because they don’t need to ask that many questions they will both interact about a subject they both know about. I feel like if you want to make friends easily and have a great flow of conversation with most people, you need to broaden your hobbies and common knowlegde on current things so that you have an opinion to give, or an anecdote to share, or a suggestion to make. Rather than question, answer, question, answer, which doesn’t always flow easily.
I’m not necessarily sure of a name for what you’re describing, but I know exactly what you mean and have had conversations with people who talk like this. And I can see how it limits creating friendship etc. But you’re not alone in it.
I think one thing to remember is that people become friends by relating to each other. If you ask a question, it’s better if it is open ended, and also relevant to the conversation. While asking questions can show interest, asking questions for questions sake/conversation sake can feel unnatural and forced for both people.
Sometimes if you ask a question and you receive an answer, it’s not necessary to follow up with another question, instead you could follow up with a statement that shows you heard that person/are interested in what they said, and encourages them to talk more e.g. they tell you they’re going away somewhere, option a) you could ask another question (like, how did you here about that place) or option b) you could reply by engaging with what they said (oh wow, I’ve heard it’s really beautiful and peaceful there; or if you had been there, oh wow I went a few months ago and it was so beautiful, you should definitely check out x,y,z).
Friendship comes from a feeling of being seen or understood by another person, and that you relate to them.
Ask more open ended questions. It gives space for people to tell you more about themselves and people love to talk about themselves.