My conversation skills are pretty bad. I can’t start one and cannot hold one without awkward silences, unless it’s with my close friends.
I decided that to level up this skill I just need practice so I signed up for a ‘meet people online’ type app.
The problem is, my texts are so dry that people just leave me on read after a few exchanges. I don’t know if I’m being too weird, or too immature or just plain boring. My go to opener is ‘”Sup! You like pasta?” which is terrible but I can’t think of anything better. I can’t even foIlow it up! I don’t know if I’m too cold, or too much. I seriously don’t know how to text. Please help me.
I can DM some examples if you want to see
3 comments
Sent ya a message
Hi, you can hit my inbox with an opener I see.
This week I’m somehow free, we can practice for a week or 4 days and see if there’s any improvement.
Is the purpose of this to get better at texting or to get better at conversation?
I ask because I don’t think texting is a great way to learn conversation skills, unfortunately the only way to get better at conversations is to have conversations. Like in real life. Here’s some tips
– ask open-ended questions, but don’t go deep, don’t ask what the meaning of life is 10 minutes in, people get uncomfortable about being probed, ask basic open ended questions that people have canned responses for
– choose something in their response that seems like it’s a tip (of an ice berg) and try to dig deeper into that, if you were right they should get excited about that thing and start talking, if you were wrong they’ll respond with a short answer
– talk about yourself too, but make it related to something about them- they like to read and you don’t, well talk about something else that tells a story (movies, shows, songs, ect)
– don’t be weird, but if you do something weird laugh at yourself and call yourself out on it (people like self awareness)
– try to remember the things that worked so you can recycle them
– practice
Also, I wouldn’t worry too much about being a boring texter, or being weird or whatever, it’s hard to find people who want to talk over apps. Getting ghosted is pretty normal.
But if the purpose is to be better at texting then maybe try talking to AI. Maybe Chat CBT or if you have SnapChat, there’s a new update with AI. At least with AI you get quick responses and you can practice saying stuff. People you’re talking to on those apps are probably also not great communicators – otherwise they wouldn’t be there.