Anonymous wrote:Sometimes it feels like shockingly few people have the skills for the kind of give-and-take conversation that I think most people think is ideal. It's so rare to meet someone who can do this. Instead there are a handful of mildly dysfunctional conversational styles and you kind of have to pick and choose based on your personality and what you can deal with.
- Only talks about themselves, never asks questions. This person is great for introverts who don't want to talk about themselves, terrible for people who actually want to share things about themselves.
- Interrogators who only ask questions, never share anything about themselves. This person is great for people who love to talk about themselves, terrible for people who are shy as well as people who are more interested in others than themselves.
- The person who never talks, just listens. Great for people who like to talk, bad for people who struggle to come up with things to talk about. Two of these is bad unless they are both totally happy with long silences.
- The person who only wants to talk about OTHER people. Great for gossips! Bad for people who don't like gossiping, or anyone who doesn't want to be gossiped about to everyone else.
I'm an introvert so I actually like the people who mostly just talk about themselves and a lot of my friends fall in that category! Some are worse than others and I do prefer the people who can do a bit more give and take, but I'd much rather hang out with someone who just talks about their now life a lot than someone who is going to pepper me with a million question or who never has anything at all to say or who just wants to share a bunch of judgmental things about our other friends or colleagues.
These are great points!
I'm also an introvert more likely to ask people questions than volunteer info about myself right away BUT I have noticed that many people don't return conversational volleys and ask me questions back. Just because I'm not immediately launching into my stories doesn't mean that I don't ever want to share.