You know when people ask you some trivial thing like 'why do you use public transport, buy a car like me it will be much easier' or 'how come you don't wear dresses I could never wear only pants' or 'you like playing board games? Wow I think they are super boring, what I like to do is...' and then proceed to talk about themselves for 15 minutes...Like how do you even respond to that? Lately I have encountered some many people like that and I have some much trouble communicating with them...
Anon, I’m so sorry you have to deal with people like that. You’re not alone. I’m afraid I sometimes do this, too (though I realize it and hopefully can work on it). Here are some ideas and things I’ve tried:
You could, if it’s a friend maybe, try telling them that they’re constantly steering the conversation back to themselves or ask them WHY they do it. I don’t think everyone is doing it on purpose or because they need attention. Some of us are really just bad at communicating.
You could do the same to them. Once they’re done talking, you go “well’, that’s you and this what I do/like”.
You could, and that may not always come across as nice, interrupt them and be like “sorry, but we were talking about this other thing/ we were talking about me”.
The thing about your examples is that it’s not only making the conversation about them, but also putting YOU down in the process. Like “you like board games? They’re boring. What *I* do is much better”. It sounds like they don’t even want a conversation. They just want to give a monologue why they’re right.
I have a friend who likes to go “I don’t know anything about this and I don’t care” which makes further conversation impossible. So I feel you on this, anon. Unfortunately, I have yet to understand communication myself but I hope my short pieces of advice are in any way helpful.
If anyone has more advice, please feel free to add!
