I’m in the reflection phase after finishing a relationship. Makes me wonder…what do most couples talk about when they are just hanging out? We talked mostly about fitness…health problems…and family drama. How about you?
EVERYTHING!
We’d probably drive another adult nuts if they lived with us, just a constant rambling two person stream of consciousness.
“What was that actor in the movie with the creature”
“What creature?”
“You know the creature, ah that dude come on with the longer hair?”
"Can you eat beet greens??
“How could the roots be safe to eat but not the leaves?”
“I don’t know some stuff has to be cooked to be edible you know”
Everything, anything, nothing, sort of like Seinfeld conversations. There’s also a lot of planning, and post-mortems about the previous plans’ failures.
I’m also gonna throw in the unhelpful “everything”.
She and I are sports and TV fans, so we’ll usually be doing something that could illicit conversation (Look at that pass! Why did this character do that?) vs. sitting in silence, staring at each other, and trying to come up with something to fill the silence.
I absolutely cannot stand silence, so I’ll always find something to fill in the gaps, even if I have to say stupid things that make no sense.
The daughter’s new grandchild, the son’s upcoming wedding, what I’m going to do when I finally retire, what’s for dinner, what’s the name of the actor who played the dad on the old Patty Duke Show (William Schallert), is the pork at the Piggly Wiggly better than that at the Harris Teeter, and is it related to the name of the store (c’mon, pig is right there in the name), how much better this last season of The Walking Dead was than back when they were all soap opera like. You know, stuff.
-She’ll tell me that we’ve been invited to so-and-so’s for dinner and drinks, and the date, and we’ll discuss whether we can or want to go;
-I’ll ask her if she wants me to build a whatever for the whatever room, which will kick off a discussion of the larger whatever-room renovation project, and what it will involve, and when we should begin;
-One of us will ask the other if kid 1 remembered to bring her math book home over the weekend, which is a regular occurrence (forgetting it);
-Do you want to watch another Veep tonight, or another Homeland, or start True Detective;
-As she’s making a shopping list, she’ll ask me if I need any more deodorant;
-I’ll tell her about this new pain I’m getting in my right foot as soon as I step out of bed in the morning;
-Etc.
Regular daily life things.
That’s us, too. Big events, small nothings, personal and impersonal, and we’d absolutely drive someone else crazy.
We do Minion voices. And Daleks. And Minions doing Dalek voices.
You guys sound like our kind of people. 
We do Doctor voices a lot (“Wot?” and “What would you duuu?” (in a heavily Scottish accent)) are the current favorites.
Mostly the mechanics of running the household. We can go for a good five minutes discussing the consistency of the dog’s daily poop. Then there are myriad kid-related issues, which can generate hours of conversation depending on how badly someone is fucking up.
Of course, when we watch TV, we make comments on that or try to answer game-show questions.
At least once a week we go out to dinner, drink lots of wine, and get into the deep philosophical questions. This generally becomes a spirited (ha!) debate or even an argument.
There are also times when one of us will say, “What did you want to do about the…” and the other one will say, “Next week. I already called them.” And we will both know what we are talking about even though it seems to come out of the blue.
Furthermore, lots of companionable silence.
There’s also shouting, “Look out, Doctor!” and leaping about dramatically. And she imitates the Pacific Rim palm-punching robot.
We discuss our kids and grandkids, we discuss current events. Or the book I am reading that she has already read. Or vice versa. Or our next visit. Sometimes out computer problems. Interesting Facebook posts. What’s for dinner. When? Should we go to a Chinese restaurant on Christmas Day? Whatever comes to mind.
My husband and I have a similar deep meaningful connection, only when the other one says, ‘‘Next week. I already called them,’’ the response is something like, ‘‘What the hell are you talking about? I was talking about this other thing,’’ and then we laugh. (It’s funny most of the time, but while playing Pictionary it’s a freakin’ pain in the ass.)
On a more serious note, I’ll have to drop another penny in the vague ‘‘everything’’ bucket. Usually we recap our day, both in personal experience and current events. It’s not unusual for me to talk about some of the threads I found on the Dope which leads to broader discussion, or some dumb/funny/interesting thing on Facebook. We discuss politics, we watch TV and then discuss the themes of the show we just watched. The other night we got into an hours-long discussion about the censorship issue with The Interview movie, and didn’t fall asleep until 2am. When we take road trips together we talk so much we lose track of where we’re going. And those are the times when I am never more certain I married the right man. When you can come home to the same person every day for 12 years and still have something interesting to talk about, you’ve got a winner.
Everything. Things we saw or did, to politics and stuff, to long-term dreams and wishes. Always have and its worked for like 38 years so I ain’t screwing with it.
Politics, because we’re pretty much in agreement about everything and we enjoy sinking the metaphorical boots into our current government.
Operating systems because we’re on opposite sides of the Linux/Windows debate and we enjoy a good old argument about the comparative merits of our pet OS vs the other.
Tech news, because we’re both gadget heads and like to share things we’ve recently learned about.
Gardening/permaculture stuff, particularly relating to our pet chickens.
What the kids said/did.
Particularly interesting info from the internet. Often I’ll take the subject of a SDMB thread and hash it out with him, and I might never even reply to the thread on the board.
Just about anything and everything, really. I’ve even added F1 to my conversational repertoire and can offer opinions on many of the top 10 drivers without resorting to Google. It’s the first time in my life I’ve had any sort of sports conversation.
I’m in the quiet phase after a relationship. Mostly we talked about why she was upset with me. Today.
Everything, but in a sort of short hand. But we also can sit in comfortable silence.
Work (we work together, but in different departments), scooters/scooting, music, books, kids (his and mine), sex, cooking, the news/current events, facebook posts, stories about our childhood and adult years before we met, future plans such as - when we move in together, travel, etc. Just everyday stuff. We also are quite comfortable with silence and not having to share our every thought. It’s a good balance.
The bad boyfriend: he talked about his plans. I listened politely. I actually had better conversations with his mother and sister :smack:!
The good boyfriend: except when he got into rant mode (and those could be about anything), pretty much anything. My job, his job, friends, family, hobbies, religion, music… I think we never talked about politis as such, but if so it’s because it didn’t come up, not because we avoided it.
Everything from “you know, that guy, the one who played the dad on the one sitcom, and then he played the boss on something else?” to “if we ever win the stupid big lottery, the only thing I can think of that I’d want to buy for myself is pretty pieces of land with big old trees.” (Actual conversations from yesterday.) Work, sports, old friends, family shit, what’s for dinner, where to vacation if we ever get to take one of those, the truck’s gas mileage, does this look infected, whether we paid the cell phone bill, etc., etc., etc.
It’s nice to be able to talk about any- and everything.