What all do you talk /discuss with your wife/SO? Every thing under the sun, or only subjects which interest her?
And on an average what percentage of time you spend under one roof is spent talking to each other?
Well we talk a lot, have known each other for eons so we talk almost 50% of the time we are together!
We talk about her job, my job, her worries, my worries, and also about cats, owls, foxes and The Sopranos.
It’s pretty nice.
Sure, wives are welcome to comment too.
Husband here, anything and everything! We’re usually only not talking if we’re watching a engaging film or one of us is sleeping etc.
I’m going to assume that the wife doesn’t have to be a Doper as well.
We talk about varied topics, and we each tend to bring up topics that interest us to start a conversation. There are no real restrictions or taboos on what we discuss. Everything from religion to what happened on a television show is fair game.
I suspect we may talk less than most couples, though. We are kind of loners and spend a lot of time on our respective computers, but when we do something together we tend to talk through it from beginning to end. For instance, if we go to dinner we will start conversation when we head out the door and continue it until we get back home and settle back in. It may be because we don’t try too hard at it, but any lags we do have aren’t uncomfortable.
Neither of us is much into pleasantries, so questions like “How was your day?” don’t usually get asked by either of us. If something noteworthy or frustrating happened, we will say so.
I’m not really sure I can sum up into a percentage, but I would say less than most, but we try to make it meaningful.
Us too. Usually I don’t even want to talk about my day; I just want to put it behind me. He doesn’t really seem to want to talk about his day either, for which I am grateful, listening to him about his day is a bit of a chore. Most of the time, whenever one of us is attending to our toddler, the other catches up on some private computer time or some sleep. So we work in shifts and don’t get to talk much. I go to bed far earlier then my husband, so we don’t talk in bed either.
We have taken that a bit too far, when I got so tired after eating that I didn’t want to share meals, either. I just cooked the meal, ate some, excused myself while my husband and son were still eating (otherwise I would just have slogged like a zombie at the table) and I would go to bed. Now I promise to stay at the table untill we have eaten.
The only time when we will have sparkling conversations is in the weekend when we are both rested and relaxed. Then there is usually some teasing going on, which is more his favourite way of communicating then it is mine. He sometimes tells me what he read in the paper, but I tend to think that useless because I 'd rather read the article myself. My preferred conversation is abotu me and our relationship and me wanting compliments and reassurance, and -quite understandably- he doesn’t want to do that unless I am really emotionally starved.
We tend to put off serious conversations about choices we have to make, because thinking about them is too much work. For instance, last week I asked him if we could talk saturday evening about planning a vacation this year, because it looked like we would have to take separate vacations if we were to bridge our sons vacation days at school. But we were both to tired and we didn’t have all the data yet (the cost of daycare in vacations).
I guess our marriage doesn’t really look good…
But we do talk about our son a lot, and that conversation is warm. What funny or smart he said and did, what he learned, what we still need to organize for him.
One of the things I like about my husband is that we can sit in the same room and comfortably not say anything for hours. That said, we do talk a lot. We mostly talk about politics, other stuff going on in the news, the kids, our friends, day-to-day business. He usually asks me what’s going on in the world, because I’m more likely to read the paper and listen to the news. I like to ask him about his day at work, because he meets a huge variety of people and I like to hear about the crazier ones. The kids are probably our biggest topic, though.
We mostly talk at dinner, usually about how work was that day or what we’re planning for the rest of the week. I’d say we spend maybe 1/8th of our non-sleeping together-time talking.
Wife here.
-
Typically we talk about things that interest us both (the Little One, the house, books, parenting, science, work, the news, blog posts, the Dope). Occasionally mr. hunter will describe some mechanical tool to me, or I’ll tell him about some music thing, even though tools are not that interesting to me and music is not really his thing. We do like listening to what the other person is interested in, but I don’t think either of us would like it all the time.
-
We probably spend half an hour talking a day, regardless of whether we’re in the house together for two hours or twelve hours. We like to do a lot of things separately.
We talk about our kids a lot (occupational hazard).
When not that we talk about politics, things we read in the news, tv shows, board games, our friends and family. We also have a five minute meeting at night to cover what the plan is for the next few days (but that’s business not pleasure).
He talks at me about sports sometimes but I talk at him about work so it evens out.
Wife here.
We talk most of the time. It’s probably my fault, since I’ve always been talkative and my husband was much quieter when we met, but now we talk about everything: how our days went, what we’ve been reading, what we’ve seen in the news, what’s going on with our hobbies and people we know, and even what we’re watching on TV (we pause it a lot- it would probably drive most people crazy).
That’s not to say we are never quiet. We definitely spend occasional evenings quietly reading or surfing the internet, but I’d say we definitely spend more than half of our awake non-work time talking. A large part of this is that we run almost all of our evening errands together, during which time we’re talking almost nonstop. Also, if one of us is cooking, the other usually is helping out or pulls up a chair to talk if it’s a one-person job. We really don’t spend much non-work time apart, and when we’re together and not engaged in something like work or reading, we’re talking.
I talk to my wife about everything. She’s smarter and more logical than I am, so bouncing things off her gives me a fresh perspective that I need sometimes. We don’t need to talk all the time. We can happily spend hours with each other and never say a word. Heck, we met because we both liked talking about BtVS.
We don’t talk as much as my wife would like, but we still talk a lot. We talk about what is in the newspaper, interesting stuff in books, about the DVD we just watched, about the state of the kids (both far away) and a lot about friends from back east who are getting divorced and how crazy the wife is. At the moment she is working on a mystery novel, so I hear a lot about that, and sometimes even get a word in edgewise.
indian, I’m getting vibes from the bolded words above (bolding mine) that maybe your feel that your SO only likes to talk about subjects that interest her? That could make for some booooring conversation…
Mr. Smaje and I talk about everything that pops into our heads: books, movies, tv, music, our friends, our neighbors, our family. And we’re new parents, so we talk about Baby Smaje a LOT.
One place where conversation tends to dry up is when we’re eating. It’s kinda weird. I blame Mr. Smaje – I think he likes to focus on what he’s eating – and so I tend to rattle on for a bit before I just stop talking. We used to just eat in front of the tv all the time, but now that we have the baby, we tend to all sit together at the table.
We discuss Wolverine vs. Spiderman. I’m pro-spidy. We also talk about what we would do if either of us owned a giant battle robot. Other than that we talk about our kids and friends.
My wife and I live in separate houses, which is a great way to cut down on idle chit-chat. Works out pretty good for both of us.
I’ll talk about anything (politics, religion, new recipe, our son) including her favorite subjects but sometimes she has to listen to me and my rants about college football, video games, obscure comics continuity. I try to keep it short to prevent her eyes from glazing over but there are times I can’t restrain myself.
With our son underfoot, most of our evenings are not spent in conversation.
Leslie and I have an amazing relationship and it’s very physical, he still pushes all my buttons. People say ‘oh but he’s so much older than you’ and you know what, I’m the one having to push him away. We have so much in common, we both love soup and snow peas, we love the outdoors, and talking and not talking. We could not talk or talk forever and still find things to not talk about.
We talk about everything. It wasn’t easy at first, she had led something of a sheltered life. But experience taught her to open up and broaden her horizonns. There are some things each of has no interest in, so not all conversations are long and deep on every subject. Sometimes it’s a challenge to find enough time to talk to each other about everything we’d want to. And then there are those times we aren’t speaking, but that’s another subject altogether.