I have a friend - I’ll call her K - who is a pretty good friend of mine. We talk several times a week, and there’s one thing that happens that drives both of us batty. She tends to want to use me as a sounding board to bounce ideas off of, typically about her hobbies or interests. Stuff like “I was thinking of buying XXX piece of stereo equipment, but I’m not sure it’s better than what I have which is YYYY bleah bleah bleah.”
The first few times she brings stuff like that up, I try to engage her and be a good friend and all that. However, it just keeps going… over and over… and eventually I just want to scream and say “MAKE UP YOUR OWN MIND AND QUIT ASKING ME ABOUT IT!!!” This is, on the whole, stuff that I know nothing about - I’m not some expert she wants advice from. We’ve talked about it, and she’s told me it just helps her to use me as a sounding board at times. Well, I don’t WANT to be used as a sounding board. Hell, we’ve gotten into fights about it because she can sense that I’m bored and she interprets it as me blowing her off.
I’m kind of torn… other than this, I like K. A lot. We’ve been friends for a long time, and I value her company. But man oh man, this is causing us some problems. We’re good enough friends that we’ve even talked about it, but we’re at a stalemate. She thinks that I’m not being a good friend because I don’t want to talk about her hobbies and interests. I think that at some point you have to accept that fact that your own hobbies and interests are not always as interesting to other people as they are to you, and you can only expect people to express a certain amount of interest and after that, you’re a bore.
So am I a bad friend? Am I expected to listen to this because I do genuinely like her and care about her? On a related subject, does one’s obligation to hear this stuff change based on how close you are? Is it OK to politely change the subject if it’s an acquaintance, but not a good friend? What about a relative - a sibling, a parent, a spouse?
Does she do the same for you? Or allow you to impose in other ways? Friendship is all about reciprocity. Some people save up all the little favors and pay them back with one selfless gesture so huge that it wipes the slate clean (“You’ve been putting up with my sh*t for 20 years, and I know it’s been rough at times. Now I have an opportunity to pay you back, and I’d like you to have one of my kidneys”); others just soak up the little favors and leave their friends feeling used, cheated, and/or pissed off.
Even one’s relatives can go too far with this sort of thing, and they get a lot more slack than friends, in my book. I figure one has an unlimited obligation to one’s parents to listen to their boring crap, a substantial obligation to one’s siblings, and a smidgen more to a well-loved cousin than to one’s friends.
I like what Robert Heinlein had to say about it: “Love is a condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” One has friends becasue one loves them (less than some other people, but still) – but if your friend does not love you (does not care that she is boring you), then is she really your friend? in other words, how much concern for your happiness has she shown, and has she used up the credit that gets her?
I’m married, andit apparently makes me obligated to talk about computers, technology, and anime. None of which I find especially interesting. My husband knows I don’t like talking about this stuff, but he keeps talking about it and then gets upset when my eyes glaze over.
On the other hand, I realize how boring it is to talk about stuff one has zero interest in, so I don’t inflict it on him. I just try to file it under “sometimes cute, sometimes annoying general male cluelessness” and leave it at that.
I think she’s imposing on you. If she needs to talk aloud about something, maybe you should get her a sock puppet to talk to – it would be at least as useful in terms of giving her feedback and it would save wear and tear on her nerves.
Wow. K sounds a lot like my mom, although my mom always does that with food. “So, I had salmon last night, and the night before that I had chicken. I don’t think I want chicken tonight Or salmon. What are you having? I think I’ll have beef. Oooh, or maybe I’ll be bad! A burger. Oh, I shouldn’t. Maybe I should have a salad instead.” She will tell me what she’s had for dinner for the entire week before, then what she’s making for dinner tomorrow and what’s she’s making for bridge group next week. And I’m on the other end making the appropriate noises but not listening to a thing.
I’m sorry for your predicament, Athena. That would drive me crazy, especially if I didn’t have a book nearby (in your case, I don’t know if I’d hit her in the head with it or start reading while she talked). I think it would be fair to say that your friend is imposing on you. I mean, you’re friends, right? That means that you DO have to listen to each other, but you listening to each other inherently means that you BOTH get to talk - not just one person yammering on and on. It would be different if it were a really huge, life-altering decision, but if it’s just stereo equipment, and you don’t know a thing about it, why would you be the sounding board?
I’m just wondering what would motivate a person to keep on talking to someone about something that they’ve already said they’re not interested in. Your friend sounds a little strange, Athena. Most people don’t actually want to bore other people, and will make an effort not to do so if told they are doing it, not just tell you you should be a better friend and listen to her drone on forever without comment.
I have a sister who talks a lot, and sometimes she gets carried away with telling me stuff that’s going on at her work or whatever. Long, involved stories about people I don’t know, doing things I don’t care about. She’s my sister, and a good friend as well, so I listen to her longer than I would like sometimes, because her friendship makes up for it in other ways. Are you getting enough out of this friendship to make some long, boring conversations worth it?
My husband does this with hot rod stuff and it makes me want to slit my throat. He’ll go on and on about a Monte Carlo bar and how the brackets aren’t lining up properly and the hood won’t close, but that might be because the carburetor is mounted too high, but maybe they’re going to mount a kill switch on the rear end of the car in case there’s a fire…(click…click…BLAM!).
I tune him out, turn up the TV or even resort to walking away.
But if I start talking about something that he knows nothing about, he’ll just tell me he doesn’t know about it (and I can tell he doesn’t WANT to know anything about it) and I’ll drop it. Because I’m the GOOD spouse.
I know a girl who will tell the same story over and over and over again. Even if I say, “Oh, yeah, I remember you telling me that,” she’ll still start from the beginning and tell the entire story in painful detail. I had to stop hanging out with her, though that wasn’t the only reason why.
I agree with you, Featherlou. I know I try not to blather on about stuff I know other people don’t want to talk about. Sometimes it’s unavoidable - something happens and you just want to TALK about it - but even then I try to be brief, to the point, and preface it with something like “I know you don’t care about this, but I have to tell someone/ask advice/get this off my chest, I’ll try to make it short.”
Indygrrl she does this too. She’ll start telling me something, and I’ll say “Oh yes, I remember you told me that last week.” On occasion, I’ll even finish her sentences to try to put some humor in the whole thing, for example, she’ll start with “I was thinking about buying these new speakers…” and I’ll say “The Sony SKM-5s because they offer the z-235 subwolfer solution and are on sale at Best Buy for $50 off!” It’s humorous, but it illustrates the problem… I think sometimes I know more about the technical details of HER hobbies than I do my own.
As far as dropping her, or avoiding her… no, I won’t do that. She’s an old and dear friend, and if I have to listen to her talk about her hobbies I will. I guess I just wanted some support that I wasn’t a bad person to get bored with hearing the same stories over and over, and it was OK to feel frustrated at being used as a sounding board.
My wife is a talker. I am a non-talker. Unfortunately for both of us, I find a lot of conversation boring so my eyes often glaze over. Overall we have come to an unspoken compramise where she talks less than she’d like and I listen attentatively more than I’d like. The result is that we’re both pretty happy I think.
To your particular situation, I think it comes down to a matter of degrees. If your friend is harping on when she knows you’re not interested then that’s probably a bit much. It would be better for both of you if she could tackle you once, maybe twice, on a particular subject and then be able to drop it for good.
Not at all. See my thread, lol. The exception is my mom and sometimes my dad. My mom has helped and supported me through the years. I doubt that she gave damn about everything I talked to her about.