Some instances that made me look anew at this puzzling question these last days:
a newspaper article mentioning a regular at the Hofbräuhaus in Munich, one of the 600-odd who have a locker for their personal stein, who is 94 years old and has been a member for the last 53 years of a Stammtisch that meets on Mondays.
personal observation: yesterday we took off from a Greek village square for a day hike, and passed a group of middle aged local men sitting in the shade who chatted over drinks and snacks from the nearby taverna of a Saturday. Three hours later when we returned the same men were still at it. Presumably that groups meets regularly but still has not exhausted topics.
personal observation: on the beach today, a middle aged couple (presumably together for a long time) lounged on the deck chairs next to ours. They kept up a steady conversation for two hours. The conversation being in Greek, I could not identify topics, but there was enough to talk for that time, and there was no acrimony involved. The husband sometimes got a sentence in, otherwise the wife could talk on and on, with no noticeable pauses to draw breath - amazing technique.
personal quandary: my wife has been complaining for some years that my conversation has been drying up. I am well aware of that, and regret it, but the problem is that we have been living together for 15 years now, and the supply of things that I have not already said has become pretty meagre - new facts that can be discussed, new opinions that I have formed, old opinions that I need to retract and revise, plus occasionally details of my wife’s past that I am interested in but suddenly discover I have not asked. Everything else has been said, according to my mental ledger of what I have said i.e. staked my personal honour on, and I am hard put at justifying to repeat myself. Curiously my wife often does not remember my having talked about something when I vividly recollect (e.g. because it was something I revealed to her for the first time) the time, place and circumstances.
All of the above examples involve the ability (in the latter example, the expectation of an ability) of people who have talked with each other for an aggregate hundreds or thousands of hours, to still have something that can be justified to say.
I cannot fathom it. Only the first case may have an explanation: in the case of the 94 year old guy and his Stammtisch pals, a smidgen of dementia might be helpful in clearing their mental ledger of topics already covered last week.
Where I somehow succeed is in another problem: how to find topics to talk about with people who I have not met before, or with people where they and I both have accrued enough new experiences to talk about since we last met. There is a sufficient new supply of talk here. It is different for long time companions of any kind.
The weather, politics, books, movies, sports, jokes, health issues, mood, gossip. New things happen faster than you can talk about them.
eta Do you stop having thoughts? Like you’ve been alive for N years, have you exhausted everything there is to think about? If so, is your mind just blank? If not, why is that thing verboten as a topic of conversation?
It does however make the obligatory phone call to Mom easy.
Dial, when she answers say “Hi Mom”, set the phone down and come back in 30 minutes. She probably won’t notice you’ve been gone. If she does, claim the phone call malfunctioned or dropped.
I have two observations about that, both related to my best friend who, sadly, passed away several years ago from an aggressive form of cancer.
When he last visited me, we had not seen each other for nearly a decade despite being close friends, because we lived some distance apart. But I was astonished at how we immediately bonded despite the time gap. What did we talk about? Who cared! Pretty much anything and everything – it just all came naturally, each inspired by the other. It’s when you have to worry about a prepared subject list that conversations become awkward.
The other thing about my friend that is pertinent to the subject, and less benevolent, is about his wife. A nice lady in many ways, but an interminable chatterbox. She never felt any need to filter her thoughts – whatever came into her brain was immediately emitted from her mouth. I’m sure that there was never any dead air when the two were together, but he was doing most of the listening.
Whenever my grandmother phoned, after maybe two exchanges mum would put the reciever down wherever she was (counter, ironing board), and just continue on what she was doing (more often than not just watching tv).
With my wife and me, it is current events, what are our far-flung kids doing, what is the weather forecast, health issues. And then my wife starts reminiscing about the past.
Your mention of the Stammtisch reminds me of my Swiss. I happened to be spending the year in Switzerland when they had a national referendum on the question of women voting in federal elections. He told me that a significant part of the opposition came from the fact that quite typically, all the men in the community would congregate at their Stammtisch and discuss the events of the day. Thus they would be au courant with the problems and the government in a way that the women were not. The referendum did pass, but there were still a couple cantons that didn’t allow women to vote in local elections. It took around 20 more years for all the cantons to come on board.
I sometimes remark on intriguing strangers to my wife (always out of earshot as you never know which languages people understand or, worse, misunderstand). That makes for all of 5-10 seconds of conversation (20-25 seconds if there are complex surmises to be analysed). There is only so much (i.e. so little) that can be said as both fact and analysis about anything.
As is so often the case, the Dope provides an insight into the OPs question, if not the answer. I constantly marvel at the eagerness to discuss every tiny flicker of observation or errant musing that cross folks’ minds. Just scan the thread titles.
I am fortunate enough to see my buddy of over 60 years for a walk every Sunday morning. In an hour of walking we usually talk for about half of it, but walk in silent comfort for the other half. We both know individuals who can’t tolerate a gap in conversation and just do not stop narrating every thought that flits through their brain. I actively avoid those folks and am in awe of their friends and partners.
But it is certainly a common, if not universal human trait to deal with our mental needs through talking and listening to talk. A need which can be at least partially served with writing and reading.
My husband and I have been married 20 years, and we do sit in silence a lot. When we worked together, we spent almost every minute in proximity, so we really didn’t have a word to say!
Now that he’s retired, we sit on the porch at night, drink wine, and talk about all kinds of stuff because we haven’t seen each other all day. But if we’re constantly together, like on a road trip, we can be quiet for hours. It’s nice.
ISTM if you’re interested and engaged in everything, there’s lots to talk about. If you’re interested and engaged in nothing, there’s nothing to talk about.
As folks get older, there’s a natural flow from the former to the latter state of being.
Remember, you’re only as old as you behave. So don’t turn into somebody interested and engaged in nothing.
There’s always new (and old) stuff to discuss when I meet people I have been conversing regularly over the decades with. The world goes on and things happen, and then there’s always the reminiscing.
I guess if someone had no mutual friends, no relatives, no children, no pets, no hobbies, and no interests there would be nothing to discuss. Except the weather.
I often don’t have much to talk to my spouse about on weekends, say, at dinnertime, if we’ve been spending the day together – because we’ve probably already talked about it while we were together. If I’ve been reading a book or talking to another friend or something like that during the weekend, then I could talk about that.
On weekdays there’s usually no shortage of stuff, because we can talk about what happened at work, what the kids have been up to, what the kids said when they were with one parent or another, stuff he or I saw online, etc.
