Your patience for idle talk?

In My Humble Opinion
1

How long, in months, can you listen to someone talk about doing something, without actually doing it, before you murder them?

For the purposes of this poll, the person is a good friend who has been obsessed with a single goal that is fairly simple and straight-forward to accomplish and requires a small amount of planning, and some effort, money, but almost zero effort has been put into the goal. Don’t ask me to define any of these terms besides “obsessed” because I won’t.

When I say obsessed, I mean there are e-mails about it at least once weekly, text messages, Facebook wall posts, it is impossible to have a conversation where the topic does not come up at least once. It’s become a staple of your friendship. It’s constantly yadda yadda yadda about this one, single thing.

But. The person has put zero effort into accomplishing the goal, bristles at the idea of suffering the mild inconveniences spending the time and money required to reach said goal, and gets defensive when told her plan, or lack thereof to be more accurate, will keep her where she is 100 years after she’s dead.

Yes, all people have something annoying that they do, and it’s part of life, but how long can you put up with endless idle talk about the same thing before you, “SHIT OR GET OFF THE MOTHERFUCKING POT! You don’t listen to anyone’s advice, you haven’t done jack shit to accomplish what you’ve been calling your goddamn ‘dream’ for something in the order of a year now, and when an opportunity almost fell into your lap, you waffled about it. How clear it is you’re better at talking than doing has made your talk beyond tiresome. You also say it’s been your dream for, what, three years now? Okay, because it was two years last time we talked. What’s next – it was a lifelong dream? In any case, if it’s been your ‘dream’ all this time, how come you haven’t done a fucking thing about it yet? How long does it fucking take to do this, anyway? Better yet, how long does it take to initiate the process. Why haven’t you even done that yet? Just fucking start it already, and don’t talk to me about it again until you have. Seriously, don’t bring up this topic ever again unless it begins with ‘I have taken the following steps toward accomplishing my goal, and have set a deadline of.’ Otherwise, if you bring it up in my presence again, this friendship will end in your death.”

How long before you say that?

2

I thought I was going to march in here all “Oh I nip that shit in the bud!” but then I realized that I am waiting on my friend to get here so we can drink wine and bitch and I can almost tell you word for word what her problems will be. Because they’ve been the same every time we’ve done this, for a better part of 10 years. All suggestions are met with “Yeah, but…” or “I can’t…”

I won’t derail this by giving topics, but usually we revolve around the topics you would guess.

I also realize I have listened to my SO make the same fucking complaint about work almost every single day for the 3.5 years we’ve been together, and occasionally before that when we were friends.

I guess I really do have infinite patience for this bullshit.

I, on the other hand, am a perfect delight to be around. I’m almost sure of it.

3

See, I need an option for

“I appear to have an endless stock of patience for bullshit like this but underneath my smiles and nods and general smiling supportive exterior I’m really thinking about that interesting book I was reading before you showed up again and mentally cataloging everything you say to mock you to other friends because I’m too passive aggressive to actually confront you about your raging idiocy.”

but I think that’s too long to fit in a poll option.

4

Murder would never happen, but I certainly wouldn’t have stayed friends with this person as long as you have. I don’t cope well with people who wax and wax about a dream (or whine and whine about a problem) without taking the logical steps to fix it. I have an analytical, hands-on, “fix-it” type of personality. I don’t like to listen to anybody venting, especially not all the time. I’ll do it on occasion if we have a good relationship, but the people who know me know not to bring a problem to me unless they want to fix it, and they want my advice to that end.

“There are lots of other people who will be friends with you, because they like to bitch about shit while doing nothing too! Go meet those people and leave me the fuck alone.” I wouldn’t use those exact words, but the sentiment would be the same.

This hits close to home because my stepdad was like this. He would spend so much goddamn time talking about building a workbench that if he’d just started building the fucking thing instead of talking about it for years, he could have built it 10 times over! christfuck

5

I have let a friend go for whining about the same problems over and over, and continuing the same behavior that engendered the problems in the first place, and rejecting any suggested solutions. Life’s too short.

6

Don’t care – I just tune that noise out and, assuming I still like him or her as a friend for other reasons, I’m happy to be some random empty phone for them to complain into.

I would probably do obnoxious things like quotes about pipedreams from “The Iceman Cometh” though, just to have some fun at another’s expense.

7

This. I’ll listen for a while, offering helpful suggestions, then I’ll listen for a while, being a good friend, then I’ll start questioning why they keep talking about the same thing if they have no plans to do anything about it ever.

8

If they’re a good friend, at some point I’d have to say “Listen- I’ve been listening to you talk about X for years now, and you’ve never done anything about it. If you want to do it, then just do it. But if you’re not going to, please don’t talk to me about it because I’ve offered all the advice I can which you’re not taking, and I can’t listen to it anymore.”

And if it doesn’t stop after that, then I’d have to kill them.

9

Yes, yes, this is me. I had to make this thread because I was this close (holds fingers close together) to telling my friend, “Dude, you’re not going to do anything about it, so shut the fuck up already.” Instead I bit my tongue and posting a whining rant here.

I try to be helpful, I give advice, I ask her point blank what she’s actually done, which is always followed by hemming and hawing, and prompt changing of the subject, but it always comes back up again. I can’t escape! I’m not going to write her off because she’s an otherwise cool broad, but Jesus Hussein Christ, the idle talk is driving me nuts.

Exactly. :slight_smile:

10

I can’t kill her, she’s my kid! :eek:

11

MeanOldLady, not knowing any specifics, all I can offer is the discovery that sometimes y’ gotta run inside that wheel to stop it.

It’s not unusual for people to have ‘the dream’ or the wont and not really know how to take the practical steps to actually make it happen.

I’ve had a couple of friends do exactly what you and others have described. Because they are more than the sum of the parts of their endless diatribe, I started gathering information, making appointments for them, writing lists with them - in short, getting involved beyond being the bored sounding board.

It worked, and I stopped rolling my eyes, bitching behind their backs and questioning the value of the friendship. (That seemed oh-so one sided, with me as the hero of course. All in all, not very nice. I finally realised that if I was painting myself as the hero, then I’d better damn well behave like one.)

I think it’s up to you to decide whether to take her by the hand, or smack her across the head. Either way, someone will be relieved.

12

It’s been done.

Oh, she knows what to do, considering it’s simpler than pie. Way simpler. I can’t bake for shit, but her “dream” is something that I have done recently almost on a whim, and two other mutual friends of ours have done within the past 12 months, and countless people who are less bright, less hard-working, and with less resources have done it. It’s not fucking rocket surgery, but she won’t do it because whining is easier. Actually – is it easier? Isn’t it exhausting to pretend like you want something more than the air you breathe nonstop for so long? It would seem so to me, but she apparently just wants something handed to her, and even a droplet of effort or risk overwhelm her. I have told her what to do, repeatedly, but she can’t because the dog ate her homework or something, so I just have to hear the yack yack yack.

I don’t even get what she gets out of the complaining with no action. Doesn’t it piss you off to want something that just is not happening? And does it not make you feel like a million bucks when you get what you want? So… make what you want happen then, no? Especially if it’s pretty easy to do? She’s just making herself more upset by daydreaming about her life changing, while everything stays the same.

Oy, some people.

I know, I know, “Get a blog, MOL!” No.

13

I have a dumbass friend who is in love with a married dude. The only time they get together is on lunch breaks where he fucks her in his truck. They work at the same place. She keeps trying to tell me that he truly does loves her. He just can’t divorce his wife because this is not acceptable in Hispanic culture. :rolleyes:

She’s always whining to me because she can’t get enough alone time with him. One time she actually went out on a date with a guy who is actually single. Married guy found out about this, went to the house party they were at, threatened to kick the guys ass and called my friend a whore. He made her cry.

She constantly whines about how he treats her but guess who she’s still fucking on her lunch breaks?

I flat out told her I don’t want to hear this shit anymore. Her response was that I must be jealous and in love with her or why else would her constant bitching bother me?

Grrr!!!

I still call her a friend because we no longer work together and I only see her two or three times a year. Thankfully, she has since moved on from this two year trist and is currently involved with a guy who isn’t married. I hear she’s a lot more pleasant to be around these days.

14

In that case, kill her before she bores you to death.

15

I find that alcohol helps. A lot.

16

Yeah. It keeps them alight.

17

You get 37 days, and then you die.

18

How romantic.

Girl, you don’t even know…

That’s unusually specific. How many bodies are in your backyard? :dubious:

19

It is.

“Let’s duck for a fuck in me fucked up truck!”

Sheer poetry.

20

Well, 38 days is clearly too long. And 36 days, that’s just damn unsupportive. So 37.

But nobody has ever gotten that far before giving up anyway. Apparently I am a “terrible” listener. Though I prefer to think of myself as “solution-oriented.”