Subscribe Via RSSHow To Prevent The Aspie Ramble
How often does this happen to you? You’re having a conversation with someone, really struggling to make it work, and then…wow! Wouldn’t you know it, they actually bring up a topic you’re really interested in! Now you have something to talk about. So you start talking…and talking…and…wait, why is the other person changing the subject? We were onto something good! No, why is he trying to leave now?
Aspies have a tendency to talk at length about special interests, and often have a hard time recognizing when it bores the other person. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to kick myself after realizing I’ve done this. But realizing it is a huge improvement over being totally oblivious, so maybe there’s hope.
I’ve come to realize that people care a lot about back-and-forth interaction in conversations. They like conversations where both people are enthusiastic and make each other feel good. I’ve always wondered why people talked about the weather, and it seems to be because it’s the one thing that everyone has in common and can easily talk about without disagreeing. It can be mindless, but it creates interaction and establishes common ground. (That’s also why people say to avoid talking about sex, politics, and religion at social gatherings.) So when we talk at length about our interests and don’t create opportunities for the other person to respond it can feel like a lecture for them.
It helps to look for certain cues that you might be monopolizing the conversation.
- Check on the other person’s expression and body language. Has he stopped looking at you and started looking around anxiously? That’s often the “Help, get me out of here!” look.
- Has it been a while since the other person has responded?
- Is the other person not as enthusiastic about the topic as you are? “Thanks for letting me know,” “Okay”, and “That’s nice” can be signs that he would like to talk about something else.
It also helps to know your hot-button topics. Have you ever noticed that there are certain topics that you just can’t help going on about? For me, it’s dogs. I don’t always remember that while a lot of people like dogs, most aren’t terribly interested in hearing about the nitty-gritty details of breeds and behavior. They just think dogs are cute. If you know there’s a topic that’s a trigger for you, you can think ahead of time about what people are really interested in knowing and edit down your talk. If you’d like to talk more about the topic but aren’t sure if the other person cares so much, you can always tell them that it’s an interest or hobby of yours and see how they respond.
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16 Responses
Fantastic advice!
Personally, I find myself on the other end of the spectrum – I deeply fear that I’ll bore people with my “special interests”, so I don’t talk about them at all! At least, not with strangers in real-life situations. Twitter, on the other hand..
[...] This post was Twitted by johnnyA99 [...]
Yes, I can relate to that/
A partiaal solution is to try to make freinds, or at least aquantances, among peole who have at least some interest in your special interest. And the easest way to do that, especialy if you live in a city, is to join some sort of group of people who like have that interest. If your thing is dogs, find other dog lovers. (A town near where I love has a club for corgy lovers, which is pretty darn specific.)
You’ll still have to work on listening as well as talking, but you have uped the odds that when you talk, your audiance will be interested, and when you listen, you will be interested, which will make it easer to keep listening.
I seem to have developed a natural “radar” for that, ’cause when it happens, my words seem to echo back to me, and I know I’ve been tuned out. I then feel embarrassed, flummoxed. But it does save time.
Great entry! This would have been helpful to know when we started dating. Hopefully those long and awkwardly painful conversations are a distant memory. My first sign should have been that you would leave me to a 45-minute monologue and not say anything in response. I could not figure out why you were so quiet; I am usually the quiet one. We have worked this out over the years and it has been helpful that we have many of the same interests.
I remember…and I wondered how anyone could go on for so long. Do you remember how I never asked you anything either?
It’s pretty fortunate that we have similar interests or else we would either ramble about totally different things or eat dinner in silence every night!
I didn’t really see your post as saying that I need to “shut up” – but I did see it as trying to tell aspies how to behave to reduce our annoyance to our NT friends.
It’s true that we often realise the problem some hours after the conversation and it’s true that it’s better if we can salvage it but I wonder if sometimes it’s not worth the “mess” just to have a decent conversation every now and then.
The problem as I see it, is that most people are quite conservative and boring in their choice of conversation. Sure, perhaps for a moment they’re getting a bit of a taste of the boredom that they dish out to us but at the same time, the aspie is probably having them most stimulating conversation they’ve had in weeks.
If truth be told, once they start looking around anxiously, you’ve lost them. No amount of conversation changing is going to bring them back. They’ll probably never talk to you again – particularly if you hardly know them. So… should we really let them get away? If we do, we’ll find ourselves standing around with nobody to talk to (or talk at). That could be worse.
There’s some great ideas in this post – I’m just not sure how often I’ll want to use them.
Okay, so you don’t *have* to use any of the ideas if you’re comfortable…as always, they’re mere suggestions for anyone who would like to do something differently, that’s all!
Boring is in the ears of the behearer.
Butjust because ou’ve bored somebody, dosn’t mean that they’ve written you off forever.
However, most of are not particularly good at small talk, or at least, have to work at it realy hard.
I think it’s best to put ourselves in situations where we are observed by the same people over time.
When I do, I often get remarks about how much I’ve “improved.”
This is usualy atributed to the influence of the particular group.
Sometimes this may be true, but often I think it’s just that people “get me” better over time.
Also, I get them better, and figure out how to fit in to that particular group better.
Since I’m not curently ready to be a total hermit, and still do like to associate with people, this is good.
Also, since I think that a lot of what I have to say has value, it’s good to come up with ways to get people to listen to it.
Which often means feeding it to them in smaller doses.
I’m not ready to be a total hermit either!
And finding a way to get someone else to engage with what you have to say is showing yourself a lot of respect.
As an example of my “radar”, I was asked by Hub Admin to call the Kalamazoo PD to check up on Zach, because of his latest post on aspieweb.com. So I called, and started to read his note. Halfway through, I FELT her “roll her eyes”, so I interrupted myself with, “It’s not much longer,” and finished reading it to her. Whereupon she gave me the number of the Sheriff’s office, which has a lovely labyrinth of a menu, and I got dead-ended with an office that closes at 4 PM. Grrrrr!
I left out that I explained the situation to her before I started reading the note.
That sounds like an effective way to do it – in context and keeping her hooked. Your radar sounds impeccable.
And again, that was a very thoughtful thing of you to do…I’m really glad he turned out to be okay, or at least relatively okay.
I messed up again, have to explain. There were two brief paragraphs in Zach’s note yesterday, followed by a YouTube video of Alannis Morrisette. I didn’t realize, when I made the call, that below the video, he went on and on and on. So I had read one brief paragraph before interrupting myself to say that wasn’t much more.
The blog seems to have been taken down again today, so don’t bother checking. They’re going to look into securing Social Services for him today.
Since you said not to check, I had to check! Huh…I see what you mean about the YouTube video and the paragraphs. How odd that that’s the maintenance mode plugin and yesterday there were new blog posts written since his goodbye post.
Good post. For along time I thought it was annoying how people say, “How are you?” when they don’t really care about an answer other than “OK” or “fine, how about you?”, then realized one day it’s more of a politeness, a throwaway interaction, than an actual question.