Conversations are supposed to be two-sided – but all too often we come up against someone who’s passionately, exclusively in love with the sound of their own voice. Time to fight back …
When I was in my early teens, I was often invited round to a schoolfriend’s house for dinner. Her family struck me as wildly progressive: they were Danish and indulged in all sorts of “out-there” activities – fondues, candle-making and, most terrifying of all, the talking stick.
Before the meal was served, someone would retrieve the sacred broom handle and it would be passed around the table. You could speak only if you had possession of the stick. Despite it being the most stressful thing ever (it meant being in the spotlight, and then remembering to keep quiet the rest of the time), I now frequently yearn for a more convenient version of that stick.
For example, I met a friend recently who I see infrequently but keep up with via voice notes. No sooner had we sat down than he launched into a long discourse about his new marathon training food plan. He only broke the flow to order an omelette: “Four egg whites, two yolks, is that possible?” (We were in my local greasy spoon, so the request was greeted with mirth.) When we left, 90 minutes later, he finally had the grace to turn to me and ask: “And how are things with you?”
Walking home, I felt a mixture of disappointment and irritation. Had he always been so self-absorbed? So uninterested in anyone else? I couldn’t help wondering if our one-sided virtual updates had played a part in the problem.
There is a name for this type of egocentric behaviour – “conversational narcissism”. Although it was coined by the sociologist Charles Derber in his 1979 book The Pursuit of Attention, the term seems more relevant than ever. “WhatsApp communication and voice notes are really a series of monologues,” says Charlotte Fox Weber, a psychotherapist. “In face-to-face situations, people are forgetting how to pause naturally, to make space to hear and listen. And people are chatting on the phone – an activity that at least requires turn-taking in a defined way – much less often.”
A lot of our communication online can feel weirdly transactional, focused on logistics or niche WhatsApp groups. According to Tamu Thomas, a life coach and author, this has damaged the art of improvised conversation. “People have less capacity for meandering conversations that don’t have a purpose,” she says. “A good dialogue is a back-and-forth between two people discovering new things about each other, even if they have known each other for years. Because there are now so many different channels available to stay in touch, some people are confusing communication with connection.”
Knowledge is power, though. If you can recognise the five types of common conversation hogger, it will be much easier to handle them.
