My friends talk my ear off and don’t listen to me

Dear reader,

After last week’s column about emotional pain and suicide I wanted to write a nice lighthearted column. So I looked for a nice, lighthearted letter like I used to get sometimes at Salon. Couldn’t find one. Just people in deep pain. All over the world, people in pain, uncomfortable, forced to change, give up routines, give up comforts, face fragility,  precariousness, lack of control, randomness, capriciousness of nature.

Wow.

This is the most lighthearted letter I could find and it’s not all that lighthearted. It is about being tortured by your friends.

I do want to answer the darker, harder letters, and I will, but not just yet. I can’t. Not yet, not another heartbreaking letter, not just yet. (Also, I was not able to produce an audio of that column; it was just too dark. But I will produce audio for this one.)

The following is a problem with a solution. It might not be an easy, comfortable solution, and it might end some friendships, but it is a solution.

Dear Cary,

Why do I attract friends and romantic partners who are verbose, who talk nonstop where I can barely get a word in edgewise? Doesn’t this show little regard for my well-being, let alone the desire to get to know ME?

Let me give you a couple of examples. Early in our so-called courtship, a former partner would call, usually late in the evening when I was dead-tired. Often I was in the bed. After all, I did have to work the next morning. I recall that much of what he droned on about was of no surprise, interest, or consequence to me. But I am polite, so I would listen. And, I would fall asleep during these “conversations” only to wake up to his voice going on and on and on! The first time this happened, I was horrified. How rude of me. Anyway, I couldn’t believe that he hadn’t detected that I was not conscious and awake during parts of his monologue.

More recently, but still a long time ago, a former partner contacted me. He wanted to FaceTime, of all things. I suppose I was curious, so I agreed. Briefly, we exchanged the usual banalities. “It’s been a long time.” “You look good.” And, then he proceeded to talk at me for nearly two and half hours. Looking at me. On FaceTime. Where he could witness my growing boredom, then irritation, then disgust, as he monopolized the entire conversation. It went that long because I wanted to see how long he would talk without acknowledging me as a living, sentient being. I don’t remember how, but I managed to end his monologue with raised blood pressure and anger at myself for agreeing to the call in the first place.

It’s the same with many of my friends. They really are my friends. I love them very much. Over the years, I have acquired a small circle of generally lovely beings from all walks of life­­-­-unemployed, ultra-professional, atheists, religious, black, white, male, female, relatively young and definitely old. But I find that I do most of the listening. I know much more about them than they know about me, because I am usually listening to them tell me about their lives.

At those rare moments when they are actually listening to me, what kills me is when they say, “I didn’t know that about you!” Like I was intentionally keeping something from them. Or, “Wow, why didn’t you tell me?” It just kills me.

During this pandemic, it is not the time to avoid friends. I find that I have to schedule some of my friends because I know it’s going to be a long conversation. And, guess what? They talk even more! Understandably. We’re in the midst of a scary pandemic. I can’t win.

So, Cary. What’s up with all this? Your advice will be most appreciated.

The Listener

Dear Listener,

Well, I do have a suggestion.

I suggest that you be unusually honest and direct.

What I suggest may sound rude. I think being honest with a friend is not rude. What I am really thinking about is intimacy: allowing someone to know you, including stuff you’re not proud of. Like that you feel you’re being walked on and not heard and you want to stop that and that means you have to ask for something that you’re afraid to ask for.

You may think people should just know. And maybe they should. But they don’t. If they did, well, none of this would be happening.

This is your chance to enlighten them.

Let’s subject this friendship to the Friendship Stress Test! Let’s see how it holds up under a little stress. Let’s see if the friendship can handle a little honesty!

Here are some things you might say:

1) “I have to tell you something. I really need for you to listen to me. Just let me talk for a few minutes.”

2) “I want you to do something for me: Ask me a question about myself and then let me talk, and listen to me.”

3) “I need for you to listen to me for a while. I just need to talk and have you shut up and listen. Can you do that?”

These are mild, woo-woo things. They’re not very confrontational and they don’t even address the selfish, entitled, bullheaded behavior that is actually irritating you. The following questions are more confrontational.

4) “Excuse me. Listen to me. Do you know how long you have been talking without asking me a single question? I have been timing you, and it’s now [fill in the blank] minutes you’ve been talking nonstop.”

After making this statement, it is advised to just be quiet and see what happens. The person will probably say something. It will be interesting to find out what.

5) “Hey. We’ve known each other a long time. I like you and I want to stay friends. So I would like to say something to you that you might not like: You don’t listen to me enough.”

6) “Hey! I’m dying of cancer!”

Well, that last suggestion might be in bad taste. But it’s worth a try, just to see what the person says. You would have to explain that no, you’re not actually dying of cancer, you’re dying of boredom.

These suggestions require “getting out of your comfort zone.” But your comfort zone doesn’t seem all that comfortable. In fact it seems more like your torture zone. You’re  being tortured but don’t feel it’s OK to complain.

And now look what happens, I get up to have a coffee and wouldn’t you know it, I imagine a longer conversation, a kind of dialog, like in a play:

“Hey, you like me, right?”

“Sure.”

“You consider me a friend right? I’m not perfect, but I’m a good friend, right?”

“Right.”

“So good friends are supposed to be able to tell each other things they wouldn’t tell everyone, right? That’s what intimacy is about, right?”

“Um, right.”

“And sometimes what a good friend tells a good friend might be a little uncomfortable, right?”

“Well, not sure where you’re going with this but OK.”

“So, where I’m going with this is that there is this pattern in my friendships that is bothering me and I am starting with you—because I trust you—to see if I can change this.”

“Well, OK, but as I was saying, the other day I go down to the grocery store I always go to, you know, and I park carefully, and I get out of the car with my bag, I carry my own grocery store bag because I don’t like to add to the landfill and also because I like my own grocery store bag, it’s stronger and holds more and I’m not afraid it will burst like the cheap plastic ones they give you at the store, and I go into the store to get my box of Wheaties and they have these two boxes with different graphics on them, and I’m not sure which one is the right one, which is more fresh, and I can’t read the labels with the manufacture date, they’re in some kind of code, I’m just not sure about the whole thing, I think it’s the same product but I’m not sure so, to make a long story short … I go walking around to find a stock clerk to ask him and …”

“That’s what I’m talking about! You’re doing it!”

“What?”

“You’re telling me boring trivial shit that I’m supposed to listen to and you’re not listening to me!”

“I am? I mean, I’m not?”

“You are! You’re not! That’s what I mean.”

“Oh.”

And then, just take it from there. Piece o’ cake.

Friends are supposed to listen to you. It’s in the friend job description.

Cary T.