A non-asker on non-asking
There's an article based on a post asking, Why don't people ask questions in conversation? Well, friend, I am here to tell you.
Hi, I'm Frances, and I'm bad at asking people questions.
It's not that I'm not curious about people. I'm so curious. I love listening to people. And I would rather they talk than me. I know I should ask more questions and I really do try. It just doesn't seem to work.
My sister is excellent and I try to study her. Never too cliché, never too serious. Very natural. She doesn't think she is very good. Which makes me think it's just innate and I will never learn.
One issue: bad experiences being shut down over even fairly innocuous things. Someone told me they bought a new car. Oh, what kind? I asked. They refused to tell me. That seemed honestly like quite a slam dunk question. Why mention it if you don't want to disclose anything about it? There's been enough times my follow up question about a subject they started has been met with "I don't want to talk about it" that I get nervous asking.
My sister's husband says people don't mention stuff they don't want to talk about. I would that we lived in such a world but, as above, we do not. Also, he's a medical doctor so a large part of his day is spent asking all sorts of people about all sorts of things and he's become immune.
He's the sort of person, you tell him so-and-so got a new patio and he says, "How much did it cost?" Dude. I'm never going to ask someone that question. I wouldn't ask you that question. Probably once you've asked enough people about their poop you can ask about patios.
So that's another issue. Deeply ingrained Britishness. Something about cultural differences. Stiff upper lip and all that. Also, though the inciting encounter of the article isn't a dating scenario, a lot of the issue is about dating and I've never dated so I'm missing a whole aspect of this.
I don't want to be invasive or put people on the spot. It can feel like an interrogation. I'm kinda private, I assume other people are too. Maybe car guy thought I was going to use this information to hunt the car park and key his prized new possession. I can get deer-in-the-headlights panicky about being asked questions, I assume other people do too. Unknowing questions blunder into trauma. Too many questions are an interrogation. Boring questions are a job interview.
Another thing, I'm always questioning my motives about questioning. Am I just being a nosey bastard? Is this serving the conversation or satisfying some craven desire within me? Related performance anxiety: Am I coming across as a nosey bastard? Do I sound disingenuous, like the half-assed questions at the end of blog posts trying to boost engagement?
There's also a deeply ingrained fear of silence among the majority of us. The desperate avoidance of which will lead to stumbling, rambling, and excusing yourself to the toilet to flush yourself down. I don't think silence is inherently bad but it is the death knell of a burgeoning conversation: there's no coming back from that.
This is a lot to be going on inside my head during every interaction.
What I will blame is fiction. Unrealistic standards set by books and tv and films where all these scripted interactions flow effortlessly on topic, there are no stumbles, no misunderstandings unless they are relevant to the plot, no interruptions or cross-talk (unless it's The Bear, where cross-talk is the point), everyone waits patiently for the speaker to finish because they know exactly what the speaker is going to say and how they themselves will respond, comfortable in the knowledge of the path of this whole conversation and that the scene has a point to get to. In fiction your dialogue is your character. Witty people are witty, boring people are boring, and never the twain shall meet. How nice for them.
While we are on the topic: small talk. Some people poo-poo small talk. But please, leave the pleasant nothingnesses to those of us that need it. I know you think it's superficial, and maybe it is. That we ought to be talking about our greatest hopes and deepest fears. But I absolutely don't want to talk to my in laws, or my siblings' in laws, or the many random acquaintances of a day about my hopes and fears. I don't want to talk to anyone about that shit. (There's been a lot of nibling birthdays recently, hence a lot of in laws. Who I do love. But am only going to talk to about certain well-trodden topics such as their holidays, their garden, etc.) Please, let's talk about the weather. Small talk is a social tool to signal our intent and non-psychopathy. It's a sounding board: if I talk about the weather and my conversation partner starts talking about chemtrails then I know to slide off to flush myself down the toilet.
Ultimately, I suspect, there's a word for all this. And that word is: anxiety.
What about you? Do you - That's a joke. There's no comments here. Or any good questions.