These “dull” conversations- you are one half of them you know, why is it up to the other people to be interesting enough to come up to your exacting standards?
It isn't, notcopingwellhere, and I know perfectly well that I'm the other half. I don't have "exacting standards", honest! It very rarely helps when I try to steer this sort of conversation in a more interesting direction, because the nature of that sort of event works against it. It does work sometimes, which is lovely (like my boat trip, where I met someone lovely and interesting ... but I think that possibly worked because it was a more relaxed setting) This sort of very formal event, with a lot of people, just tends to result in small-talk and chit-chat, mainly because no one has that much time to spend with one person.
Your partner who is taking you as a plus one clearly doesn’t know you very well
I think he most probably does, notcopingwellhere, seeing as we have been together for well over thirty years.
Sorry, but you just sound like a bit of a misery
Come with me to a music festival and say that!
I think it’s a shame that the couple are spending money to entertain you when you will hate it all so much
Yes, so do I, notcopingwellhere. I think it's a rotten, miserable shame. I wish they could swap me for one of their young friends ... but it's not the couple paying; it's their poor parents. I still wish they could swap me, though.