Why do people not ask questions?

[bryceQ]

I'm in quite a few social situations where this happens, was speaking to a friend about it and it happened to her today.

She was with her partner's brother and wife, they didn't ask a single question about my friend and her husband (the brother). And gave minimal responses when they spoke. Only wanted to speak about themselves.

I always find it so alien. If I'm with someone, friend or even someone I barely know, I'll always ask about their news and do my best to be engaged with what they say. I can't imagine just not saying anything when they speak, or turning it back to myself.

My dad does this too, if i tell him something, he doesn't engage with what I say he just turns it back to him and we have a conversation about him again.

It's really frustrating.

Like a pp, my mother is like this. Oddly, she's very unselfish, but also totally self-absorbed. She's in her 90s now and knows nothing important about me as a person. She might ask a question (usually about some outdated issue or someone I haven't seen or heard of for 40 years), but sees it only as a jumping off point for talking about her own statements, opinions and experiences.

She suffered severe trauma as a young child and has never properly recovered. Often it's as though she's still living in those experiences and any conversation is likely to trigger another bad memory which she needs to rehearse. I see it as a developmental arrest - not being able to get beyond the natural self-absorption of a child to develop a mature interest in others. It's not her fault, but the impact on me has been a lifetime of feeling unseen and unimportant.

Agree it’s absolutely awful - cringeworthy. Great grown adults rabbiting on about themselves never showing an inkling of interest in anyone else. Urgh.

We were taught social skills by my mother as children and we have done the same for ours. Dd2 in particular is awesome socially. Aged 6 there was a lull in conversation in the school queue and she turned to another mum and said “do you have any nice plans for the weekend?”. My work was done. As a teen 3 different families invited her on their summer holidays last year.

When I was dating I found many men to be like this. So much so that in the end I wouldn’t take it further if a guy hadn’t asked me a question about myself within a set time.

As for everyone else, every friendship I’ve had like this, I have let fade away. It means I don’t have many friends left! But being someone’s “audience” is not only not fun, it’s also draining. So why would I continue being their friend when I get nothing positive from it? If I can never share any of my news, good or bad. My time is precious to me. I’d rather spend it alone and doing something I at least enjoy.

When it comes to family, sometimes I just have to bully myself into the conversation! If I want to talk about something I will!

I’ve always been interested in other people. I even chose a job which involved people telling me about their lives! So I’m actually really good at getting people to open up to me. But in a social setting I want that to be equal.

After knowing my BIL for 30 years he doesn’t have a clue what DH or I do. He knows vaguely the area we work in. That’s it.
He will tell you every single aspect of his work, every person he deals with, every job.
He is totally unaware.

I do that sometimes. I'm not being rude or self absorbed I just don't want to know.

I won't answer questions about me, my family unless I want to. I will volunteer the information I want to and presume others do the same. I find mist if the "and what did you do when..." questions quite intrusive.

So all you'll get from me is a general how are you? You won't know how DH is doing with his recently diagnosed health issues unless I want to, trust you, and I won't ask about yours, assuming you'll tell me if you want to.

So if I answer all of your questions and you respond to my single question with a short "fine" that's just how the conversation went!

It's not that I don't care. I just won't pry.

I just don't understand why conversation is so difficult to grasp for so many ( and I honestly don't think it's the minority ). You ask a non intrusive conversation starter- ' How was your Christmas ' for example, the recipient answers and responds with a follow up question and from there conversation flows. Easy! I understand we're all different and not necessarily going to gel with everyone we meet, but the very basics shouldn't be difficult. It's polite! I cherish friends I can have an easy back and forth diaglogue with as each party walks away feeling heard and satisfied. It fills up your cup. I've learnt to let people go where my entire role is to sit and listen like a wall whilst they talk at you. One now ex friend used to talk for eternity about her kids teachers/ friends/ food dislikes/favourite cartoon shows etc whilst I'd stir there like a plank feigning interest and nodding along whilst anything I said was met with a derisive "ohhhhh" or " hmmmm " and then back to herself again. Like a pp said, it's not just the lack of questions that's the issue it's the utter lack of interest in anything you have to say.

I think having good social skills are in decline, with people unable or unwilling to have a two-way conversation or they talk constantly about themselves.

My late MIL could hold a 2-way conversation but omg could she talk incessantly too. She would look horrified if, after being talked at by her for 20-30 mins, I started to learn that I had to deliberately interrupt her (as politely as possible) or she would quite literally never stop. DH and DSis have this to a lesser extent and it’s exhausting. All three of them seem to have little social awareness sometimes.

My mum is like this, she doesn’t know what my degree is in, what languages I speak, what my job is etc. if I tell her something about myself she will stare blankly at me for 10 seconds then carrying on talking about herself. I think she’s autistic though.

I also do this to my step mum, but only because I can’t stand her and genuinely do not care about anything she has to say. I’ll answer her (many) questions to be polite and civil but I don’t ask her anything.

My aunts like this. Just a constant monologue of all her friends, friends kids, neighbours cats dogs uncles life. And never asks about me or my children. I don’t even reply now, I have no interest in the ins and outs of strangers lives. I just nod every now and again and say ‘oh. I don’t know who they are’.

Oh dear I am probably guilty of this. I just find small talk so incredibly boring. It is true I probably won't ask about what you had for Christmas Dinner, but I won't bore you with details of mine either, I'd assume everyone would find that so dull and just avoid the whole convo.

I also find questions peppered at me quite intrusive and prefer not to answer a lot of them.

I sound very dour, I am happy to chat - I suppose my definition of private seems broader than a lot of you. I wouldn't talk about my family relationships to a casual acquaintance for example

Not one person asked me a question over Christmas. I started dating 6 months ago after being on my own for many years, raising children alone and nobody wants to know a thing! I'm always curious about people and want to know how they're doing, how work is going and if they've been up to anything fun. Even my own mother doesn't ask me anything about my life..
Sometimes, I just volunteer the information because I'm so fed up that nobody cares, and I get 'oh that's nice dear' and then conversation quickly turns to something about someone at church, who I don't know, but my mother seems utterly fascinated by.

Yes, to dating! I found it excruciating on the app! And it wasn't just one man it was most of them!

Question after question went answered but with no reply question. I just stopped replying and then got 'are you still there?' Type questions. I actually once said - you haven't asked me any questions, so I thought you weren't that interested. He said ' oh right, what should I ask you? What do you do? What do you like doing??!!' With multiple punctuation marks! Came across quite aggressive. Blocked!

I can understand being reluctant to engage in idle chitchat but when the whole point of being on a dating app is getting to know the basics to see if you're compatible - so many men lack any kind of conversational skills.

Slightly baffled at the weirdly defensive posts about “prying”🙄. Questions in chit chat are along the lines of “how was your Christmas” “did you enjoy NY your pics looked great” not “what’s your favourite sexual position” or requesting full details of your Dhs medical records. Think I can spot the monologers…

I agree that many people just lack basic social skills ... I used to be responsible for graduate recruitment in the company I worked for and a lot of the selection process focussed on interpersonal skills and how well the interviewees could get on with each other and other colleagues. I can appreciate that this would be difficult for anyone who is shy or found the situation overwhelming & I am sure some of them could have done the job perfectly well but they lacked the 'soft skills' necessary in many areas of the business (which was very people focussed).

Many years ago I lost twins at 20 weeks. A few weeks later I went out for a meal with a friend who knew I'd lost the pregnancy. Over the course of 3 hours she talked about herself non stop (she'd just started work as an occupational therapist) and didn't ask me once how I was. At the end of the evening she had a moan about the price of her son's school blazer and said "just think, you'd have had to fork out for two!". This was her only reference to me having lost two babies during the whole time we were together. A few days later she did message me to apologise for her behaviour but I still can't believe she did it and the friendship didn't continue.

I spent 48 hours over Christmas trapped with one of these people. Barely paused for breath, I heard about every social event they’d been to in 2023, every person who’d attended was named, every social event they have planned for 2024, who is attending ( I know none of these people) how much each accommodation cost, what they ate, how good they are at their job. The list goes on. My glazed over, dead eyes didn’t stop them. I resorted to adopting Agnes Brown’s etiquette training and at intervals said “ that’s naice”. ( while really thinking fuck off to hell and burn)
At one point I had to lock myself in a toilet with my air buds in on full volume just to feel remotely sane. I doubt this person could tell you one fact about me other than my first name.

@RelevantSherbert Im so sorry for your loss and the dreadful, awful comments this person made.

@pinoco my family are exactly the same. Not one question about me. Every Christmas my family ask DB about his job and DH about his, but no one ever seems to care about mine. In the end I volunteered the information that my new job is going very well and I have received an award in my field but all I got was indifference followed by a very obvious subject change.
I don't think most of my family even know what I do, to be honest!

It came to me quite recently that you are actually allowed to ask people questions in conversation. (Past the very very generic such as "Did you have a nice Christmas?") When I was a child I was always being told that whatever question I had asked was rude or nosy, so I really thought it was rude and intrusive to ask any questions at all. I quite liked answering questions so I would fairly happily do that, but I would always hold back from asking people questions in case it was unwanted.

I guess this is probably an ND thing - the questions I would have been discouraged from asking as a child being personal/intrusive but me not being able to tell where the line was so I overcorrected.

Anyway I have been very pleased to learn that it is in fact OK to ask people questions and every time I've tried doing it I've ended up having such interesting conversations. Previous to this I tended to find I got on well in bigger groups (where I could answer questions and listen to the answers to other people's questions) or within smaller groups where we all interrupt and talk over each other routinely anyway and that is accepted so nobody is seen as monologuing. DH is horrified with my new approach, because he is of the opinion that you never ever pry, but then he also doesn't talk about himself and prefers not to have a conversation at all so I don't listen to him

This happens all the time, getting to a point where I can't be arsed any more...

I used to be one of those people until a few years ago. I thought a conversation went 'x tells me they are going to Ibiza', 'I offer observation about Ibiza/ memory of when I went there' 'x tells me more about forthcoming trip' 'I make more observations based on these further details, perhaps more experience of my own, possibly branching onto other island holidays'.etc.

It blew my mind one day when a work colleague told me 'you don't have to turn every conversation to about yourself'. I had no idea I was doing that, or offering personal stories instead of further questions was the wrong thing to do. I was late 40s so not even young.

I'm more careful now, though it still doesn't come naturally to me to keep going with questions. Partly because I know I will forget whatever comment I wanted to make.

Agreed with the online dating issue, I find it disheartening how most men just give short answers, and ask no questions. I give them 3 chances to ask a question then block them. I have also been on an app to meet female friends and the difference is marked - women generally know how to engage in a conversation. Even if not asking a question they at least offer up information that isn't incredibly dull.

@Brird now see, I agree with your original take.

The reason it's good etiquette to ask questions is that it keeps the conversation going and lets everyone have a say. If that's happening anyway then you're obviously all SuperStar Conversationalists and don't need to keep asking questions.

(However, I'm pretty sure I'm autistic, so...)

I think I do this when I'm drunk, the next day I get massive beer fear, playing the conversation over in my head thinking, god I just talked about myself all night. Hopefully I'm just bing paranoid and my memory is hazy because I'm the opposite when sober 🤞🏾

I struggle with the whole “when to ask questions, when to offer own experience” thing. I’d consciously try not to jump in with having gone to the holiday destination X is talking about myself but can then feel like I’m withholding something obvious - the conversation then moves on, X doesn’t know I’ve been to Ibiza, and next time it comes up it feels weird that I didn’t just say at the time. Think I’m an over thinker.

There’s a great scene in Ted Lasso about the benefit of being curious and asking questions!

I think in the case of offering your own experiences to the conversation, such as with the holiday one. You can still do that while asking them more about their trip. So like oh I went a few years ago, did you go to x place or do x thing? So it’s then back to them to continue. Then they might ask you something about your own trip. And so on. Then it hopefully turns into a nice conversation where you both learn more about each other!

But yes, be wary of doing that with every single conversation! I knew one woman who every single thing I said she had an opinion on, or it was something she’d already done or it was something that someone else she knew did better. It really got on my nerves in the end.