Strategies for dealing with Moaning Minnies

[MaturingCheeseball]

Or Moaning Malcolms. Just that - inspired by another thread today on moaners and a relative I talked to yesterday.

The weather is awful, a wedding they went to was decidedly below par, where does so and so get their money from… And then there are the problems which are eminently fixable but they won’t do anything but just moan on and on. If I offer a solution (or even sort things out for them myself) it’s just on to the next thing or circling back round to chewing over things again.

I try to be a good ear but I’m sinking!

Stop bothering to be polite - they obviously don't care about how they sound to you.
See the person as infrequently as possible
Zone out when they start
Do not bother to engage or try to counter-argue - this will fuel the moany fire

draw their attention to it?
Do you realise you have been talking for 20 minutes and haven't said a positive thing about anyone or anything?

Firstly, I limit my exposure to such people and I dont try to be a "good ear". You arent helping these people by enabling them to marinate in their own impotent misery, you are simply reinforcing a dysfunctional cycle of negativity and pointless moaning.

They are energy vampires and will leave you feeling drained of life after every encounter so limit your time with them as much as you can. If they are friends rather than relatives this is certainly much easier.

I have removed all friends like this from my circle and feel much lighter and better. Obviously, I am not talking about friends who complain sometimes or are genuinely going through a temporary hard time (we all have that) but I mean the people who seem to make it their life's mission to spew out misery, criticism, gossip and negativity and even if they won the lottery they'd still be moaning and whining about it.

Secondly, if you do have to spend time with such people I like to call them out on it - eg "that sounds challenging- what do you intend to do about it?". They dont tend to like that because it challenges their narrative that they are perpetual victims. It moves the conversation from perceived helplessness to personal responsibility.

Moaners gonna moan, and when they do, they aren't usually looking for someone to say how to fix it, they just need to have something to moan about.

Maybe just do a Sybil Fawlty and go "Ooh, I knooow..." on repeat.

My MIL tends towards this and I openly call her on it. She is constantly off on holidays but whenever you ask how they went she starts listing everything that went wrong. I give her a minute and then say she has to tell me her favourite bits otherwise she can get back from a 3 week trip to Italy and only talk about a problem with the flight.

Yeah stuff like this can be really insensitive. I know a lot of people who would be so grateful and happy to be able to afford a three week break in Italy so to constantly moan about insignificant things just seems kind of gross - its so privileged and tone deaf.

Stop offering solutions for a start. I’d murmur “oh dear that’s a bit of a pain to sort” and then promptly change the subject. I’d also limit my time with them if possible.

I’d be blunt, you moan a lot don’t you. They are doing it because it gives them pleasure. Worse case they fall out with you but that’s a winner as you don’t then need to talk to them!

I do do the Sybil Fawlty thing - endlessly! I can’t mention anything to them, I just can’t.

Particularly upsetting is when they pull to pieces weddings, Christenings, birthdays… always picking on the one thing that was off. My wedding was 25 years ago and they are still mentioning that there was too much food, so-and-so behaved badly and the church was cold.

Just find a happy place in your head and let them enjoy it.

For goodness sake, why dont you tell these offensive idiots how bloody rude they are being?

why on earth would you just sit there and take their insults about your wedding?

So many doormats on MN

I am guilty of this. I struggle with chronic illness and sometimes it's really hard to find good things to think about or say because I feel everything is tarnished by my illness. I had a brilliant mentor at work who used to challenge me, but I've long since retired, so don't have her firm but fair rebuttal any more. All you can do is gently reflect back, or ignore. Therapy helps so perhaps you could suggest that - the person must be quite unhappy.

Yes draining isnt it. I had a few family like that and my mother. I just dropped some visits. Found it very tiring moan moan

All good strategies, I'd like to add that taking hold of the conversation and constantly turning it to your own favourite topics, and only responding to what they say by dragging up something you know will bore them and expounding about it at length.

I recently had a visit from a neighbour who came to grumble about someone else on the street. I diverted the discussion to other topics, boring on about the problems I was having installing Ubuntu into a partition on a Windows laptop, particularly with the BIOS locking me out and insisting I needed administrative privileges, but not allowing me to set an admin password. Which was what I'd been doing when she rang the bell.

I watched in secret relief as her eyes glazed over, and instead of getting comfy on the settee and bending my ear for hours, she declined the offered mug of tea, remembered something else she needed to do and buggered off. WIN!

It's taken me several decades to reach this point, I wish I'd sussed it 40 years ago.

Ooh yes, that sounds like a plan. I never talk about myself, but I could drone on about something in the news I suppose.

Ta -da! It worked! I listened to moaning for 30 minutes, then started talking about a television programme I said I thought she’d enjoy. There was silence… then “Oh, my phone battery’s dying… Bye!” 😁