Friend that constantly talks about herself

[lomplan]

I have a friend that talks about herself all the time. She calls me often and the entire time is just me listening to her talk, when I try to talk about stuff going on in my life it's rare that she seems interested.

We met up yesterday and it was just the same again, 90% of the conversation and talking was her. I'm a very active listener, but she is the complete opposite when I'm talking.

Do I say something? It's boring and exhausting.

She texts and calls me a lot and we have meet ups arranged but I really can't be arsed anymore.

I'm not sure how to navigate this without upsetting her?

It’s difficult to keep up with a point that you didn’t actually make 🤷‍♀️

@PegasusReturns ah right so person 1 isn’t interested in person 2 at all and wants person 2 to solely focus on them rather than a balanced conversation about both sides? See, that’s weird to me, unless person one has an actual issue to discuss, this is generally how conversations work.

But why would person 1 not then respond with something like, oh that’s a shame. My DC looks set to get their second choice but is really hoping for x. Then again, x is very expensive (or whatever…)

I see person 2 as showing interest and furthering the conversation. Otherwise it feels a bit like an interview.

I suspect this post is about me

I have a friend like this. I am at the point of timing her every time she talks when we meet up so I can present her with the fact she talked about herself for 80% of the time.

In reality, I don’t care enough to be honest - I just have a busy diary so we can’t meet up very often.

I have a friend like this. Very ‘Me!Me!Me!Me!’. I started making excuses, seeing her less and less. I see her now maybe once or twice a year at most, and that’s when I absolutely can’t put her off any longer.
She’s a kind, lovely lady but I just can’t sit through the monologues any more.

She’s not much of a friend.

Why not just be busy when ever she wants to meet or talk on the phone?

That's so hurtful.
Sorry.

My mum is like this, she talks (mostly about my brother and now his children) but she doesn't really listen. When I had a new baby and, as I found out later, PND I tried to talk to her about how I was feeling and she suggested a housework schedule would help.

People like this make shit friends.

BIN.

I had one of these. Tried to set boundaries. They were trampled over. Tried to back away. She didn’t notice. In the end I had to bin off. I wasn’t the first to do it either. Many other mugs had before me. Don’t regret it at all. All I was, was a free therapist and sounding board. Doubt she could tell you anything about me. Just a joy-sucking, emotional vampire and toxic too

I used to be a magnet to these types as I was eager to please and have good active listening skills, so they'd flock to me! You get to a point though where you start to weigh up what you're actually gaining from the friendship. Unless they are exceptionally funny or generous or good fun I wouldn't put up with it anymore. It's frankly boring to listen to hour monolgues about people's kids you've never met or a detailed itinery of their holiday plans, whereas they don't spend 5 minutes asking after your family or know anything about you.

Charming.

Where I used to work there was a group of four or five of us who would meet up at lunchtime and chat , eat lunch ...
One of the group would always have a drama that she needed to get off her chest and we would all listen but as time went by, we would inwardly eyeroll.

If ever any of us tried to say anything about our own lives , she would turn it round to her .

What really annoyed me was that if ever any of us said anything that she couldn't relate to she'd then whip out her phone and start scrolling.
She'd not even click that we were gobsmacked and say ' carry on, I AM listening.!' when we stopped talking.
She'd then proceed to interrupt the conversation with eg ' ooh, look at my daughter's hair, ' or 'have a look at my new curtains.'

I suspect your friend is very similar. Utterly self centred.
When I left the place I ignored her texts.

Felt bad but I can't stand one way friendships.

Yes but person 2 didn’t ask Anything or find out more about person 1 they just turned it all into themselves!

I'm like this. I interrupt and talk about me all the time. I know I do it, I'm kind of aware as I do it but find it incredibly difficult to tone down. I've stopped drinking because it was worse after a glass of wine. I pinch myself on the arm when others are speaking to stop myself from butting in and turning the conversation to me. I don't mean to!

@Slanketblanket I don’t pretend to be able to diagnose anyone or anything over the internet, but I used to sit there saying to myself “keep your mouth shut, keep your mouth shut”. Eventually I was diagnosed with ADHD.

@TeenLifeMum

In the example given above a less self centred response would be ‘are they excited?’ ‘What are they going to study?’ ‘How do you feel about that?’ Etc. The example given has shut down person one in order to talk about themselves.

If you can’t see this I suspect that you are guilty of it.

A great example of this is a friend that I spoke to earlier, I told her that a relative with stage four cancer has been prescribed some medication (this was the first thing mentioned, we’d not been talking about it for ages). She said that’s similar to what she takes and then talked for ten minutes about her own pain from a chronic health condition that she has. My relative wasn’t mentioned again. I suspect with her it’s because she’s very affected by her health and is quite anxious and depressed, she tends to be quite inwardly focussed as a result which in turn feeds her MH issues.

More generally, if I can be bothered, I look quizzically at them and say err… OK and carry on talking about what I was taking about or direct the conversation back to the other person who was speaking first. Can’t always be bothered though.

@1AngelicFruitCake they found out the dc has a plan to go to uni and study x.
i would then say what dd is doing who is at the same stage then ask what the other dc wants to do after uni.

I have a fairly new friend who is like this, but her conversation is a monologue about herself, her family and her hobbies. She talks for literally an hour without stopping. It's honestly very boring.

I haven't mentioned it to anyone but a mutual friend said something to me about her and the floodgates opened. She is in a hobby group and most of them have tried to pull away from her and make excuses when she asks them round for dinner. I feel bad for her but I just don't understand how she can not realise she is like this.

Exactly
It is then a conversation

The monologue people are often either very lonely or ND

No that’s not how conversations work at all and if that’s genuinely your experience I’m both sorry that no one in your life is sufficiently interested to ask about you/your DC/your life and sorry that you think that being a decent friend involves ignoring your friends comments and making it all about your own experience.

A balanced conversation is not just throwing out information about yourself that is somewhat adjacent to the topic raised.

if someone tells you they went to Istanbul last week you surely don’t respond with “oh yeah I went there is 2020, great food but weather was uncharacteristically awful”. You ask them where they stayed, what they enjoyed, did they have fun etc etc. and if you really do go straight to your own experience you are definitely a bore and the type of person that most people plead not to be sat next to.

I have a friend a bit like this, I find her really draining. I have pulled back from her, can you gradually stop answering her calls and meeting up with her so often and just let some distance between you?

She is clearly a self obsessed bore and not a real friend.

The more interesting question is why you are afraid of upsetting her? If she just drains you and you get nothing out of the friendship why care if she’s upset? These kind of people do need some come back. She may hopefully do some self reflection and become a better person.

I have relatives like this. Selfish idiots. I end up knowing everything about them but they show zero interest when I talk about myself and they turn it back to them. I now refuse to engage with them.