To hate when people repeatedly tell the same stories?

[overrainbowstars]

I have a colleague (we started one month apart) who constantly tells me about the interview process, who interviewed her, what she had to do etc.

And I just think yes we spoke about this the day we met. Why do you think I don’t know this story?!?

My sister is terrible for this too. Constantly tells me the same stories that she would have told me at the time they actually happened. But no a good 15 years later I’m still getting told about the time her uni friend walked out of their exam.

My late MIL did this. To be fair she was a great raconteur so I didn’t really mind.

I think that sounds really rude, not lighthearted, especially with a hand signal!

I think it's better to say something like "oh is this the story where X happened?" as then you've effectively told the story already and it's harder for them to keep waffling about it.

I sometimes find that DH goes the other way on this though. I'm not a waffler at all and don't ever tell long-winded stories but if I ever repeat myself once, eg I might say a piece of news like our neighbour's dog died, and then forget I've told him and tell him again the next day, he'll massively exaggerate and say "oh you've told me that ten times already" when I really haven't! That's annoying too, especially as I don't do it very often at all.

I think it’s rude to keep telling the same bloody stories

I think it’s rude to keep telling the same bloody stories

I agree, but clearly there are a lot of people who do. I also think it's rude to go to a social event and sit silently for the evening while the people around you try to engage. That happened to me at the weekend. I spent an excruciating couple of hours trapped on a table at a wedding opposite a silent, glaring woman. After several polite attempts to get some kind of conversation going I gave up and focussed on the people either side of me. She sat there staring balefully at us. Very strange.

There are certainly two camps - the gentle souls who can't remember what they've already told you and the self-centred bores who don't care that they are boring you.

DH, SIL and PILs are in the latter camp...

Having had the same stories for years from my FIL, I usually zone out… but with experimentation, Ive found the only way to stop the flow is to interrupt suddenly with something completely unrelated which disrupts his train of thought. It is rude of me though, but he just ignores if I say “you’ve told me this before”. Once though, in a new conversation he gave me a sly look and said “I definitely havent told you this before” before launching into a new (to me) story…which implies he did take note of what I previously said but chose to carry on.

I’ve discussed it with MIL and she said she thinks it’s some kind of social anxiety…she mostly lives in a different country though and they visit each other 😂

Maybe I'm not so sensitive.

I'm not necessarily an offender but I do take some very strong medication and definitely have fog/cognitive difficulties, especially if I'm having a really bad pain day.

@Deliaskis I heard 3 times last night that dad has an appointment in a neighbouring town this week and they don't know what the parking situation is like or how far they will have to walk to the clinic

Yep, uncertainty about parking is the overwhelming concern whenever my very elderly parents need to be taken anywhere.

’There used to be a car park by the bridge, but that’s gone now of course. Could you park at Sainsbury’s? I expect we’d have to buy something and that’s a bother. Well, I don’t know. Shall we leave half an hour early in case we have to drive round? There used to be car park just by the bridge, as I say. That’s gone now.’

And I think, ‘Mum, you brought up five happy, well-adjusted kids whilst juggling a very successful freelance career, a husband on shiftwork and the eternal decoration of a succession of delapidated family homes. Parking near a clinic should not present a challenge for the two of us combined.’

But I think all that not to help her, but to remind myself. It’s not that she’s a petty worrier. It’s that her world is smaller now, but the lifelong habit of anticipating problems, and to plan solutions and to make everything alright - that’s still there, constantly at work. That ability of hers has benefitted me all my life. It got me here, beside her in a car, looking for a bloody parking space.

People that post things like this?

Thank god its not just me
I have a friend who is obsessed with her ex,his 'new' girlfriend,an ex friend and his daughter
I hear the same stories on repeat most days (on sm) and I really don't care-I don't like any of them
She'll tell me something 'new' about them and my heart sinks as ill be hearing that story for years
This has been going on since I met her 9 years ago and no amount of 'yes,you've told me' works
She just carries on

Gosh @PointsSouth you've really turned something on its head for me a bit there, and made me oddly emotionally grateful for everything my lovely mum and dad did as i was growing up. I am patient with the repetition now because of who they are and I guess understanding that they worry etc, but you're quite right, their world is smaller now, but it's the same problem solving going on right there, and it was that mindset and approach that allowed my sister and I to live very full and rich lives (not wealthy, the other rich!) until we were old enough to start creating that for ourselves and our own families.

It's actually a lovely thought and has filled me with gratitude.

God no, I'd be mortified. No we didn't want to hear it twice or heaven forbid more than twice, how is that rude?!

My fil does this. Sometimes I find an excuse to walk out the room.

I have a friend like this too, the same stories over and over on the same night and then again the next time and the next…

I have to walk away now, I can’t just listen to the same thing over and over again.

Only if you absolutely need to be around these people, to benefit yourself somehow.
Otherwise, no need.
It's draining.

My mum does this, but only with certain (and quite random) trivial stories. What kills me is there are certain bits where she uses the exact same words and dramatic intonation - she seems to enjoy repeating those bits. No idea why. She is an intelligent women with plenty of fascinating stuff to say, but I know I will be hearing about the neighbours' roof, the dodgy builders and what the insurance surveyor said when he saw their work (word for word) again very soon. I mean even her facial expression when she is imitating the surveyor!

I suppose we all do it to some extent - I know if something is on myind I don't just mention it to one person, anyone I meet that day will hear about it. But I like to think I move on.

How could essentially telling someone to shut up be anything but rude?

I have to say, having looked after a friend undergoing regular medical treatment for several weeks recently, that parking became a major concern for me — and I'm not elderly and not normally not one to worry about that kind of thing! Having someone in a wheelchair and not feeling at all well, with almost daily trips to various hospitals and clinics, did turn me into the kind of person who'd wake up at night in a cold sweat worrying what I'd do if I couldn't find a parking spot/ if it was pouring with rain. Fortunately I managed to keep my anxiety to myself — or at least, I hope I did.

Why would you want to tell them twice?

A variation - my MIL and FIL constantly preface their stories with a précis of who everyone is and what happened to them. Fine if I was a stranger but not only have I heard these stories multiple times (DH and I have been together over twenty years) they really don’t need to tell me MIL’s father was a regular army soldier who died of bowel cancer, cos I KNOW. I was listening for the previous two decades! Is there ever going to be any basis of assumed knowledge! It’s a little thing and I don’t get as annoyed as I used to (they’re getting older and it seems par for the course) but it’s happened so often it does kinda make you feel like you’re not ‘part of the family.’

If you just say, 'oh yes I think you've already said' how is that rude? I'd much prefer someone to say that to me than me be droning on and driving them mad. There are ways of saying things that aren't rude you know..

So you'd rather they kept quiet even though they want to tell you you've told them before so you can repeat it to them even though they're bored witless. Why?

Indeed. Continually consciously telling the same stories to the same people, (ie.if it’s not an accidental once-off or some cognitive problem like amnesia or dementia), comes down to ‘I don’t care that I’m boring you’ and ‘My need to tell you this all over again is more important than my whatever my audience might feel about having to listen to it’.

And I absolutely get that we put up with it affectionately when it’s an elderly family member repeatedly recounting a memory or the like, but I really want to recommend psychoanalysis to my father, who’s been telling me the same few stories (notably about the time a workmate mocked him for living in his uncle’s house and how he wiped the floor with him by telling him his uncle had signed over the house, so it was his house his uncle was living in — cue mike drop and a round of admiring applause from listening colleagues) since I was about eight, and he was about 32.

My mother used to do this. I wish I'd written them down tbh as I have forgotten some of the details of the story of the bubble car that was carried down a street in Brighton, the surgeon's car that was carried into the theater corridor, the leg in the cupboard, the skeleton in the bed, the anesthetist who asked her to join his coven, and some of the ones from when she was growing up in India.

I would also much prefer to be told - I have one friend who does this, and it makes me conscious that there are probably other people thinking it but not saying it!

I don't take any offence either because the friend who says it is the absolute worst for telling stories on repeat, so I don't feel shamed at all .