To end a friendship because of this?

[Boldness40s]

Am I being unreasonable to expect people not to talk over me and to have a decent conversation where both people have enough space to talk express themselves and feel properly listened to?

I am really struggling with my friendships. I am not someone who can tolerate this kind of behaviour anymore. I could in my 20s and 30s but not in my 40s. Recently, I have had to remove three friends from my life. Some removed themselves too as call them out as I had enough.
It almost like that is ok for them to display such bad conversations skills but not ok for me to let them know that I am not comfortable with.

I have categories the people I have come across

1. People who constantly jump from one subject to another without giving you any space to talk at all. You don’t get a word in. And when you finally do get a chance to say something, they don’t really listen they look somewhere else or start doing something else and you are left thinking I was actually talking.

1. People who talk over you all the time. They don’t give you enough space to finish your sentences. They try to finish your sentence, They just interrupt and keep talking.

1. People who suddenly give their attention to something or someone else while you are talking for example to their child, even when the child isn’t actually needing attention. I completely understand that children come first and I have children too but at least let me finish my sentence. Instead, they suddenly turn away, tickle their child, smile at them, and give them full attention, and I am left thinking, Okay, she is not listening to me anymore.

I honestly feel like I have no tolerance left for these kinds of people. If you do any of the above, you have very poor conversation skills. If you’re not listening, what kind of friendship is that? Why would anyone want to be friends if they’re never given space to talk or express themselves?

I’ve removed several friends from my life because of this. I’m absolutely okay being on my own, but I will not put up with this kind of behaviour.

I’m genuinely interested to know why some people have such poor communication skills like this.

Also if you come across any of these people, do you know why they are like that? I am still interested to know why even I often cut my relationship with them because I feel like I can’t find anyone that I can be friends with anymore. I am a little lonely 😭

This usually happens right before I finish my very first sentence.

I think if several people are doing it, you’re are long winded or boring. Nothing worse than someone tediously droning on about something self-important. Get to the point and make it funny or interesting, you also need to play your part in a conversation

The Tik Tok generation? Many feel the need to be amused all the time and have a concentration span of 3 seconds before they have to fiddle with something/interrupt. It makes it hard to have in depth conversations to say the least.

I think you have to find friends who are a bit more profound @Boldness40s. And polite. I have one friend that I tolerate this behaviour from but we are very upfront with each other so I tell her straight out to be polite and listen for once and we both laugh.

We’ve got an overbearing colleague at work, who is loud on team calls and talks over everyone and basically comes out with endless bollocks.

I was trying to explain something going on in one of my projects and off she went.

Once she’d shut up I just said, “and I managed to say all that without moving my lips”.

She got the message, got a cob on and hung up on the meeting.

I have shown a lot of patience. And yes, I think at least one of them may have ADHD and I know they have good intentions and are good at heart. But these people are not good for me anymore. It affects me badly makes me anxious and I can’t see myself or feel like myself as a friend in that relationship because there is no space for me to express myself. So I can’t just keep listening and letting them talk over me.

I am definitely not as sensitive as you may think. Even if I had a problem I wouldn’t know unless someone told me.

I have strong boundaries but I am also a polite person and I am fun too.

I think as we get older we get less tolerant of friends that in the past we were able to cope with. I have let some friendships slide because quite frankly I don’t get much enjoyment from the conversation together anymore.
One friend is known for her monologue conversations which start with me saying, hi how are you? To a reply of hearing the ins and outs of her life and her mums and her sisters (none of whom I know) for the next 15 minutes (not even kidding often longer) without her stopping or responding with ‘and how are you?’. Started to dread seeing her and actively started avoided.
Another friend does constantly talk over me and others, seemingly oblivious to the fact she does it, talks as if you know exactly what she is talking about because she mentioned it 6 months ago (and of course you would remember that wouldn’t you!!!).
Another forgets that I have a life too and maybe she should ask about how my life is rather than constantly telling me all about hers and her problems.
To be honest, I think it’s a combination of getting older, becoming more insular, having different things going on in life and other people not necessarily understanding that.
If you find friends aren’t as much company as they used to be, find some new ones. I wouldn’t call them out as they are just being ‘themselves’ and probably think you are the one with the problem. Just let the friendship slip and move on with your life.

Regarding your last point about people giving their kids attention rather than listening to you, I think you're a bit unreasonable. Kids ask for attention in subtle ways sometimes, especially around strangers, and whilst I don't let my kids interrupt a conversation outright, I would give them a kiss or cuddle while I was talking to a friend just to show them I'm still connected to them and aware of them, even if I'm focusing on an adult conversation. I had this experience a few days ago where a friend of mine who isn't interested in kids and basically ignores them was talking about herself at length and my kid was trying to show us his drawing and basically join in the conversation. I did briefly redirect my attention to my child in that moment, partly because I think it was rude of my friend to dominate so much and ignore him.

Sounds perfectly normal to me but we're riddled with ADHD and autism here.

I don’t interrupt. I listen properly, and you can tell that from my body language. I make eye contact and don’t shift my attention elsewhere unless I absolutely need to. And if I do need to, I apologise first.

I don’t think I’m long-winded. I like to get to the point first, and then go into more detail only if the subject is interesting to them and they ask questions. I don’t start with lots of details straight away — I usually get to the point first.

I call the behaviour out because I wanted to be friend with them. But it didn’t work and I will do your advice most definitely. Just let the friendship slid out if I find it dreading.

You got that totally wrong unfortunately

I have a friend who does 1 and 2. I still see her but I tend to try to stick to cinema visits to minimise actual interaction.

How do other people behave around your friends when they are doing this? I’ve got a couple of friends like this and I know people have told them they just talk about themselves because they’ve complained to me about it. I usually do an activity with them so they are like a podcast in the background, I also cancel and see someone else if I’m feeling down or need a proper chat.
I don’t agree that it’s necessarily a you problem if it happens with several people, it could be past family dynamics now playing out in friendship or the influence of social media

I'm AuDHD so often I don't understand when it's my turn to speak, and other times I accidentally interrupt friends and finish their sentences because of the ADHD.

I'm always working on this, though.

If it helps - if someone with ADHD is interrupting you, it's a sign they're enjoying the chat and very engaged in it!

Luckily my lovely friends are more tolerant than you but I get why it's annoying.

Honestly, from your posts, and the fact that you’re at the point of cutting off multiple friends because they don’t listen to you in the way you would like, you’re almost certainly being rigid and inflexible in how you see ‘appropriate listening’. I’m interested in other people and have good friends, but I don’t sit listening to someone with my body language indicating ‘total attention’, making constant eye contact, or apologising if I need to do something else. Neither do I feel that my friends are not respecting me, or giving me sufficient time to express myself.

If you think about the amount of information we receive on a daily basis, even compared to 30 years ago, it’s beyond what our brains can cope with. We haven’t evolved yet to the sudden change in our environments.

We are jittery, unfocused and unable to cope with the constant stimuli. People who can hold their focus and attention and practice active listening and have good conversation skills are in the minority these days.

I have always been like this, but I have ADHD. I have taught myself to focus better and be more engaged, through self awareness and modifying my behaviour. It’s not impossible to learn.

I don’t think people are intentionally bad friends, OP. Perhaps just victims of their environment.

ETA - I’m so sorry to hear about your dad being unwell. It must be hard for you when you need your friends to give you some emotional support and they are too distracted to do so.

Exactly! All seems very dramatic

I’m 65 and I haven’t “removed” as many as 3 friends from my whole life, never mind recently. You sound quite hard work and actually telling them rather than just letting the friendship fade is strange to me. Maybe I am one if those talker-overs or interrupters!

This is exactly the sort of response that leads me to conclude that you, rather than all your friends, are the problem.

Well, you are extremely confident that you are right and they are wrong, and you are openly pulling them up for not doing things to your liking. That’s a demanding and very black-and-white approach to conversation and friendship, which I think many people would find quite rude and difficult.

‘Simply showing them that you’re not comfortable’ with their own natural conversational style, because it’s not the style you prefer, is quite rude. Of course they’re going to be defensive - that’s the natural response to being attacked. You’re being defensive yourself, too, on this very thread.

I don’t think many people really want to hang out with friends who make a point of ‘simply showing them’ that you dislike the way they interact with you, to be honest.

You say you’re ’not ditching them’ but in your first post you literally said you had ‘removed three friends from your life’. Same thing. You also said other people had removed themselves. I think it’s unlikely that all these different people are the problem when you are the only common denominator in all these situation.

I’m familiar with this. I find friendships very tiresome and sometimes too much like hard work. My closest friend would suddenly scream “KAILEY!” while we were in a telephone conversation. Repeatedly.

another close friend couldn’t cope with me being in a relationship and would constantly imply that my DH was a loser without any reason to do so.

and friendships lately appear to be transactional and based on what you can do for them, coldness if they displeased with your opinion or not doing what is expected of you…

"I don’t think I’m long-winded. I like to get to the point first, and then go into more detail only if the subject is interesting to them and they ask questions. I don’t start with lots of details straight away — I usually get to the point first."
Perhaps it is your tendency to repeat yourself that they find of off putting.

Or perhaps it is your brusqueness when you think someone is wrong, even when that person is trying to be helpful, as you were to @SillyQuail . You said in one of your posts that you wouldn't know if you were doing something wrong unless someone told you but here, when people have suggested you might be doing something to cause the situation you described, you have seemed unwilling to consider their point of view.

I have friends because I like them, I don't sit in judgement over their conversational skills! I think you're naive to believe these friendships naturally died after you point out their failures. I would strongly suspect they are actively distancing themselves from you. Whilst a number of coincidences don't make a trend, if you've lost 3 friends recently for the same reason, as others have stated.....you are the common denominator, and most likely the problem.

They are tolerant maybe because you are working on it and you are aware of it. And it’s good for you

I have two in law family members like this, otherwise v nice, and tolerate it passively, but if they were acquaintances/ friends I’d have dropped to low contact.

Have two acquaintances like it, one is self absorbed IMO, one is just a poor conversationalist and talks way more than she listens, so I have stayed ‘at a distance’ from my end.