DM Long - winded conversations

[Happiestwhen]

My dm seems to be getting worse with this as she gets older. She tells a story and it just goes on and on for ages. It is so boring to listen to. She just talks and talks with no point to anything. It's so frustrating. I notice other people getting frustrated with her to the point where they actually avoid her (eg when out walking the dog) I've mentioned to her that her stories are too long winded and she needs to cut to the point , be more concise. However she can't take any criticism yet wonders why her friends and family have started going quiet. If she's at anyone's house she will stay for hours and hours talking blankly. I was telling her about my sons accident and she jumped straight into a story about how her brother was always in hospital as a child. I didnt even get to say what had happened to my son. Any story I tell she goes on about something she experienced in the past or heard/saw from someone or tv. She will talk about what happens in movies/soaps in minute detail. She will talk about it for an hour if not interrupted. Is this something to worry about? I wonder if it may be an early sign of dementia as I remember my grandmother heading the same way before she got it. Or maybe she just has a trait of GM.

My Mum is like this too.
My husband has zero tolerance and just walks away. I'm semi more polite, I play on my phone.

When I moved abroad years ago we used to have Skype calls. They would be absolute marathons.
I could go to the loo or outside for a smoke and she wouldn't notice I was gone.

Just a brain dump. Exhausting.

My mum has diagnosed herself with autism and ADHD. Other family members have actual autism diagnoses. So in her case, yes she almost certainly is ND and so am I no doubt.

But she recognises rudeness in others and calls it out relentlessly. Her tolerance level is nil and she complains all the time about the behaviour of others, most hilariously her late mother. My dear gran was the original monologuer, on and on she would go, to my mother's open frustration.

But now we're supposed to suck it up or get the hurt, bewildered theatricals if we look at our watches or ask her to get to the point.

It occurred to me last night that on the whole, probably around 30-40% of people I've met do this. Most of my extended family when I was growing up, most of my neighbours, some colleagues, people I've become friendly with on courses, people at a class I go to, people I've met at parties, people I've met at meetup groups and so on.

My ex would do it and I ended up afraid to ask him a question for fear of triggering a 30 minute ramble or retelling of a story. I had to ask him to please get to the point for my sanity.

Recently I booked an engineer to look at something in my flat, and we got chit chatting because part of his job turned out to indirectly involve an area I work in and did research in. He went off on a long-winded monologue about it, occasionally asking me a question but then interrupting me about 5 seconds into my answer to talk for another 10 minutes. He was a nice bloke and what he was saying was interesting to me, but I found myself wishing I'd never said anything.

I've started to chit chat with a nice woman at an evening class I attend, but she's beginning to monologue and ramble from one random thing to the next. I feel held hostage when I just want to get home so I need to start making a swifter exit.

I don't know if people just don't realise they're doing it. It feels odd to me because I'm always very conscious of how much I'm talking and whether the other person is interested or not, but maybe I'm hyper aware of it because of my mum.

I met up with someone I'm getting to know as a friend last week. We had proper two way conversations where we asked each other questions and actually listened to the answers. It was lovely, and such a relief.

One of my oldest mates was terrible at this. I live in another town now, but I used to avoid him in the shop or the street if I could get away with it. It's extremely off putting and irritating. He was once a very funny and witty guy, but his anecdotes became excruciatingly monotonous and long winded.

My FIL is like this and he gets stroppy if anyone dare try to interject. Apparently has always been like it but has gotten worse! I empathise OP!

My mother does this. She can phone me and then talk for an hour non stop . I literally just say yes and no . It’s so draining. Never asks much about me.

@BellissimoGecko I am sorry for your loss

@Jaehee I relate SO much to so much of what you say! My brother rants about people who’ve wronged him too and also who have wronged ME even if they haven’t really - like if I’m driving and another driver makes a minor mistake and I tut it sets him off ‘bloody idiot shouldn’t be on the roads blah blah blah!’

It is exhausting. I relate so ouch to so many of you, the endless irrelevant details and refusal to let the other persons speak. Argggghh!

My Mum is the actually the most loveliest person in the world but she can be really boring when she tells a story. It's because she doesn't have a busy life and because she doesn't see lots of people. I don't mind but luckily we have a relationship where I can tell her. I say Mum, this story is boring. So I'm nice and clear,
An example would be when she was telling me about a trip out with a friend and including the details about where in the car park they parked.

Oh this is my mum! It's not an age thing because she's been like this since we were kids but it has gotten worse in the last 20 years since she began living alone. She's almost 80 now.

The point I gave up was when I'd gone through almost a decade of infertility, secondsry infertility and 5 pregnancy losses, and she finally asked me how was I? I suspect my sister prompted her to enquire. I got halfway through the first sentence explaining that actually, I was struggling. She then talked over me for the rest of the visit about her couple of miscarriages she had before we were even born and I'd heard her recount thousands of times. I got in the car feeling wretched.

But then it's worse if you do tell her stuff. She gossips it to everyone, especially if you've asked her to keep it to herself. I've had strangers commiserate with me thanks to her. And if you were worried or struggling with whatever it is, you are bombarded with calls and texts about how worries she is about you, how she tossed and turned all night, and sends a link to a scaremongering daily mail article.

Then she's supposedly baffled when she finds out you never told her about it. 🙄

This is very insightful, thank you.

Thank you for all the responses , I'm very surprised that there are so many people like this! The comment that up to 40% of people you encounter are like this, wow. My DM is definitely the worst I've ever come across. In fact I don't think I know anyone similar. She reminds me of the uncle in Derry Girls who drones on even at the cinema getting sweets with a queue of people around him! There's no self awareness, she will also stand in the middle of a shopping aisle or footpath while talking at people. We have to literally push her to the side 😅

Oh God, my mum at least isn't a monologuer, but this is why I don't tell her things: because it then becomes about How Worried She Is About It. It's been that way since I was a small child. Emotionally I feel like I parented her, not the other way around.

I'm Autistic and I try to keep very strict tabs on monologues as yes, I'm one for detail. I tend to speak too fast to get what I say over with or don't say anything at times. The idea of boring people horrifies me.

My Psychiatrist said it was the difference between Autistic people with quite high self awareness, and Autistic people with absolutely zero self awareness at all.

The other difference is that if you're officially diagnosed, you're likely to reflect more. The head in the sand or self diagnosis route doesn't tend to lend itself to reflection and modification of one's behaviours.

I have family members and an ex MIL who do this. The utter lack of self awareness and yet the obvious enjoyment of holding court made me want to scream. It was blatantly fucking obvious she was getting massively on everyones tits. I just walked away in the end as it was utter sensory hell for me.

There are only so many times you can proclaim loudly "Yes. I know, you've told me this a million times" If someone said that to me, I'd shut up damn quick and make a note not to piss people off.

Typos

*The point I gave up was when I'd gone through almost a decade of infertility, secondsry infertility and 5 pregnancy losses, and she finally asked me how was I? I suspect my sister prompted her to enquire. I got halfway through the first sentence explaining that actually, I was struggling. She then talked over me for the rest of the visit about her couple of miscarriages she had before we were even born and I'd heard her recount thousands of times. I got in the car feeling wretched.
*So sorry, this is awful. You needed a big hug and got a mouthful of me me me 🫂 😪

My mum’s like this too. Always was a talker but has gotten much worse in her old age (87). It’s the minutia of the life experiences of the daughter of her cleaner, for example. I honestly couldn’t care less. I just make appropriate noises every now and then. She refuses to discuss anything meaningful and characterises any conversations about important real-life stuff as an ‘argument’. I’ve dropped the rope now. 🤷🏼‍♀️

I've given up telling DM anything, because like your DM, she interrupts my story to tell her own story and I never get to finish what I wanted to tell her.

I think it's a mixture of loneliness and poor conversational skills - she simply has no interest in what I have to say and can't bring herself to feign interest.

Are you Welsh @SensibleSigma ? I love the word 'dab', haven't heard it for a while! ('Aww, the poo-er dab!') But out of the mouths (or the reactions) of babes, eh...

You touch on something though - I do think it can be a control thing - but another observation I made while watching a gang of old ladies frantically talking over each other was: 'No one's listened to them for years - they're desperate to be seen and heard, aren't they?' So I think it can be a few things.

But maybe it does all come down to 'who talks most, wins'. See it with men over women, men having 'bants' with other men, in meetings... what would have been sorted out with a short tussle or peeing on more bushes in our prehistoric past has mutated into this, speech as a social tool.

Yep - I had cancer and didn't tell my DM because she would have made it sooo much worse, and all about her reactions, and she'd have spread it about with added lies and malice... And then, as others have said, her own sprained thumb would have trumped it...

In fact, I can see the benefits of these monologues because you can protect yourself from them knowing anything about you. Boring but safer, a self-imposed grey rock...

It’s the minutia of the life experiences of the daughter of her cleaner, for example.

This is what gets to me with my mum @SoporificLettuce. I’ll get a 15 minute ramble about the minutia of something that happened to one of her acquaintance’s sons 5 years ago, a story she’s told me several times before, and I feel annoyed that she takes such an interest in the life of somebody she’s never even met but absolutely no interest in mine. It’s like banging your head against a brick wall, isn’t it? You give up.

She doesn’t even know what I studied at university or what I do now. She’s never asked and there’s no space to tell her.

She starts off a phone call with ‘hi how are you’ but doesn’t let me answer. When I was a teenager I was diagnosed with a heart condition and told I’d need surgery for it when I was fully grown. She knew all this, she was there! But in my early 20s when I told her I’d had the surgery she seemed to have no recollection of me having the condition. All she said was ‘oh, right. I used to get palpitations when I was anxious’ and moved on to some random thing without pausing for breath.

I’ve challenged her on it. I sent her a message where I opened up and told her how it made me feel but she didn’t get it.

@PabloTheGreat I’m so sorry for your losses and that your mum wasn’t there for you. I’m not surprised you gave up on her after that. Just awful.

@Compash again, it’s absolutely awful you had to keep something like that from her in order to protect yourself. I would be the same. I wouldn’t tell her because she’d jump to the worst case scenarios and send my anxiety through the roof.

I’m curious about what effect this had on people when they were growing up, for people whose parent(s) have always been like this? I remember crying in frustration as a child when my mum wouldn’t listen to me talk about, say, something I’d done at school, or wouldn’t look at a picture I’d drawn, or play with me. I think it’s made me very introverted as an adult and really affected my self esteem.

My mum has the gall to criticise other people who monologue!
There's a bloke she used to bump into when she was walking the dogs. She called him Chatty Man and eventually she started to avoid him because he wouldn't shut up.
He followed her up the street once and kept her talking so long that something she'd put in the oven, prior to taking the dogs out, burnt to a cinder.
She complained long and hard about that.

The lack of self awareness is shocking.

Mine was also one for being So Worried. But every time we spoke she’d start off by saying how she’d been So Worried (often because I hadn’t called her enough for her satisfaction- guess why I didn’t like calling). Then after hearing me reassure her for about 20 seconds she’d say “oh’, then start the usual monologue about herself. Being So Worried was just a way of ensuring the focus was always on her. It was a counsellor who helped me to understand this - everything needed to be about her.

A PP got it right, they are really only interested in themselves and their own feelings, and find it hard to feign interest in other people.

When I was extremely upset because I failed to breastfeed, she used to repeatedly ask me on the phone “have you got plenty of milk?” when I’d told her many times I didn’t. I’d say actually no, I was managing to pump a tiny bit but feeding dc nearly all formula. She’d say “oh” and then go back to what a prolific milk producer she was, and how sibling and I were So Intelligent because of being breastfed. She never noticed that her insensitivity and failure to hear me was actually making me cry - she was too focused on talking about herself, word for word the same story about how she was so good at breastfeeding. After that I went vlc.

@PabloTheGreat I’m so sorry she did that to you. All we can do is recognise that their behaviour towards us was appalling, we did nothing wrong, and nothing we could have done could have made them be any different; and to avoid being like that ourselves. I know I’m not a perfect parent but I know I don’t subject my kids to that.

@Jaehee I’m so sorry you have had this experience with your mum just not being emotionally or even mentally present for you from childhood. What pain you must have endured 😔 It’s beyond my comprehension how people are this way, especially mothers.

That blanking your heart surgery is simply bizarre behaviour. ( I do hope you’re doing well now and don’t have any long term cardiac problems). The way she turned it around to be about herself does ring a bell with how my mum responds to any situation now. Im thankful that she hasn’t always been this ‘bad’. It seems in her case to be more of an age related thing.

What you said about your childhood did resonate with me concerning one of my grandchildren- she will cry terribly if she’s ‘talked over’ or we don’t look at her paintings immediately etc. I think it’s because she is co-parented by a very abusive father, who is only interested in himself and his goldenchild son (a reflection of himself). She’s ignored, left to fend for herself a lot while she’s in his ‘care’. It’s very upsetting. I can understand something of how awful your childhood must have been 😢

anyway best wishes to you, and I would just love to give you a big hug 💕 xx

@MyFragility
You have described almost exactly how I cope with my mum- I put the phone on speaker too and just make the appropriate noises (if she even hears them). She will talk at me when I visit, even if I’ve gone into the kitchen I can still hear her droning on and on in the other room. When it’s time to leave I just give la couple minutes notice and pop on my coat straight away because in the past that’s the exact moment she needs me to help her clear out the spare bedroom cupboard or whatever. It’s survival strategy.

I think that “blocking the way” thing is definitely an older age behaviour. My mum has started doing it- just walks into a shop / doctors / wherever and stops dead totally blocking anyone else from coming in or going out. I’ve had to say to her to keep moving, which irritates her intensely. 🤦‍♀️