The Relationship Advice Thread, by Dr. Calano

[The cheeseman Don't you dare go Hollow!]

Hullo!

Being as vague as possible for the sake of privacy.

There is a person in my life who often needs distractions from their own mind, and they almost always come to me for that. I don't mind, that's not the issue.

The issue is that I don't know how to distract people. I've lived my whole life trying to make sure I'm not bothering people, and that is impacting my relationship with this person because I don't know how to just keep talking. It's also almost always over text that I need to do this, and I'm even worse at 'just talking' over text than I am in person.

[Quivil]

This is coming from someone who is also bad at just talking, so take it with all the grains of salt.

One thing that might help would be to, as you come up with stuff when they're not asking, make a list of words or short sentences that remind you of stories you can tell or things you can say. Or things that are completely unrelated to whatever in their mind they need distracting from that you can ask them about.

Another option would be to talk about books you've read recently or something you saw or heard that was funny/interesting/aggravating.

How well would telling them a folktale or something work?

You could look up a huge amount of stuff about something random (like cheese) just so you can tell them about it.

I really don't know, these are just ideas I had.

Edited May 29, 2024 by Quivil

[jamesbondsmith He/him]

22 hours ago, The cheeseman said:

Hullo!

Being as vague as possible for the sake of privacy.

There is a person in my life who often needs distractions from their own mind, and they almost always come to me for that. I don't mind, that's not the issue.

The issue is that I don't know how to distract people. I've lived my whole life trying to make sure I'm not bothering people, and that is impacting my relationship with this person because I don't know how to just keep talking. It's also almost always over text that I need to do this, and I'm even worse at 'just talking' over text than I am in person.

My friend got dumped over the phone several years ago, and the next day I went over and we played games (I think it might have been Injustice 2).

So basically find some interest you have in common that doesn't involve talking and use that. Or at very least something that you can talk about while you're doing it, if you're worried about being able to talk about random stuff.

Are you doing things via text because it's not possible to meet up physically? To follow the games example you could log onto a co-op game, and I know people who set up a phone call or some discord call type thing while they binge tv shows.

[elias888]

When my partner and I first started dating, there were definitely some awkward silences. We both had a lot on our plates – work stress, personal issues – and it was hard to fully connect sometimes. We'd both try to distract ourselves by talking about random things, but it felt forced, like we were trying too hard to fill the space. It wasn't that we didn't enjoy each other's company, but we were both still figuring out how to really communicate in this new stage of our relationship. We weren't sure how to keep things light and natural, and that left us feeling a bit disconnected, even though we liked each other a lot.

Then one day, my partner suggested we check out some help online. She thought it might help us with the whole 'keeping the convo going' thing. After reading a lot of info, like this article, we both realized it wasn't about having something to say all the time, it was more about just understanding each other and being there. We started trying out some of the advice online, and things definitely got better between us.

Edited January 30, 2025 by elias888