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Sometimes you don't need to fill the silence with sounds. I'd rather be in a relationship with someone that we can sit down and be quiet together

The key to understanding is finishing the sentence.

"I hate small talk... with people I have no reason to talk to and don't care about."

I love my partner, and even when it's small talk I can listen all day, just to hear their voice and learn a little more about them, to feel closer to the person I married in many small ways.

But I don't care about what Jim at the laundry mat did last weekend, or which machine he thinks makes socks dry faster.

Its only "small talk" if you dont actually care about what the other person says. If you are genuinely interested, then its just a conversation. Thats how i see it at least.

Wife and I have a longstanding argument over whether free-will exists.

I say it does and she has no choice but to say otherwise.

I'm able to make smalltalk. I just don't enjoy it, so I avoid it when I can.

And my wife and I don't engage in smalltalk. We talk about what we actually care about. Seems to have worked fine for the past 24 years.

It's not small talk if you love the other person

We will sit in comfortable silence together.

Comfortable silence. Learn to appreciate it.

My wife is a VERY quiet person. She doesn't say a lot but when she does it's because she actually has something to say. This made me nervous when we were first dating but I've learned to embrace it. Silence is OK. She definitely talks more than she used to but we don't have to talk all the time. Sometimes she just looks at me and smiles without saying anything and in those moments I know that I am loved.

My interest in talking has more to do with who I'm talking to and less to do with the subject of conversation

Imagine going through a marriage like "how about that weather"

I'd like to have similar interactions with my significant other to the ones I have with my cats. You know, things like siting on the couch together... saying silly things in even sillier voices... staring into each other's eyes while blinking slowly... yelling at her to get down from the cupboard...

If my partner can't handle silence, then there's something seriously wrong. We usually have something to do and if we don't we just cuddle up. There's no need for constant noise.

Did you see that ludicrous display last night?

Pretty sure being in a long term relationship means you’ve moved on from small talk a long time ago.

I don’t want to talk with my wife about the weather, we have more important shit to worry about unless we’re literally having to dodge a tornado.

Small talk is for strangers.

What if I told you: People who hate small talk only have meaningful relationships. It’s the shallow relationships they lack.

It would be hell to come home to someone who only wanted to talk about the weather and how those jockstraps are doing.

I think there's a misconception regarding what counts as small talk. "Bland conversation that has no real point but to escape silence" is small talk. Asking you how your day went because I care about you is not. "How's the weather?" is small talk. "How was your trip to the grocery?" is small talk. These are dumb things and, if your relationship can't bear the silence that would be interrupted because "The vegan sausages were on sale today", then it prolly doesn't need to exist.

Remind me never to get into a sustained meaningful relationship then.

Small talk by definition is useless drivel. I don’t build relationships on that…

In my perspective (a lonely person generally accustomed with my loneliness), small talk doesn't seem to be the problem. The problem is the lack of people's interest in deep topics, such as the aforementioned nature of reality: people either don't have the needed patience, time, or both. People are so busy running through the survival game of the mundane existence that deep topics are left for their afterlives (if there's one), when human ideologies and need for survival cease to exist. Small talk is like "sorry I got no time to think about the ultimate question of life, universe and everything else, gotta go to my modern slavery where I'm not paid to think but to obey, bye!". Deep inside, seems like a fear of becoming lonely as those that, just like me, likes to think about the depths of the reality and breaking paradigms (for example, "shouldn't we discuss how existence is so fleetingly finite in the grand scheme of cosmos and how futile is to accumulate wealth and goods?" is a granted source of loneliness).

Idk that I really do small talk OR do philosophical conversations with my partner but I'll let you judge. Here's the sort of things me and my partner say to each other throughout the day:

• wanna play [whatever co-op we're into lately]? (Then several hours of strategy discussions)
• did you eat all the chips again you FUCKER followed by BITCH WHAT IF I DID YOU ATE ALL THE OREOS???
• If all dogs go to heaven do their people have to be there for it to be a dog heaven and does that mean hitler is in heaven because he had a dog?
• miscellaneous bitching about our jobs
• wanna fuck
• the dog pissed in the elevator again it's your turn to go clean it
• did you see the sweater I put the cat in?
• Debates about whether or not a taco is a hot dog or vice versa
• how many toys do you wanna get out for the fucking and more importantly how many are you willing to clean
• that book you made me read is really melodramatic but I agree it's about black mold.
• we should go visit the hot tub vs no it's too fucking cold vs that is the point of it being a HOT tub
• wanna play cards against humanity with the cat
• debates about who will hold the cat while we trim her claws
• yelling at each other for being too loud while the other is sleeping and which offense is fundamentally more heinous (dayshifter vs nightshifter)
• discussing the biopunk visuals in lexx and how they would have made all the butthole windows out of fabric
• random nonsense words and noises like doing an entire karaoke bit but all the words are "doodoodoodoo doodley dooooot doo"
• discussions about farscape's costuming department's extensive use of bondage gear
• putting peanut butter on TOP of the dog's snout then filming her
• what if we feel like we're seeing God when we're on mushrooms because the mushrooms ARE god and we're all just fundamentally here to feed them
• blaming each other for the peanut butter thing to get the other person to clean it up
• talking about weird internet personalities like chrischan or the tile patterns guy
• calling each other old for stuff like heartburn after pizza or chronic injuries flaring up with the weather

I dont know how to make small talk so i just learned to make really good goat noises

You can talk about ideas on what to do in the bedroom or kitchen instead of the weather. My girlfriend and I talk about the nature of the universe and consciousness quite often.

I always took it as an early red flag that the person is way too intense and stressful to be around if every conversation has to be a do or die dynamic.

My inability to carry even a basic conversation is just one of many reasons I have no plan to be in any kind of relationship, sustained or not, meaningful or not

I've seen women like that on dating apps. Claim to hate small talk, include in their bio that if you just open with "hi" they'll unmatch you, and then when you put some thought into actually writing a response, ask a leading question about their interests or what they wrote in their profile, they unmatch you anyway.

#thisiswhyyouresingle

personally im a firm believer in the shut the fuck up and be quiet camp.

Who cares if you talk. If you have something to talk about, talk about it, if not, don't it's that simple.

How did everyone take this post to mean that you should only do small talk with your partner and not have deeper conversations?

Ha, jokes on them! I haven't been in a relationship in about a decade and I don't see that ever changing so I don't need small talk!

...wait. Who's the joke on?

:P

Someone once pointed out to me that what I consider small talk might be someone else's important.

Sure it might seem like gossip or chat about the weather just for the sake of talking but it can equally be someone trying to say that they are lonely and need reassurance.

I think about that a lot and I've become a lot more tolerant. Besides, you can segue into some pretty big chat from such humble starts.

They seem ritualistic social interactions. Like some bird's courtship dance except there's no relationships interest. So it's just a burden that I didn't want to participate in unless I have a genuine friendship.