What if HE does all the talking?

Have you been on any dates lately?

If so, how did the conversation go?

If the experience of many of my clients is anything to go by, there’ll be a good chance you didn’t get a word in edgeways. Many men on dates, especially first dates, hog the conversation, regaling you with stories about themselves or their friends or family, or giving you the benefit of their extensive knowledge of science fiction or organic chemistry or whatever. Meanwhile they don’t seem particularly interested in garnering your opinions.

Sound familiar? 

You might think the fact that they spend the bulk of your time together talking about themselves means that they’re either narcissistic or just plain feckless.

Well, you can take narcissism off the table because Ns tend to specialise in feigning charm and are well able to press your buttons, at least at the start, so they’re actually likely to come across as rather attentive and charismatic.

As for being feckless – possibly so, but not necessarily. I’ll explain why not in a minute, but I just want to say that while it’s not ideal if a guy doesn’t seem to show willing to find out more about you, if he seems to have other good qualities that would make him a good partner, it’s worth not automatically going for the “reject” button. 

I know some women will be uncompromising on this, after all, why should you need to teach a fellow adult how to communicate? But there may well be a price to pay for taking a hard line.

Why do I say this? Well as it happens, I had exactly this issue of conversation-hogging with my husband on our first few dates. Some conversation topics were more interesting than others but generally I found this conversational style mildly annoying and also a bit frustrating because he didn’t seem to be asking me for my opinions so I didn’t get to express myself as much as I’d have liked.

But Rob is one of the most agreeable, empathetic men you could meet and absolutely cares about what I think.

So why did he talk so much and why didn't he ask many questions? And why are men in general not good at this stuff?

Here’s why.

The most difficult part of winning the approval of women is at the start. Your typical man is used to being brushed off and unable to get past first base with a woman he likes, and so he feels he has to do his best to impress you. And the default way men have to do this is to talk themselves up, and tell you about the interesting life they have. This is also how men demonstrate their status more generally.

So when I was first seeing Rob, he’d already decided he liked/fancied me and had formed an impression of the kind of person I was. As far as he was concerned he now had to impress me, hence the monologuing. He also later revealed that he’d been a bit nervous on our first dates, and so got carried away with filling in any possible silences.

What most men won't be aware of (and you might not be aware either) is that we impress people a lot more by listening to what THEY'RE saying and being interested in THEM, rather than by regaling them with tales of our own fantastic adventures.

In fact research demonstrates that far from exciting a date with your interesting experiences, you might actually turn them off if you’re talking about stuff they have no knowledge of; a phenomenon dubbed the “novelty penalty”. It turns out that we all have a general preference for hearing about stuff we have some familiarity with and can relate to, rather than some, albeit impressive and unusual, experience that our conversation partner is holding forth about.

A lot of men clearly don’t get this stuff (and a lot of women don’t either of course – bear that in mind when you yourself are trying to make an impression).

However, you don’t have to just let him dominate the conversation. If you’re asking lots of questions but you’re getting fed up that he doesn’t ask YOU anything, here are some things you can do:

• Firstly, don’t think his lack of questioning necessarily says anything about what he thinks of YOU. If he talks a lot about himself, the chances are he’s trying to impress you. He may well be a bit nervous and that’ll likely impact his conversational skills even more. Note that the more he likes you the more nervous he’s likely to get. 
  
  
• Remember that guys who are good at first date conversations are more likely to be the ones who go on a lot of first dates and quite possibly not who you want. The qualities that make a guy a good bet for a long-term relationship aren’t generally called for on a first date, these being things like being GENUINELY kind and considerate, being emotionally stable, being able to clean up after himself and look after you when you’re ill.
  
  
• You don’t have to wait to be asked a question. Don’t be afraid to interrupt and have your say on the topic in question. We generally think of interrupting as being impolite and giving a bad impression, but various research shows that interrupting can be good if done in the right way. A Stanford University study of speed daters’ conversations, for instance, showed that people felt they clicked more with those who interrupted them, particularly when the interruptions were “collaborative completions” where the interrupter was helping the other articulate their argument and then adding their own tuppence-worth on the subject.
  
  
• You could try making your date fun by taking turns in asking (and perhaps answering yourself) deeper, connection-fostering questions. Tell your man in advance you’re going to do this and he can come armed with some questions too. Stuff like:
  “Do you have a place that’s special to you? Why’s it special?”
  “If you could invite any celebrity or historical figure to dinner, who would it be and why?”
  “What are you most proud of yourself for”
  And so on…
  That way you’re going to find out some interesting stuff about your date and you definitely won’t run out of stuff to talk about. And you’ll get your turns!
  
  
• You can directly invite them to ask you a question, e.g. “I’ve learned a lot of interesting stuff about YOU now – time to ask ME something!” (said with a cheeky smile)
  – and if they don’t get the hint and improve their turn-taking then you might have to accept you’re flogging a dead horse. But at least you tried!

I realise it might sound like I'm making excuses for men being useless at first-date conversation, and I do think if you date someone who clearly is showing no interest in you personally, and is obviously completely focussed on themselves then it’s probably time to call it. 

But what I'm trying to get at here generally is that it's worth understanding that men often look at things from a slightly different angle from us women, and we can use that knowledge to our advantage if we’re prepared to be a bit patient and give an otherwise good guy a chance.

That’s what I did and it worked out extremely well, and I’ve had several clients who’ve had a similar experience.

So there’s something to mull over :)

MAIRI MACLEOD PhD