Bad Conversation Skills

Post Reply New Topic

I'm having a conversation with another person in a chat... I think I'm doing very well, it's back and forth, but then I looked at it and realized that the entire conversation is the person asking me questions and me answering them. I know that's not proper, but I don't know what to ask another person. Help?

When you type your answer, ask the same kind of question back. It's not every single question, but, how to say?
Every conversation has one main topic at a given point. When somebody brings up a topic in a normal conversation, it is usually not because they only want to know what you think about the topic, but that they want to have you hear what they think, as well.
Your job, if you don't set the topic, is to figure out what exactly is the current topic.
For example, if the person asks you if you have pets, the topic is pets.
If they tell you about their dog, the topic is pets (or dogs/if you already know the dog well, also that particular dog). But with 'pets' you'll probably be alright.
So, when you are asked if you have pets, most people expect you to talk about whether you have any, or whether you can't/don't want to have any. And then, when you have talked about that a bit, maybe replied to some more specific questions regarding the pets, either a new topic comes up, or there will be an opening for you to ask whether the other person has pets or what they think about pets.
The important part it to keep track of the actual topic you are talking about, and ask some topic-related questions every now and then.
If that's too difficult, just ask 'and what about you?' after answering a question. I do that often, too.

Some people have bad conversation skills and their conversations will consist of battering the other person with questions while either not giving the person the chance to ask questions back, or being completely oblivious to the fact that this person might not be asking questions back because they don't really want to talk to them.

You situation sounds a little different in that you were receptive to having a conversation, you just could not perceive at the time whether or not it was a balanced one.

A health conversation should consist of both participants asking questions, and sharing views and information and/or relating experiences.

Since this was chat, you probably had ample opportunity to do that and just didn't realize you should, or were not, until now.

In a real life situation, if the person is shooting questions at you and not allowing you the time to ask questions back, or share your own views, and you would have to frequently interrupt to do so, it is the other person who has poor conversational skills.

There are times when I don't think before I open my mouth. I don't say anything hurtful, but I end up saying some pretty stupid things.

We were just talking about this here - the spectrum exaggerates it, but it is intrinsic in personality / cultural differences.

Some people [one of them started it here] converse by asking questions and may get upset if you don't ask questions back.

Others converse by talking about themselves and may get upsdet if you do not talk about yourself in turn.

I have known a question asker who did not need to be asked and a few tellers who had no interest in hearing you.

Bottom line - you can't please everybody. I just do what IO can and what I have to and hope the other won't decide to be offended.

Just about all of my conversations IRL consist of me practically 'interviewing' the person I'm talking to. Once, somebody who was listening to a conversation I was having with my friend thought we were playing one of those games where someone thinks of something and the other person has to ask questions to figure out what it is
If I know them well enough, I try to think of an interest I share with the other person, and try to talk about it with them.

Well, it's better than talk on and on and on about something mode. Now what's messed up is that I'm pretty good at reading faces (questions if I really am aspie), so I can pretty much tell when someone is getting bored, or at least I guess. Usually I ask however and they claim they are not bored. Anyway, I just keep talking even when I'm pretty sure they are bored because I want to express my information so badly.

I know how annoying that is, because I met this one guy that said that people thought he was autistic... well he spent an hour talking to me about tornadoes and I purposefully tried to give hints I was bored and he didn't care or didn't pick up on them. This was the most similar person I found to me, because he had mood disorder too.