What’s With Those People Who Don’t Ask Any Questions?
By: Claire J. Harris
Tags: Society, Dating, Life Lessons, Friendship, Conversations

We’ve all been there — you’re sitting across the table from a friend, listening to them give you a rundown of everything that has happened to them since the last time you saw them. You wait for your turn in the conversation to come… and it doesn’t. They’ll tell you all about their latest Tinder date but they don’t so much as ask “How are you?”

Or perhaps it’s the work colleague who you always ask “How was your weekend?” on a Monday and they’ll share all the details of what has transpired between Friday evening and Monday morning. Then the conversation just stops. Or the housemate who comes home and complains about the terrible day they’ve had at work. Then they go to their room.

There is a now fairly well-documented phenomenon about men who ask no questions on dates. They expound on the minutiae of their everyday lives as though it must be inherently fascinating to anyone — but fail to find out a single thing about the person sitting opposite them.

There was a man I dated for three weeks, seeing him every other day, when I asked him if he knew what my job was. I’m a financial copywriter so most people don’t know what that really entails — but he drew a complete blank. That’s because he’d never asked. In 10 dates.

He was from Finland and he told me that culturally speaking, the Finns don’t believe in small talk. They’ll happily sit in silence until someone has something important to say, he explained. They don’t ask questions because that’s rude and instead, they wait for someone to freely share information. I would have accepted this explanation if he was ever actually silent — but he was not remotely taciturn, he just never showed any particular interest in what I had to say.

However, it’s not just men and it’s not just dates. Most people like to talk about themselves — and they love to be asked about themselves. I’ve come across this time and again at networking events. But I kind of understand it within this context: pretty much everyone has something that they’re trying to pitch on these occasions. Asking about someone else takes away from their valuable pitching time.

But then there are friends. Because I’ve moved cities, I have friends I only see once or twice a year when I visit my hometown. Some of them never ask me what I’ve been doing in that year. Is it because our lives are on social media and they feel like they already know the answer?

There are other friends I see more regularly who might throw me the odd question, but their eyes glaze over or they glance at their phones when I start talking. Is my life so uninteresting? Do I need to sharpen my storytelling skills?

Not asking someone anything when they’ve listened to you talk at length would seem to go against every convention of making conversation. Which makes me wonder: do they know they don’t ask any questions?

If the answer is yes, then perhaps they simply don’t care — or think what they have to say is so much more interesting than anything I could offer. But if they don’t know… then should I tell them? “Excuse me, do you think you could ask me one single goddam question?”

Worse still, perhaps I am one of them, and I don’t even realise it. Maybe there are people who, after we see each other, think to themselves, “She really only talks about herself. Why doesn’t she ask me anything?”