Conversation

When I came back from a family vacation the summer after my freshman year, (I was still living in the same complex, Monticello in Provo) my roommate from the school year who had moved to a different apartment for the summer, told me she'd met someone she wanted to set me up with. She didn't say what it was about him that made her think of me, but I was intrigued and interested to get to know him when I did eventually meet him. She hadn't gotten around to setting us up, and I'm not sure I was too keen on being set up with someone who lived in my ward since it seemed I would more likely naturally meet him.

Anyway, so I did eventually meet him, playing games over at someone else's apartment--#1 in White Brick, I think. At first, he seemed pretty nice, and kind of cute. I thought I might not mind going out with him. Then, as we were talking, in a split-off conversation from the bigger group, but still with three or four people, he asked me what my game was. (I thought was kind of an odd question, I'll confess.) I told him conversation was my game. I think he thought that was pretty weird, and I can understand that. It does seem rather a weird thing to say, even to a weird question.

But it actually was true. I had a fascination with conversation. I payed attention to how people conversed and judged how well I liked a guy based on how he could talk to me, looking for certain things. I'm not sure what incited my interest--perhaps that too many people were telling me I was too quiet, and so I was trying to shift the blame, or find out why I was quiet, or figure out if they were really any better than me for not being quiet.

Well, to cut that story short, I'll just say this--our conversation was not successful. Within a few shifts of topic, it came out that he'd like to have 20 kids. I told him good luck finding a wife.

I don't know if he ever achieved it. I saw him a few years later at a concert, with a girl. She might have been his wife, or maybe just a girlfriend. In any case, he appeared to be making some progress toward his goal at that time. I was on a date that night, too, I think, but he was not my boyfriend. I think I didn't even like my date very much, but I don't remember who it was. In any case, I haven't yet found my perfect conversationalist. But this weekend/week (for reasons I'll refrain from discussing), I've been wondering how much progress I've actually made with the subject in general. Am I a better conversationalist than I was then? Have I improved in my ability to detect a good conversationalist or refined my demands?

See, both things are kind of hard to have as do or die goals--I mean, I don't know how long it took him to get married, or how old his wife was, nor how fertile or able to adopt they were, or if he's actually married! I have heard of families of 22 or more, but it is pretty rare and really hard to come by. That was obvious to me then. But I guess I wasn't quite as convinced at the young age of 19 of the difficulty of my own goal--finding a good conversationalist...

...Particularly as my ideas about what makes a good conversationalist were still in a lot of flux at that point. I don't think I expected perfection at that game. I was savvy enough to know that like any nebulous attribute, conversation is very near impossible to perfect in this lifetime. But it seems like there are enough people who have good friends, get married and seem to find that right balance of conversation between them that it wouldn't be absolutely impossible. But I'm also thinking that a lot of people find good matches for them because they don't care quite as much about conversational abilities. I mean, I've met a good number of people who have either been married, are married, or have had long term relationships and yet they have serious lackings in what seem to me as normal conversational abilities.

That probably sounds kind of critical, and it probably is, but I guess what I really want to know is two things--why is it hard to find someone with good conversational abilities and what's the best way to handle it when you're stuck talking to or listening to someone who has a lot of difficulty with basic conversation, such as someone who talks your ear off or who's never interested in anything you have to say, or who cuts down everything you have to say. What do you do? I want to be a charitable person, but I'm really struggling here.