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Comfortable silence. Learn to appreciate it.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Did you see that ludicrous display last night?

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

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.

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

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

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

We will sit in comfortable silence together.

Imagine having a relationship based on talking about the weather today. I talk about things I enjoy talking about. If I don't have anything to say then quiet is peaceful. 😊

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

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

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...

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.

When family/friends asks you how you are doing but don't listen to the answer that really sucks. Or they hear what they expect and make a comment that clearly means they weren't listening. Personally I found that too much of small talk is someone saying or asking something with no intention of listening. Maybe they think they are being polite or some social obligations to talk but I hate it. If I ask "How you doing?" "How's work?" I'm going to listen to your answer. If I make a comment about the weather and you comment back I will listen.

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.

Extrovert cannot comprehend being quiet.

The weird shit in my head is not suitable for public utterance. I can give you engaging statements or appropriate statements, but one statement that is both requires far more effort.

Small talk with strangers, acquaintances, neighbors is draining even when I like those people. Those closest to me do not require appropriate statements, so with them it never feels like small talk.

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).