I have a friend I see about once a week, and all she ever does is vent about her various dating problems. The 10 percent of the time we actually discuss my life or anything else, she seems bored. I want to tell her I feel like she's monopolizing our friendship with her love life, but I'm not sure how.

--Ignored

You couldn't be a better friend to her, unless, of course, you could have yourself reincarnated as a giant ear.

This isn't friendship; it's therapy without the copay. The question is, has she always been this way? Even a true friend can go through periods of being needy, moody, selfish or otherwise hard to be around. That friend probably just needs a heads-up, like, "I know you've been on edge about your whole dating situation, but I've been feeling kind of bad that you never seem interested in what's going on with me."

"I'm feeling bad" appeals to their sympathy, which, economist Adam Smith noted, motivates us to try to ease others' discomfort or suffering. Tagging the problem to the "dating situation" suggests that they're a little wrapped up in their problem rather than that they, personally, are the problem. If, however, a person is narcissistic -- truly self-absorbed -- and if that's always been their orientation, there's probably no transforming them from a talker into a listener (not without duct-taping them to a chair and gagging them with a pair of old tube socks).

Good advice! Would be nice to hear back as to whether LW took it and what the effect was.

Lucy B at July 30, 2014 3:29 AM

I had a friend that I stopped communicating with because of this. Every conversation with her was the same: her love life sucked, she didn't understand how to attract men, etc. She seldom was interested in any other topic. Eventually I figured out that her love-life problem was because she was only attracted to men who were waaaaaay out of her league, and that a lot of her other friends had already given her advice which she ignored. Further, she liked to do her conversing on chat, which is the most time-consuming form of communication known to mankind.

Cousin Dave at July 30, 2014 8:18 AM

Amy Alkon

https://www.advicegoddess.com/ag-column-archives/2014/07/selfish-allergy.html#comment-4892069">comment from Cousin Dave

Also, it's boring to be with people who only want to talk about their love life and finding love, etc.

Amy Alkon at July 30, 2014 8:22 AM

There's a name for men who get sucked into this torture: "Emotional Tampon", aka "substitute girlfriend", aka "Nice Guy". Too many men put up with this in the hopes of finding their way into her panties, but it doesn't work. We just feed these women validation, which they use to run off and get back with the jerks they're really attracted to.
Nobody needs this, not men, not suffering women friends.

jefe at July 30, 2014 11:33 AM

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