Quote:
Originally Posted by MoriartyL
Actually, just today I was having a conversation with someone who's a really nice guy. He kept getting annoyed at me for asserting my opinions too strongly, so I switched topics, showed more stubborn curiosity than he apparently wanted me to show about that topic, and he called me a "jerk". Which threw me off guard, because I thought there was potential there for a pleasant conversation. But there really wasn't any common ground. The way I have conversations isn't often compatible with how other people have conversations. (I tend to find the usual chitchat extremely dull.)
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Man, it would be so much easier if people actually called
me a jerk, or showed some other obvious sign of dislike. As it stands, people are either friendly or indifferent towards me. The trouble is basically that I can't really feel much of a connection, because like you, I can't stand small talk. In fact, I tend to be pretty quiet until a topic comes up that I know something about and/or feel passionate towards, so if folks around me go on and on talking about something I'm not terribly interested in, they pretty much see silence on my end. There's nothing for them to really get angry about.
That, and Canadians are, by and large, very polite and friendly, which can be nice to a point, but also tends to make me suspicious of people not telling me how they
really feel. For this reason, it was somewhat refreshing to live in the States for a little while because people there seemed a bit more outspoken about their opinions, so I felt more like I knew what I was getting. And from what little I've gathered about Israeli culture from travelling there a couple of times, people around your part of the world are also pretty upfront about what annoys them. Ah well, such is life. *sigh*
