You usually do people a favor when you stop them from repeating themselves. You minimize the embarrassment of their bad behavior, you minimize your own resentment of their wasting your time, and you provide them with valuable social cues.
\nMen often interpret silence as agreement or interest, so they continue talking until an external signal stops them. A well-placed interruption provides that signal, establishing a boundary that keeps the conversation efficient. It is a practical intervention that prevents wasted time and maintains the balance of the interaction.
\nAlso, if you are like me and tend to be way too passive (when I describe verbal abuse I receive, my successful friends often say they wouldn’t put up with that for one minute), interrupting people who repeat themselves builds the muscle of standing up for yourself, and the stronger this muscle, the more often you will want to use it in its right place.
\nI have a low tolerance for boring conversations. I rarely let people hold me hostage this way, and when I do, it is usually in the context of doing a desperately lonely person a kindness.
\nI’d usually rather be on my own reading a book than enduring the boring.
\nNow a limit. My personality takes this tendency too far for my own good. I naturally gravitate towards too much isolation, so I force myself to socialize more than I want to, and to accept that human interactions can’t be optimized in the same way as solitary routines. I have to accept a lot of boring talk to get to the good stuff. So I make decisions about which persons and communities receive my greatest forbearance in exchange for the greatest bonds. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You usually do people a favor when you stop them from repeating themselves. You minimize the embarrassment of their bad behavior, you minimize your own resentment of their wasting your time, and you provide them with valuable social cues. Men … Continue reading