Everytime when I visiti parents home it seems that don't care I'm even there. They have their "sports routines", which cannot be stopped. It happens to others too. Most topics revolt around what matches they had, with whom and watch matches in TV. Whenever they go to some holidays they look for sports hall for playing. They take part in exercises with coach, they play occasional games with 20+ friends.
The last time I had some talk, was that one time couple months ago when I brought the board game to improve our family integrity and communication skills, to get to know each other better, but that was once.
I feel that I I know them mostly on the surface level currently.
That's me lol. I love programming a lot, and if I don't, I'm either drawing or playing splatoon. I just don't have a switch in my head that tells me "you must know about the news" or "go see how your friends are doing". Not really that I don't care, but as long as my family is fine and I have nothing to say to them, why bother?
My compromise with that was to get stuff to do together. Video games or board games are a good enough idea.
Sitting and talking can be awkward and taxing. If I want to have an in-depth chat with someone, I typically ask to go for a walk or a hike.
I’m feeling this way about a lot of people in my life right now. In my opinion, it is a combination of a splintering pop culture (we aren’t all following the same things), splintering foundations of identity (even facts seem to be subjective these days), and simply being overwhelmed.
Most media is selling doom these days, and the source of that doom is completely contradictory based on who is selling it. If you want to talk about something serious, you inevitably wind up parroting your sources, or eliciting others to parrot theirs. The more you dig, the worse things get, until the argument feels personal.
Under those conditions, subjects like sports seem like a safe option that is unlikely to expose a raw nerve.
Not everyone is an extrovert. Spending hours doing nothing but making small talk is legitimately excruciating for many people, and it has nothing to do with "skills." Having a premise for social interaction besides "let's grill each other for hours" is socially inclusive.
After a certain point of familiarity there just isn't much left to say.
One of my uncles is always extremely into collecting something but the topic is changing every few years. First it’s board games, then geocaching, then geocoins (a subset of geocaching), then it’s lego. Now it’s a soccer club but just the merch, he never talks about the players or games. He lives in a small apartment so he puts stuff in self storage or even in the basements of other family members... I guess it’s compensation for not achieving much in life but it makes that situation even worse.
There are a couple people who I refer to as my best friends, and they're even in a relationship with each other, but they debate/argue all. the. time.
On the outside, one would see this as a sign of incompatibility, but they both maintain as well as demonstrate this isn't the case, and, according to them, "a sign we met at the school debate club."
In any case, though they always had warmth, it always felt distracted, unless I too was debating with them. Their two main bonding activities are spelunking and one could say photobombing as I've mentioned, two things I don't have the physical/mental patience for.
