Conversation mores.

[accountingwitch]

If you don't know how to react, "that's good/bad", "thank you" and "I'm sorry" cover a wide range of responses. Conversely, "I would've" or "you should've/could've" is a terrible response to anything unless asked for

Comments

[conrad_delta]

Has this been happening to you from a lot of people, or from only one person? Are these people close to your heart? (I am not asking this to apply what you are saying in this entry, it's a genuine question haha)

I fear that the main deciding factor is your sentence "If you're genuinely interested in getting along with your peers, you'll make an effort to do this." Either those people are not really/entirely interested in getting along with peers, or their focus is... well, simply themselves.

I want to strangle a person every time this happens to me (see, I told you - not applying haha). I'm not sure I would use the term "rude" - I feel like "insensitive" becomes more appropriate, especially when you're ranting and raving or are sharing a problem that you could no longer bear, then he/she says "yeah that happened to me too" and proceeds to talk about what happened to him/her.

(It took me about 30 minutes to think about how to write this comment without entirely sounding all "This happened to me too"... Hahahaha)

[accountingwitch]

Ha ha, yeah, it's a conversational double-edged sword. Someone suggested, "That reminds me of something, but finish your story first" (or a for discreet version of it) so people know you want to have a turn, but can finish first. Shared experiences are normal, but interrupting me halfway through a story isn't the time to hijack the conversation. Or using the experience to share how you'd both handle the situation.

It's at least two people who regularly do this, who aren't particularly close (because of their tendency to hijack of conversation). Whenever I share something good or bad with them, they react with how it affects them, or how they feel, when the result I'm aiming for is, I don't know, say "thank you" or "I'm sorry that happened". I'm obviously fishing around for sympathy and instead I'm left holding your hand. One actually will kill a conversation when the focus isn't on them, knowingly or not - it's frustrating to talk in a group and they've just got to dominate it conversationally.