My friend is in a new-ish relationship, and I asked him how it’s going. “It’s going great,” he said. “We have really good conversations.”
This, as far as I’m concerned, is one of the best litmus tests of a relationship’s long-term potential, and ability to make you happy now and in the future. Sure, there are other things that matter – do they treat you with respect? make you laugh? make you come? – but conversations are the way we typically spend so much of our time in any kind of relationship, so it’s a huge deal when they’re good.
I have a healthy respect for non-awkward silence – which definitely exists, despite the protestations of people who are terrified of “dead air” – but sometimes silence can signal a lack of anything to say. The death knell of one of my longest-term relationships was the realization that I didn’t really want to talk to my partner anymore. I no longer got excited to share good news with him, or ask his opinion on a recent movie, or discuss philosophical quandaries into the wee hours. For the last few months of our relationship, most of the activities we did together were non-conversational – and by that, I don’t mean that we were having tons of sex. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Bad conversations are also usually the centerpieces of bad dates for me. In my Tinder years, I’d often rush to the sex part just to get through the horrifically awkward “date” part. If I could go back and do it all over again, I like to think I’d adhere to higher standards – i.e. believing that bad conversations are a perfectly valid reason to say, “Well, I’m gonna head out,” and go home and masturbate to The Office fanfiction instead of having lacklustre sex with a boring bro just so I don’t have to talk to him anymore – but who the hell knows. Craft beer and social anxiety are not a great combination as far as making good decisions goes.