"I dread getting calls from friend who talks non-stop"

Can you humiliate your friend without hurting her feelings?

Original column: Dear Abby, March 29 2024.

My take: The LW has a friend who talks so relentlessly the LW “can put the phone down and go make a cup of tea, and she’ll still be talking when [I] get back.” The LW wants to know how she can tell her friend to listen more.

Her friend has many good qualities! She doesn’t want to hurt her friend’s feelings.

Abby’s harsh. She says the friend is “a compulsive talker and a ‘sapper,’” who “gains energy by draining it from others.” She advises the LW to actually time the next talking jag, tell her friend how long it lasted, and then ask her to talk less and listen more.

Abby acknowledges that the friend might not like this.

Might not? Really? The friend will definitely not like this. I speak with 100% confidence. And it’ll all be for nothing, because unless the friend gets professional help—which maybe she will, and maybe she won’t—she won’t be able to change. That’s why they call it “compulsive” talking.

What was Abby thinking? The clue may be in her bizarre word, “sapper.” It suggests something vampiric and intentional, whereas most compulsive talkers are just anxious people who feel better only while they’re actively verbalizing. The problem, of course, is that the anxiety comes back as soon as the listener hangs up, so the talker has to find someone else to call.

But…she probably will find someone else to call! Some people like to listen! And that’s the solution for this LW: With a combination of call-screening and some seat-of-the-pants call-shortening, she can nudge her friend to move on. Vague, evasive approaches, though hard to script, are often the best way, in this and other social situations. In time, the circle of people the friend talks to will gradually shift to include only those who enjoy her chatter.

To be fair to Abby, she does recommend call-screening in a post script. Also, she’s probably not the only columnist who stresses confrontation. For some reason, advice columnists love confrontation, even for LWs like this one, who specifically say they don’t want to be mean. But I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: These confrontations never work. They do hurt peoples’ feelings, they do end friendships, and they seldom correct the original problem.

Chance this letter is fake: Why should it be fake? Surely we’ve all known such people.