06/06/14  Did you ever have that uncomfortable feeling that maybe you aren’t as important to someone as they are to you?

I recently I spent eight hours with an old friend who I hadn’t seen in four years. For the first three hours he only talked about himself. During the fourth hour he asked how I was doing. After less than 30 seconds into my response, he was back to talking about his world and doing so until we said goodbye—probably for the last time.

When I was still at the university, I often analyzed the conversational patterns of parents and their children. The most dysfunctional families were those were parents relied on monologues to interact with their children. A lesson for all of us?