How do I get my (24M) boyfriend (21M) to talk to me?
Right away, I want to say that I’m not talking about heavy stuff. I don’t need or want him to have tough or serious conversations unless he’s ready for those specific topics. My concern is literal conversation.
I legitimately feel like he doesn’t know how to have a basic conversation sometimes. He’s almost always on his phone, on social media, games, watching sports, etc. I’ve talked to him about being on it less but even though I see glimpses of effort it’s still not great. We sit down at dinner at a nice restaurant or go on vacation or go to the bar with friends and he’s either in his phone or sitting around quietly (though mostly the former). The biggest concern and the reason I’m writing this is something that happened when we traveled to NYC.
We went to visit an online friend of his (a little younger than him) and at first they both just said hi to each other and just stood around and walked around quietly (despite it being the first time they had seen each other in person). I used to be worried that it was me, that he didn’t have anything to say to me because we somehow weren’t compatible. Now I’m starting to think that he seriously just doesn’t know what a conversation is at all.
I don’t need a chatter box as a partner but I nice dinner or lazy wine night by the campfire chat would really be nice. I get shyness around new people or being introverted but we’ve been together for almost 3 years and he’s even talked about marriage and a family (quite a few years from now but we’ve discussed it briefly) so I feel like that can’t be it. How do I go about having a conversation about his lack of conversation without having it feel like I’m trying to charge him as a person? Thanks in advance! I might just be going crazy, so I appreciate all honest input!