It all starts, like most of the best stories, with a girl. It's the usual thing: she's intelligent, she's interesting, with a killer sense of humour and a smile that makes me melt. And we've been getting progressively more friendly. The problem? Well, thanks to a load of two hour phone conversations, we've run out of things to talk about.

Now, she knows that I like her. She hasn't really given a response, but the implication is that we'll get to know each other better and see what develops. All well and good; but how do you get to know someone better when you've run out of things to talk about? It's not as if she's unintelligent and boring; we like talking to one another, it's just that we seem to have covered absolutely everything.

Topics that we have killed include:

  • Anecdotes and old stories

  • Favourite things (colours, food, films, etc)

  • Likes/Dislikes/Things in common

  • Thoughts on Religion, Politics, Philosophy, et al

  • Current affairs

  • All things tangential

  • How we never have anything to talk about


  • The situation is a little more complicated than outlined above, because I'm going to Uni in a few months, and she's far too sensible to start anything now. I want to, and I think she does too -- which leads to this problem. I know pretty much everything about her, and vice versa; ordinarily, at this point, she'd either have rejected me or pounced on me. Since neither has happened, we find ourselves here.

    The awkward silences that occur when we run out of things to say would be filled with canoodling or become comfortable silences where we could stare into each others eyes and be all mushy. But, since we're just friends, the silences are just friendly.

    It's sad, in a way, because she's one of those people. I'm meeting her for coffee in a few days time, and I have no idea what we'll talk about. Something will come up, because I'm resourceful under pressure; but neither of us will be able to shake the feeling that we're just making small talk until it's time to leave.


    Moral of the story: There is a natural order to these things. Disrupt it at your own peril; perhaps the relationship will work out anyway, or perhaps you'll find yourself staring into the bottom of your coffee, sadly lost for words with a person with whom it should all be so easy.

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