Midwest Matchmaking’s 15 Habits of Extremely Boring People

10 Jan 2019

We’ll start with the good news: Absolutely everyone has the capacity to be interesting. The bad news is, if you’re finding yourself single year after year, can’t seem to get past a second or third date, or don’t have relationships that last beyond a few months, our Des Moines matchmakers have news for you: maybe you’re just boring.

Sure, there could be other factors at play keeping you from dating in Des Moines successfully. Emotional unreadiness, lacking proper dating skills, insecurities, improper etiquette, confidence issues; the list goes on. But perhaps being boring never entered your mind.

More good news: Midwest Matchmaking says that even if you’ve lived under a rock your whole adult life, this characteristic can be changed. 

So, if you’re wanting to date exciting, fun, interesting people and build a life with one of them, you’re going to have to work on being interesting yourself. Here’s how:

Boring people lack a sophisticated sense of humor

Humor shows “cognitive flexibility”: the ability to assess an idea or an event from a variety of perspectives, and then, naturally, make light of it. Boring people lack it.

Midwest Matchmaking Tip:

If you can make people laugh, you’ll probably have an easier time picking up a date.

Boring people repeat themselves

Telling the same story over and over again is mind-numbingly dull.Try reading the news or mentally reviewing the past few hours for some new material.

Boring people are boring storytellers

To interest someone and to truly engage others, you have to be able to tell a story, and you have to care about that story. In fact, a 2016 study found that men who can tell a good story are  more attractive to women. You also have to solicit stories out of others. And you have to care about those stories. Boring people don’t have anything new to add.

Research into our brains reveals that we’re basically hard-wired to seek novelty. The conversational takeaway: If you don’t provide anything new to the listener, they’re not going to be stimulated.

Boring people have conversational imbalances

Instead of finding a natural rhythm between talking and listening, boring people are on either conversational extreme.

Quora user, Jack Bennett, calls it “asymmetry in the conversational ‘give and take’ — e.g. all listening and no talking, or all talking and no listening.”

Boring people are always negative

People who are doom and gloom are the most boring.

Des Moines matchmakers break down the Negative Nancies (or Negative Neds) into three categories:

Victim mentality: “I’m cursed. I’m so unlucky.”

Scarcity mentally: “My co-worker snatched that opportunity away from me.”

Blaming mentality: “It’s all my ex’s fault!

Boring people don’t have strong opinions

If you haven’t thought critically about the world around you, you’re not going to have much to offer in conversation. People that do not see past what they were taught to believe” are the boring ones, say our Des Moines matchmakers. These people can only offer their very localized view on a variety of topics.

Boring people have dull conversations

A “boor” is somebody who’s loud and insensitive to the social situation, but a boring person can also be overly circumspect. Where the loud bore believes they are the most interesting person there is, the quiet bore believes it’s best to never say anything. These are the local singles who reply to every inquiry with some variant of ‘I dunno, sort of, I guess.'”

Boring people are stuck in routine

Statistically, what makes a person boring is living a sedentary life without variety. Diverse experiences improve one’s conversation so that you actually have something to talk about.” Successful dating in Des Moines and elsewhere means expanding your interests. You’ll probably feel better about yourself, too, since novelty and challenge make people happier.

Boring people can’t see a different perspective

Boring people are usually those who don’t understand how the conversation is experienced from the other person’s perspective. In this way, emotional intelligence is key to conversation. This goes along with the empathy thing: If you can’t figure out that someone in the circle of conversation is feeling left out, you’re boring.

Boring people can’t improvise

If you’ve got a prepared script for every casual conversation and can’t deviate from it, you’re boring. Good conversationalists don’t have to say the right thing, they just have to say something the other person can feed off of. Conversations are like a game of catch and if you don’t throw that ball back, game over.

Boring people are monotone

A person who speaks in monotone automatically gets placed in the “boring” category.

Midwest Matchmaking says that if no one can tell your range of expression or emotion in your voice, or if they can’t tell if you’re excited about something, it’s a dull experience for those on the other end. If that’s not bad enough, speaking in monotone can make you look dumb.

Boring people miss social cues

If you’re emphatically boring, you’re probably missing the other person’s body language.

Des Moines matchmakers argue that what makes a person boring is the “continual blathering and ignoring of signals and body language that say (perhaps not loudly enough) ‘I’m not interested in what you’re saying, but am nodding every few seconds only to be polite.’”

Boring people are always bored

Boredom is a two-way street. And there is no excuse in this vast world to ever be bored. Really. Get creative. Use your brain, try new things. In 1,000,000 lifetimes, you could never experience everything this world has to offer, so get out there and become an interesting person. And, most people will feed off others’ excitement, so show some.

Are you constantly meeting boring people? Are you boring yourself and need some tips on how to not be? 

Midwest Matchmaking dating coaches and Des Moines matchmakers can help! Call our offices today at (515) 414-3536 or visit www.midwestmatchmaking.com