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My first reaction was to think that you’re a little on the snark side. Then, I read your previous posts and found them all to be snarky. The women’s’ convos don’t interest me either.
Then first you should probably find what interests you and then find somebody there that is also interested in the same thing. Unless you want to continue to blame your lack of conversational skills on everyone else.
Current events.
Movies.
Travel.
Music.
Restaurants.
Art.
Weather.
Cooking.
Books.
Architecture.
History, recent.
History, last century.
History, ancient.
Science.
etc.
Please note I named neither politics nor religion.
Yeah, I hear ya. The things I am interested in are kinda weird.
If you would participate you might be able to bring up subjects you like. I'd bet those men don't know what to talk about either so they go to the sports. Surprisingly, these guys could be quite cerebral you never know .
If you are single staying around the girls is smart too. Why not try both gender groups a time or two during the party. It's called mingling.
Get up and mingle, sounds like they get settled into conversation groups and become static? Maybe get them playing a sport of some sort - a game of touch football, darts or pingpong or something - might be more interesting than sitting around talking about sports? Take up crochet or knitting and take it with you? That would be outside their usual scope of normal, though, and confuse them. Gem carving might be more along what they may perceive a proper gender pursuit, perhaps. Any small hand craft, then you can still 'talk' with them and not be bored.
Chat with your mom about the folks talking about sports? Ask her what they did as small kids? That'll get them off the subject of sports no doubt. Ask your mom for her favorite high school memory? Her favorite pet? What her favorite vacation was?
Settlers of Catan is a great game. Sheep for wheat! (Sorry, game humor, there.) Other than Settlers, there's Ticket to Ride which is a similar sort of game (similar amount of time to play, number of players, no dice or math involved) although Ticket to Ride uses less cooperation between the players. Another fun one which is hard to find, though, is The Farming Game. It's the players against the board and not each other so it's good for folks who are competitive since they're not having to gain ground by taking it from others. Takes a couple hours to play, though. Celestia is a fun quick game, doesn't take a lot of fussiness to learn although the instructions are written a bit strangely. Settlers, Trains (Ticket to Ride) and Celestia can be played by younger folks since there's very few math skills involved. Farming Game uses math (gotta mortgage the farm half the time) and we added in a few rules of our own to speed the game up. When harvesting, ones, twos and sometimes even threes don't count.
Small kid time we had loads of family reunions and they all seemed to be centered around the kids being sent outside to play in the yard (or barn if it was cold) while the adults would sit around the table and play pinochle. Weird card game involving a special set of cards that was mostly face cards. Personally, I think they would have had more fun playing poker with that deck, but they never asked me.
If you're gonna mix things up, take a card game or board game and get an adult or two as well as a couple of the kids and cross generational as well as gender groupings. If you talk about it before with one of your siblings, then when you bring up the idea, they could enthusiastically go along with you and then it wouldn't seem like you're avoiding the sports group.
we had a family fruit that didn't quite mix in with most of the men folk ….
we accepted him....offered him to have a cigar.....some whiskey and shoot a rifle off the deck.... but....he was more at home with the ladies....not
there's anything wrong with that
I married a nurse manager years ago and we went to many partys...dr and nurse partys and many were stuffy..... I just tolerated it....made some small talk ….
wine sipping parties discussing art and politics.... and I couldn't find one fella to talk about hunting ..
yep sometimes you just have to tolerate it......put on a happy face...
chalk it up to that's ... life..
sometimes you get what you give....if you feel like a fish out of water..and look like it....then you aren't very warm inviting or engaging..
OP I'm like you at my in-law's get-togethers.
If you are doing it for your mother then "just do it" and you'll be glad later when she is no longer there with you.
I ask questions, what they've done the last year, vacations, some small shared topic we can discuss (another relative is always a good one). Food is always a good topic, what there is on the table or coming, what their favorite dish is at these gatherings.
We try and take a group photo (spouse got a remote trigger selfie phone stand).
I talked about genealogy a little bit with a relative doing his side, nothing to do with my research but a point of connection.
I am there for my spouse, these are the only relatives he has even though I really only like 2 people in the group, nothing much in common with the others by a looong shot. All I need to do is show up for 4 hours, be pleasant and go home with happy husband. No big deal but I didn't spend $$$ and vacation days traveling.
Why do certain types think all sports fans are one trick ponies?
Because that’s ALL that they discuss when they are together at these functions. It REALLY helps if you have a high tolerance for beer. Even in times when I’ve brought up different topics in the past, it ALWAYS returns to football convo.
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Everyone loves to talk about themselves....
