Conversation: what is a normal level of interest?

[SpiralOut]

I'm back to LS sooner than I expected as I have a dating question.

 

A bit of background info

 

I've usually been shy/bad with making conversation so I'm not always sure of what is "normal" or not. I now feel that I'm a pretty good conversationalist when I put in the effort. Since I usually assume that other people are better at talking than I am (and I now realize this isn't always true!!) I don't always know if someone else has a bad conversation style or not.

 

This is becoming important with dating. I look at my past relationship and something that bothered me a lot about it was my ex's general lack of interest in my interests. And I don't mean stupid things like nail polish - I'm talking about stuff that mattered to me like my writings.

 

Naturally I'm sensitive about this now and am looking to screen out men who don't give a rats ass about stuff that matters to me. But I don't want to be so picky that I come to expect way too much out of someone. I don't want to be needy.

 

My question is: what is a normal level of interest for a man to show a woman (that he's dating) in regards to her interests/hobbies/opinions/goals?

 

I have already chosen to not see someone again because on our only date we had, he asked me practically no questions about me even when I offered bits of information about myself to give him something to work with.

 

I am kind of seeing someone now. I really liked him at first but when I saw him last night he was kind of weird. I felt like all the conversation was about him. I asked him questions, listened to his stories. It's not the most interesting thing in the world to me but it obviously matters a lot to him so I tried to understand it. I feel that an important part of getting to know someone is to understand what they care about. But most of the questions he asked me were yes/no questions (have you ever been here? have you ever heard of that?) that I was left saying "no" or "I don't know" to. It was all stuff related to his hobby/side business, basically. After a while, I began to feel angry and kind of stupid that I was unable to say yes to ANYTHING he asked me.

 

When a long period of time passed where he wasn't asking me anything about me, I would just go ahead and offer my opinion or contribute my own stories. Sometimes I would bring up hobbies of mine to see if he would bite but he just kinda nodded his head and didn't seem to care about knowing more about it. I got the weird sense that he wasn't particularly interested in hearing anything about me. The even weirder part is that we are both getting over a breakup. We discussed what we are looking for and he talked about his previous relationships. But did he ask me anything at all about my past? Nope. Nothing at all. It really disappointed me. But then he told me he wants to be exclusive with me, which confuses me. How could he want to be exculsive with me when he knows so little about me?

 

I should probably mention that this guy has been pursuing me for over a year now, so I'm surprised at the way he's acting.

 

I've known this guy for a long time so I'd rather not just blow him off. He's a good person. I don't know if he was just in a weird mood that day (on our other date he didn't act that way) or if I'm just dealing with someone who's not too interested in getting to know me on a deeper level. He was very sweet in every other way. Am I overreacting? Am I expecting too much?

Edited April 2, 2012 by SpiralOut