Selfish Allergy

I have a friend I see about once a week, and all she ever does is vent about her various dating problems. The 10 percent of the time we actually discuss my life or anything else, she seems bored. I want to tell her I feel like she's monopolizing our friendship with her love life, but I'm not sure how.

--Ignored

You couldn't be a better friend to her, unless, of course, you could have yourself reincarnated as a giant ear. This isn't friendship; it's therapy without the copay. The question is, has she always been this way? Even a true friend can go through periods of being needy, moody, selfish or otherwise hard to be around. That friend probably just needs a heads-up, like, "I know you've been on edge about your whole dating situation, but I've been feeling kind of bad that you never seem interested in what's going on with me." "I'm feeling bad" appeals to their sympathy, which, economist Adam Smith noted, motivates us to try to ease others' discomfort or suffering. Tagging the problem to the "dating situation" suggests that they're a little wrapped up in their problem rather than that they, personally, are the problem. If, however, a person is narcissistic -- truly self-absorbed -- and if that's always been their orientation, there's probably no transforming them from a talker into a listener (not without duct-taping them to a chair and gagging them with a pair of old tube socks).