How’s Andrea?” I ask, as we sit down to dinner.“I don’t know,” my friend replies.

“Didn’t you see her last night?” I continue.

“Well, yes,” she says. “But at some point, I stopped listening.”

My friend is neither callous nor mean-spirited; just bored with the one-way street she’s describing. Andrea talks, my friend listens ”“ the pattern is fixed and unchanging. What’s worse, Andrea talks almost exclusively about herself. No subject so fully captures her attention as her own navel-gazing.

“So enough about me,” the saying goes. “What do you think about me?”

Though we tend to associate this kind of self-absorption with teenagers, they are hardly the only culprits. Truth is, the Andreas of the world come in all ages and both genders.

A friend in her 40s has been debating a second marriage for what seems like an eternity. In fact, the talk of marriage started only a year ago ”“ it just never stops. Whenever we venture onto another subject ”“ any subject ”“ she’ll reel us back to the point: “So you really think this would be best for my kids?” she’ll ask.

She gives the appearance of caring about people’s opinions, even soliciting them. It’s as if her decision to remarry might be a collaborative one ”“ a stew of opinions that will fortify her ultimate choice. This is, of course, misleading. She will hear herself in others and turn a deaf ear to everything else.

There are endless variations on this theme, many for good reasons. People go through divorces, job crises, an illness in the family ”“ miseries that, for a certain period, take over their lives. At the time, the circumstance may be unavoidable. What’s more avoidable, though, is the indulgence that sometimes accompanies it.

A colleague recently issued a blanket disclaimer to those near and dear: “Watch out,” she warned, only half kidding. The disclaimer was useful and disarming. Her current crisis didn’t surface directly in conversation; instead she snarled when least expected. Her warning was good-humored and sociable; at least she acknowledged the presence of others and the limitations of her own mood.

Unfortunately, circumstances account for only some of the self-absorption that abounds these days. We all know people who talk incessantly about their every thought and feeling ”“ think Facebook and Twitter ”“ as if we should share their self-enchantment. Usually we don’t. When it happens occasionally, we accept it and move on. But when it becomes the norm, we lose interest in the conversation. As my friend did with Andrea, we stop listening.

And it raises a simple mathematical question: How many people does it take to conduct a conversation? By most standards, the minimum is two.

— Joan Silverman is a writer in Kennebunk. This article originally appeared in The American Reporter.