Recently, I've had a conversation with a long-time friend of mine -- whom I will call Y -- that I hadn't spoken to in a while and found myself disengaging with the conversation after 10-15 minutes.
We have pretty contrasting personalities and communication styles, and we've been friends since elementary school. Y is a very open, extremely empathetic, and honest person with so much baggage to shoulder that I'm amazed at their resilience. I, on the other hand, am much more private, quiet, and don't feel strong emotions very often. Y has a tendency to ramble and repeat points over and over, whereas I try to be as concise as possible.
This has been an issue for me whenever I have conversations with them; when Y speaks about their life or interests, I feel like I'm pretending to be interested in what they have to say and just nod along. At times I even catch myself thinking "how long will this go on for" as Y talks about a specific experience that they've had. Even though in my head I want to care, it's like my feelings are saying the complete opposite. The worst part about it is that for some reason I don't feel "bad" or guilty about any of this. Like -- cognitively -- I'm aware that this is an extremely terrible way to think about a close friend, but for some reason I can't will my emotions into caring more. It's so bad that sometimes I wonder if I even care about this friendship!
I don't have this issue when I talk with people from my school -- we attend different schools now since I moved cities -- and I find talking with my peers to be much more -- I know how sounds pretentious this sounds -- "intellectually stimulating." Whenever there's a super in-depth class discussion going on or when I have a interesting debate with my acquaintances, my hamster wheel brain is running a million miles an hour and feel this excitement that makes me want to pace all around the room. Talking with Y is like that same hamster getting stuck in a glue trap. The pace of the conversation slows down so much, and it's sometimes frustrating listening to Y reiterate their point over and over when I've already figured out what they're trying to say from the first sentence.
I'm very hesitant to tell Y about this, especially because they've told me that they've been constantly made fun of for being obnoxious and weird. They've even lost friends over it, and I feel that if I tell them, I'll be just like those crummy friends. I don't want it to come off as some sort of betrayal to them. Even if I do bring it up, I feel like it's not something that can or should be changed, given how ingrained Y's speech is in their personality. I also recognize that this isn't sustainable if I want to maintain this friendship.
What should I do? Does anyone else have a similar experience?