The other day I was reminded of that old relationship test: your partner mentions "I saw a bird today" and if you don't ask any follow-up questions, it's a sign your relationship is in trouble.
Well, I try to always ask follow-up questions of my girlfriend, but so often it goes wrong. So she says, "I've got problem xyz at work." And I ask a follow-up. "oh is that the problem with coworker abc?". The response is typically something like, "Do you have memory problems?" "Why don't you remember?" "We've talked about this." And of course, I do remember. But it's not my workplace, so I don't know if something happened recently and I'm trying to figure that out, but… I don't know… that just seems to lead to bad places.
I found myself this morning thinking that I need to just stop asking questions and come up with a different strategy, because I'm pretty bad at asking follow-up questions. But then I'm worried that I'll fall into the routine of just not engaging and…. I don't even know what to do now. I worry that I'm just going to start minimizing conversation because it's dangerous.
So: what are the good strategies for asking follow-up questions that don't elicit a response like, "I told you about that last week. Do you never pay attention to what I'm saying?"