If someone does these 8 subtle things when you're talking, they're not really listening—they're just waiting for you to shut up

I realized my friend wasn't actually listening when I noticed her eyes doing this slight glaze-over thing whenever I got past the first sentence. Not in an obvious "I'm bored" way—more like an "I'm already rehearsing my response" way.

It hit me: she wasn't experiencing the conversation. She was enduring her turn to be quiet.

Real listening has become surprisingly rare. We've convinced ourselves that waiting for someone to finish talking counts as engagement. But there's a difference between hearing words and actually absorbing what someone's trying to communicate.

These subtle behaviors give away when someone's just counting seconds until they can speak again.

1. Their body angles away from you mid-conversation

Watch where someone's torso points when you're talking.

Genuinely engaged people face you—chest, shoulders, the whole upper body commits to the conversation. But when someone's mentally checked out, their body starts rotating toward an exit, another person, anywhere else.

The physical act of turning away isn't just rudeness—it's the nervous system preparing to disengage. Their feet point toward the door while their face maintains polite eye contact. Everyone can feel it, even if they can't articulate why the conversation suddenly feels off.

2. They interrupt to agree enthusiastically

This one's tricky because it masquerades as support.

Someone cuts you off mid-story to say "Oh my god, YES!" or "Exactly!" It feels validating for half a second, until you realize they've redirected the conversation to their own experience. They weren't listening to understand your point—they were scanning for entry points.

Every story becomes a launching pad for their own anecdote. The conversation turns into hot potato, where neither person actually finishes a thought.

This interruption pattern often stems from anxiety about silence. People feel compelled to fill every gap, missing that silence is where understanding happens.

3. Their "uh-huhs" come at weird intervals

Genuine listening responses have rhythm. Natural "mm-hmms" and "yeah" moments land at actual pause points in what you're saying.

But fake attention reveals itself through mistimed verbal nods. They come too early, overlapping with important words. Or they arrive in clusters—three quick "uh-huhs" in a row—like someone mashing a button to skip dialogue.

These automatic responses are autopilot mode. The body goes through listening motions while the mind's already three thoughts ahead, planning what to say next.

4. They respond to what they expected you to say, not what you actually said

Their reply doesn't quite fit what you just said.

They've been composing their response based on assumptions about where your story was heading. When you take an unexpected turn, their pre-loaded answer hangs awkwardly in the air, addressing points you never made.

It's like watching someone miss a catch because they started their victory celebration before the ball arrived. They were so focused on their brilliant response that they forgot to actually receive the information.

5. Their eyes track movement behind you

Their gaze keeps sliding past your shoulder to monitor their surroundings.

You're mid-sentence and their eyes flick to someone walking by, to a phone notification, to anything that moves. It's brief—maybe half a second—but it reveals where their attention actually lives.

Research on attention shows we can't actually multitask our awareness—we can only switch rapidly between focuses. Every time those eyes drift, the listener has to rebuild context when they come back. Except they usually don't bother. They just pretend they never left.

6. They one-up your story immediately

You finish sharing something, and before the last word settles, they launch into their version—except bigger, more dramatic, more relevant.

"You think that's bad? One time I..."

It's not conversation. It's competitive storytelling. And it reveals they spent your entire speaking turn thinking about their superior anecdote instead of absorbing what you were communicating.

My college roommate perfected this technique. Every story I told triggered his memory of a more extreme version. I eventually stopped sharing things because I knew they'd just become launching pads for his highlight reel.

The impulse to one-up comes from insecurity, but it functions as conversational theft. You're taking someone's moment of vulnerability or excitement and converting it into fuel for your own performance.

7. They ask questions that already got answered

Three minutes after you explained something clearly, they ask you about it.

Not because they want deeper understanding—because they weren't listening when you covered it the first time. They were nodding and making eye contact and doing everything that looks like listening, but the information never landed.

This costs both people. The speaker has to repeat themselves, feeling unheard. The listener misses information they might have actually found interesting if they'd been present for it.

8. Their face doesn't match their words

Someone says "wow, that's intense" with zero change in expression. Or they laugh at your story but their eyes stay flat, disconnected from the sound coming out of their mouth.

The emotional reaction is performed, not felt, because they didn't absorb the content enough to have a genuine response. They're giving you what they think a listening person should provide—sympathetic noises, reactive expressions—but none of it's connected to real engagement.

I caught myself doing this on a video call last week. Someone was telling me something clearly important to them, and I watched my own face in the self-view window. I was nodding with my "concerned listening face" while my mind was elsewhere. My expression was a mask I'd learned to wear, fooling neither of us.

The body never lies as skillfully as the mouth does. When someone's truly engaged, their micro-expressions sync with the emotional content of what you're saying. When they're just waiting for their turn, even their best performance has a slight delay, a subtle disconnect.

Final thoughts

The thing that bothers me most about these behaviors isn't that they're rude—it's that they're contagious.

When someone does the "just waiting to talk" routine with me, I find myself doing it right back. The conversation devolves into parallel monologues, both of us lobbing statements into the void and pretending connection is happening.

Real listening is genuinely difficult. It requires putting your own thoughts on pause, tolerating the discomfort of not knowing what you'll say next, and trusting that something worth saying will emerge from actually absorbing what the other person's communicating.

But once you start noticing these subtle disconnection signals, you can't unsee them. And maybe that's useful. Maybe awareness is the first step toward having conversations that actually connect rather than just killing time until both parties can return to their own heads.