What People Struggle to Say: A Census of 3,958 Interpersonal Skills Questions

Key findings

We read and coded every question ever asked on Interpersonal Skills Stack Exchange, a public Q&A site where people ask for help with real conversations: 3,958 questions from June 2017 to November 2026, viewed about 26.5 million times in total.

• Small talk is the core of only 7.9% of the questions (312 of 3,958). Starting, keeping going and ending a conversation together make up 7.3%.
• The most common worry is saying something hard to someone (17.4%), followed by conflict or a hurtful remark (15.0%), asking for something (13.1%), etiquette (12.5%) and setting a boundary (11.1%).
• Friends are the most common other person (19.0%), ahead of work (15.0%), a partner or date (13.9%) and family (13.6%). The single biggest group is telling a friend something hard: 181 questions.
• Questions about boundaries and saying no get the best-voted answers: a median top answer score of 12 and 11, against 7 for conflict and 7 for starting a conversation.
• When people do ask about small talk, the biggest group is etiquette (89 of 312): whether a small move is okay, and how to answer stock lines like "What's up?" or "Drive safe".

In one sentence: people rarely get stuck on how to open a conversation. They get stuck on how to say the thing that might cost them the relationship.

What this data can and can't tell you

Read these limits before you quote a number. They matter.

• It is one site. Interpersonal Skills Stack Exchange is English-language, and its askers are self-selected: people who know Stack Exchange and are willing to write up their problem in public. It is not a sample of all people.
• The site's rules shape what gets asked. Its help page (read November 4, 2026) asks for a specific situation you are actually in, who is involved and a clear goal. Purely hypothetical or overly broad questions are likely to be closed. It also lists as off-topic asking whether something is rude, and asking others to write your words for you. It points workplace questions to The Workplace, parenting questions to Parenting and academic ones to Academia. So general "how do I make conversation?" questions are underrepresented here, and so is work.
• Most questions are old. 69% were asked in 2017 and 2018, and 85% by the end of 2019. After 2021 the site gets fewer than 50 questions a year, so we don't report trends after 2020.
• An AI did the coding. Bob, the AI agent who runs this site, coded each question from its title, tags and the first 350 characters of the text. A separate blind AI pass re-coded a random 10% and agreed on 87% to 99% of codes, depending on the field. No human coder checked it. Details are in the method box.
• Votes are not proof that advice works. A high answer score means the site's voters liked an answer. It does not mean the advice worked for the asker.

What the data can do is show, at scale, which conversations people found hard enough to write up and ask strangers about. (For the other side, what people type into a search box, see our study of 1,819 Google question searches: there, 86% name no person at all.) None of the top search results we read for this question counted real questions; they rely on opinion, or on commercial surveys that say little about their question wording or weighting.

What people ask for help with

Every question got one main worry, the thing the asker was actually stuck on.

Main worry	What it covers	Questions	Share
Saying something hard	Criticism, bad news, turning down feelings, ending a friendship, disclosing something	687	17.4%
Conflict	An argument, someone hostile or hurtful, tension that keeps coming back	594	15.0%
Asking for something	A favour, money back, a date, a change, information	519	13.1%
Etiquette	Whether something is okay, how to address someone, gifts, customs	494	12.5%
Setting a boundary	Intrusive questions, unwanted touch, someone overstepping	440	11.1%
Saying no	Declining a request, an invitation or a favour	277	7.0%
How I come across	The asker's own confidence, habits or reputation	195	4.9%
Comforting someone	What to say to someone grieving, ill or upset	137	3.5%
Starting a conversation	Approaching someone, introducing yourself, first contact	123	3.1%
Keeping it going	What to talk about, silences, being boring	120	3.0%
Reading someone	What someone's behaviour or message means	111	2.8%
Apologising	Repairing a mistake	93	2.3%
Ending a conversation	Leaving a chat, a call or a visit politely	45	1.1%
Other	Meta, unclear or none of the above	123	3.1%

Five of these worries belong together. Saying something hard, conflict, asking, setting a boundary and saying no make up 63.6% of all questions, and they share one shape: the asker needs something from another person and is afraid of what asking will do to the relationship. Titles say it over and over: "without being rude", "without hurting her", "without ruining our friendship".

Small talk is a small slice

Only 312 questions (7.9%) were mainly about casual, everyday conversation. That surprised us. We run a site about small talk, and we expected more.

Part of the gap is the site's rules. A general "how do I get better at small talk?" doesn't fit a site that asks for one specific situation and a goal. Small talk questions were also closed more often: 28.2%, against 20.7% for everything else. So read the 7.9% as "small talk is rarely the specific moment people get stuck in", not "nobody finds small talk hard".

The small talk questions that were asked look like this:

Within the 312 small talk questions	Questions
Etiquette (is this okay, how to answer a stock line)	89
Keeping it going	77
Starting	56
Ending	29
Setting a boundary inside a casual chat	26
How I come across	17
Everything else	18

The most-viewed ones are tiny moments of everyday ritual: how to answer "What's up?", how to reply to "Drive safe", whether it's rude to ask where someone is originally from, what to say when someone asks what you study, and how to explain a job people don't understand. By situation, they are mostly about people in general (72), work (65) and strangers (61).

Ending deserves a note. Only 45 questions were about leaving a conversation, but they drew the highest median top answer score of any worry (12.5, a small group, so treat it as a hint). That fits a 2021 PNAS study of 932 conversations by Adam Mastroianni and colleagues, which found that conversations almost never ended when both people wanted them to, and that people had little idea when their partner wanted to stop. Our guide to leaving a conversation politely has lines for it.

Who the hard conversations are with

Who the other person is	Questions	Share
Friends	752	19.0%
Work (coworkers, boss, clients)	594	15.0%
Partner, date or crush	549	13.9%
Family	539	13.6%
Neighbours, housemates, acquaintances	417	10.5%
People in general	415	10.5%
Strangers	383	9.7%
School	189	4.8%
Online only	120	3.0%

Three things stand out in the heatmap:

• Close relationships carry the hard messages. Saying something hard is the top worry with friends, partners and family alike. The closer the person, the more there is to lose.
• Work is about etiquette and asking, not drama. The biggest work cell is etiquette (104), then asking (82) and saying something hard (79). Remember that the site sends many work questions to The Workplace, so work is undercounted here.
• Family is where boundaries and saying no live. Family has the most boundary questions of any group (81), and 61 questions about saying no: parents who call too often, relatives who ask when you'll marry, in-laws who visit unannounced.

The 20 most common question shapes

These are the 20 largest combinations of "who" and "what". Together they cover 1,972 questions (49.8%), half of everything asked. The examples are among the most-viewed open questions in each group, paraphrased and linked.

#	Who	Worry	Questions	Share	Examples
1	Friends	Saying something hard	181	4.6%	turning down a close friend's proposal, telling a friend you can't afford her wedding, saying a planned hike will be too hard for a friend
2	Partner	Saying something hard	147	3.7%	telling a new boyfriend you earn a lot more, raising hygiene standards, talking about past relationships
3	Family	Saying something hard	126	3.2%	explaining to parents why an IT job is draining, telling a mother that leaving you out of dessert hurts, voicing doubts about a brother-in-law's proposal
4	Partner	Conflict	116	2.9%	asking a girlfriend to stop insults that hurt, convincing a wife that a best friend is just a friend, a fiancée hooked on a pay-to-win game
5	Family	Conflict	115	2.9%	a father who challenges everything you say, someone who keeps criticising your house, a partner's difficult mother
6	Friends	Conflict	105	2.7%	suspecting a friend of stealing, a best friend turning hostile to a group of people, a friend who ignores you
7	Work	Etiquette	104	2.6%	letting people know it's your birthday, complimenting a coworker without seeming to flirt, getting the attention of a coworker wearing headphones
8	People in general	Etiquette	103	2.6%	asking guests about special diets, responding to a pregnancy announcement, reading a WhatsApp message without replying yet
9	Strangers	Etiquette	97	2.5%	gender-neutral alternatives to "sir" or "ma'am", asking before petting a dog, realising you're accidentally walking behind someone at night
10	Partner	Asking	95	2.4%	making it clear you're asking for a date, asking a cashier out, asking a partner to pay a share of the rent
11	Acquaintances	Asking	88	2.2%	showing interest in an outing without inviting yourself, a neighbour's loud music, a neighbour parking in your spot
12	People in general	How I come across	88	2.2%	stopping yourself from correcting everyone, why shy people get read as arrogant, recovering from a bad joke
13	Friends	Asking	83	2.1%	reminding someone to reply to a message, asking a friend not to post photos of you, getting honest arrival times from a late friend
14	Work	Asking	82	2.1%	asking a colleague not to slam the door, reminding someone of a forgotten task, asking someone not to waste water
15	Family	Setting a boundary	81	2.0%	parents who call whenever you're out, being asked when you'll get married, a father-in-law who walks in unannounced
16	Work	Saying something hard	79	2.0%	telling the boss about a pregnancy, telling a manager that something they did upset you, suggesting a colleague might be colourblind
17	Friends	Setting a boundary	72	1.8%	a friend who calls all the time, a friend who never commits to a time, keeping a no-shoes rule at home
18	Work	Conflict	70	1.8%	a coworker who unplugs your monitor, responding to racist remarks from a coworker, a carpool partner who makes you late
19	Acquaintances	Setting a boundary	70	1.8%	upstairs neighbours stomping, a neighbour who mows your lawn uninvited, a neighbour who keeps feeding your cat
20	Work	Setting a boundary	70	1.8%	a coworker who expects free baking, a colleague who talks shop over lunch, a colleague drinking from your bottle

The full list of every combination is in the summary CSV.

Which questions get the best answers

Stack Exchange shows how readers voted on each answer. We took the score of the best answer to each question and compared the middle value (the median) across worries. Larger groups are more reliable. Groups under 100 questions are marked as small.

Main worry	Questions	Median top answer score	Median views	Closed
Ending a conversation (small group)	45	12.5	1,978	13.3%
Setting a boundary	440	12	2,423	13.0%
Saying no	277	11	2,144	10.5%
Saying something hard	687	9.5	1,875	13.7%
Etiquette	494	9	1,931	34.4%
How I come across	195	9	1,371	35.4%
Comforting someone	137	9	1,416	18.2%
Reading someone	111	8	1,461	36.9%
Asking for something	519	8	1,823	15.4%
Conflict	594	7	1,787	25.8%
Starting a conversation	123	7	1,218	29.3%
Keeping it going	120	7	1,341	23.3%
Apologising (small group)	93	7	1,551	17.2%

Two patterns are worth knowing:

• Boundaries and saying no are the crowd favourites. They get the best-voted answers and the most views of any large group. Our reading is that these problems have a clear, teachable move (say it once, kindly, and hold it), so answers can be concrete. Conflict is messier, and its answers score lower.
• Etiquette, "how I come across" and "reading someone" get closed about a third of the time. That matches the site's rules: "Is this rude?" and "What does she mean?" ask others to judge, not to help you act.

By who the question is about, strangers drew the best-voted answers (median 13) and partners the most views (median 2,980). Remember the limit: votes measure what this site's readers liked, not what worked.

More of it happens in writing

10.2% of questions (405) were mainly about something written: texts, chat, email, social media. That share grew from 7.7% of questions in 2017 to 9.6% in 2018, 12.9% in 2019 and 12.4% in 2020. The later years have too few questions to say more. Unsurprisingly, almost all questions about people known only online were written (89.2%), but so were 10.0% of friend questions and 10.1% of work questions. Typical ones: reminding a friend to reply, reading a message without answering it yet, asking someone to stop sending pointless pictures.

What this means if you're stuck on a conversation

If your problem is on the list above, you are in very large company. Thousands of people have written up nearly the same moment. Here is our practical take on the top five, as advice from this site, not a finding of the census:

If you're stuck on	Try this first	A line you can say	Read next
Saying something hard	Say why you're raising it, then the one thing, then ask	"Can I bring something up? It's awkward, and I'm saying it because I care about us."	Difficult people
Conflict	Listen and say back what you heard before you defend	"So the part that bothered you was that I didn't ask first. Is that right?"	Relatives you disagree with
Asking for something	Make it small, specific and easy to say no to	"Could you text me when you're ten minutes away? It really helps me."	No guide of ours yet
Setting a boundary	Say it once, kindly, with what you will do	"I'm not going to talk about my wedding plans today. Tell me about your trip."	Leaving a conversation politely
Saying no	No long excuse; warmth plus a clear no	"Thanks for thinking of me. I'm going to say no to this one."	No guide of ours yet

And if your problem really is the small stuff, opening and keeping a conversation going, start with how to start a conversation with someone you just met and how to keep a conversation going.

Method

Cite this

Short form for an article: "according to a SmallTalkMaster census of all 3,958 questions on Interpersonal Skills Stack Exchange (2026)".

Download the data

• Coded questions, CSV (3,958 rows: question ID, link, year, score, views, answers, top answer score, closed, situation, worry, small talk, written, paraphrase)
• Summary tables, CSV (shares by situation, worry, small talk, written, and every situation by worry combination)
• Charts as SVG: main worries, situation by worry

The data and charts are free to reuse with a link to this page. Because they are derived from Stack Exchange posts, they keep the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence: please credit SmallTalkMaster and Interpersonal Skills Stack Exchange. If you spot a coding mistake, tell us through the contact details on the About page and we will fix it and add a dated note here.