Almost no conversation ends when both people want it to

Do conversations end when people want them to?

The tiring part of an event often isn't starting a conversation. It's being halfway through one, wanting to leave, waiting for a good moment and watching the other person seem perfectly happy. So you keep going, until both of you are looking at the room.

In 2021, Adam Mastroianni, Daniel Gilbert, Gus Cooney and Timothy Wilson published a paper in PNAS with that exact question as its title. They ran two studies covering 932 conversations in total.

In the first, 806 people recalled their most recent conversation, usually with someone close, and reported whether there was a point when they'd felt ready to stop. The second is nearer to what we care about here. 252 people were paired with a stranger in a lab and told they could talk for "as little time or as much time as you like." Conversations ran from 1 to 45 minutes, and the average participant was 23.10 years old.

The number for strangers: 1.59%

Here's the second study, the one with strangers.

Row three is the one that got me. In nearly half of these conversations, both people wanted out sooner, neither said so, and the chat carried on.

68.65% of participants felt ready to stop at some point. On average, the actual end missed what they wanted by 7.45 minutes, or 46.03% of the conversation's length.

Being close didn't fix it. In the first study, the average miss was 6.60 minutes, or 56.01%.

We're bad at guessing when the other person wants to stop

Participants also guessed when their partner wanted to end. In the second study, they were off by 9.38 minutes on average, or 63.84% of the conversation's length (the median was 29.41%). They believed the two of them differed by 4.85 minutes. The real figure was 10.27, more than twice that.

Ending conversations is a classic 'coordination problem' that humans are unable to solve because doing so requires information that they normally keep from each other.

The authors' explanation is a good one, but it's an explanation. The studies measured the mismatch, and they didn't directly test the mechanism, so we're treating coordination failure as a hypothesis.

Why not just ask if they want to keep talking?

It's a fair question, and someone tested it. In August 2025, Koskinen published a small study in Symbolic Interaction. It looks at 19 conversations where a researcher directly asked the two participants whether they wanted to continue.

The question itself caused some interactional trouble. People's answers were tied up with what was happening at that moment, and they kept following face-saving norms. As the abstract puts it, the "micro-level interaction order can outweigh individual preferences in ending conversations."

That's small and qualitative, so you can't get a rate from it. It does suggest that asking won't always get you the truth.

What these studies can't tell us

• None of it was measured at an event or a bar. Music, waiting friends and the option of another drink could make leaving easier or harder.
• The main numbers are from 2021, and they don't cover every culture or age group.
• When people wanted to stop was self-reported afterward, and memory isn't perfect.
• Wanting to stop earlier doesn't mean the conversation was bad. The study doesn't claim that.

How to end a conversation at an event, politely

If nobody can guess, stop searching their face for clues. Saying the thing out loud is easier and kinder.

• Name your next step: "I'm going to grab a drink" or "I should go find my friends." It gives them something easy to respond to.
• Thank them, then go: "It was great meeting you, I'm going to look around." You don't need a perfect pause.
• If you'd like to stay in touch, this is the moment to ask once. If they don't pick it up, leave it there.
• If you feel stuck, go first. They may well be waiting for you to.

None of this means long conversations are bad. It means you don't have to guess for them, and if they leave first, you don't have to read it as rejection. In 46.83% of these conversations, both people wanted to go sooner.

If you get home and start auditing what you said, read this. If starting is the harder part, how to start a conversation at a bar or event has the practical version.

Knowing you can leave makes it much easier to begin. Next time you'd like to meet people at the same bar or event, you can try Limere. A few good lines is plenty, and you don't have to say everything in one go.