Have you ever had the experience where simply communicating with someone is so much work that you end up not speaking much of the time just because you don’t want to deal with the effort of it? You find yourself silent a lot of the time or only speaking about nonsense that means not much in the scheme of things. Then when you spend time with another person who isn’t so difficult to communicate with, it takes time to remember what it was like to have a conversation of any consequence, so you’re silent for a while. But then once you get started you talk and talk and talk, as if you opened a dam letting the water move into the empty basin below. Weird, these conversations that are too much effort.
Random Thoughts on Everything and Nothing 
This is a beautiful description. It perfectly captures the experience of talking “with” my mother.
I don’t mind being stretched by people with vast intellects, but I HATE having to dumb down – listening to half-arsed, ill thought out, opinions and monosyllabic grunts, where I have no choice but to just agree with everything they say. I get a lot more of the later, and very little of the former. My fault: I asked for this job.