[Aachen]

The first line was also my thought when seeing this question. Sounds like aiming to be manipulative?

But then I guess the post's contents are rather asking how to have an actual conversation with anyone, including your life partner! Which seems so weird that I doubt we can play therapist over the internet to a useful enough degree and the better solution is to ask $wife (and the friends OP is talking about in 1:1 private conversation) what the thing is OP does that makes them uninterested

I know someone who has trouble with this as well (saying things that seem irrelevant to the conversation, but if you wait and let them speak, it'll become clear... but people don't), but the question they ask is not how to command people but how find people that fit you and/or how to fit in with other people, which very much depends on the individual situation and takes lots of conversation to untangle

[brudgers]

The language of the OP suggests how they think about conversational mechanisms and their understanding of other people in the context of casual conversation.