I absolutely love questions like this! My wife absolutely hates them. She often gets irritated when people ask questions about what you think.

Like when our therapist asked her "How do you think your actions contribute to your own unhappiness?"

how do people who like small talk plan on being in sustained meaningful relationships what are you gonna do "hi honey nice weather we're having huh?"

my plan is to be too busy kissing my partner at all times to say anything

The real answer is it doesn't matter. I feel like I have free will hence I have free will for all meaningful intents and purposes.

Neither argument can be proven and even if it's an illusion, it's strong enough to make the truth irrelevant.

Silence is bliss while doing your own hobbies together.

I mean You can hate small talk with strangers and co workers but still enjoy small talk with your partner

Being in a relationship means you can come home and totally info-dump unguarded about whatever weird thing you're contemplating and the person opposite you will be happy you're there and delighted that you're happy or sad with you if you're sad. It also means you do this for the other person with genuine interest. I don't call that "small talk".

My partner and I have surprisingly little in common when it comes to interests. I like a lot of nerd stuff: homelab, 3d printing, robotics, brewing, welding, woodworking, sci-fi, etc. They like not nerd stuff: copaganda shows, murder porn (podcasts and documentaries), dog training, cooking, etc. I like metal, they like jangly indie, we both like punk. We both really love cats.

We also both hate small talk, so we only discuss what we find to be pertinent or interesting. Since we have a lot of individual interests, we actually have a lot to talk about. We just had a really great conversation on using Docker or a VM to circumvent some silly online testing issues. Otherwise, it's just comfortable silence. I really love them.

Shit got real in the shit post sub.

Literally yes.

Small talk is the equivalent of dogs sniffing each others ass. The topic isn't really the point, it's just a quick and easy way to gauge another person's mood and attitude towards you. It's a skill worth developing. And I say this as someone with social anxiety.

Meaningful.

The clue is in meaningful.

if you're in a relationship you can just hug instead of small talk

Need for small talk suggests the contents of your thoughts revolves around topics and depth of thought suitable for small talk, I wish you the best in finding someone similar who can appreciate its value to your life. I'll be elsewhere and hope you wish me the same luck. Anything that is meaningfully impactful to my partner however, is never small talk.

But that would be great! Let's start an awesome exploration of a very existential topic. Certainly better and more interesting that talking about shopping.

Id rather discuss that than what someone did last weekend tbh.

My speech is deep. My beard is neck.

Nope. Free will is an illusion that we have because we live in a world that's too complex to predict. We are a product of our circumstance.

My partner and I both understand that free will doesn't exist but it's better for everyone if we pretend it does. And yes, a lot of our conversations are a bit like that.

I love these sorts of conversations.