This forum has proven to be the best place I have ever been online for advice, both chicken and non-chicken related! So I thought I'd bring up tonight's frustration just to see if someone has some bit of wisdom to impart to me, especially men or people who have been married for longer than I have (almost 8 years, yay!)
As the title might suggest, my problem is my husband's selective hearing. I know lots of women face this, and men do too. I don't want to start a big post devoted to talking about how "inferior" men are, because I don't think that's it, and I want honest, well-formulated responses.
I looked this up on Google just to see if I would hit on some other discussion that covered it, but I found a lot of stories that were much worse than mine, and advice for problems that are much different. It's not that my husband is mean, or uncaring, or any of the other horrible things some women report. Sure, he can be uncouth at times, but for the most part, he listens and remembers more things than I give him credit for. The problem lies in his complete inability to hear my attempts at starting a conversation, or the simple questions I ask that need a two second response. Like tonight, he was on the computer and I was watching TV in the same room. I asked him about three questions and patiently waited for answers that never came. And they weren't questions that would be boring to him (at least, not all of them). One of them was, "Hey, honey, when's the Super Bowl?" I mean, talk about his dream...he's been waiting for me to show an interest in football for ten years. I asked twice, spaced about a minute apart, and he never even heard me.
A related problem is that his response time is super slow...excruciatingly slow. It's not just him; his whole family is made of slow-moving, slow acting individuals. They're not dumb by any means, but if you're burning dinner and you ask for a pot holder to save the day, consider the dinner lost to the flames. The help will get there about five minutes too slow, if it ever gets there at all. He just can't jump to a task, no matter how urgent. This goes for answering any question. I never thought I came from a particularly fast family, but compared to his, we all look like a bunch of quick-witted jackrabbits. I have trained myself to not keep prompting him rudely ("huh? well? what do you say? did you even hear me?"), so I know that his answer, if I ever get one, will be at least 10 seconds down the road. I just can't train myself to remember that before asking him some small question or making a trivial statement. It's such a conversation-killer! And super frustrating. Sometimes I even wonder if he has some kind of brain damage because he just trails off in the middle of sentences and thoughts, and forgets that he was even talking. And it's not senility, he's only 29 years old! If he weren't basically a genius, I would be forced to conclude that he is mentally challenged. I think he may just have too much going on in his head, because he does the classic smart kid things: bad handwriting, stuttering because he has too many thoughts, etc.
He says that it's because I talk to him when he's doing things, but he is ALWAYS doing something. I don't know anyone who sits around doing nothing, waiting for a conversation to be started, especially him. He's such an active guy, always reading something or building something, or dreaming up some great new project.
This has caused serious fights in our history together, and I'm really not interested in continuing that pattern. I'm more than willing to accept blame for my attitude and the ways I've tried to remedy the situation, but I just want to put all that behind me and learn how to get him to converse with me easily. It seems like the only time he can do that is Saturday mornings and he gets so feisty and alive then that he's just as likely to pick a fight with me as he is to have a fun conversation. A big part of me gets really hurt (just like a woman!) when he can't hear me. I feel like it's the ultimate insult, to talk and not be given the time of day. But I know he doesn't mean it that way, so to avoid fights I've almost ceased to bring my hurt feelings on the matter to his attention, even though sometimes it's so frustrating that I can't help it.
So what am I doing wrong? Is it unreasonable to expect that I can ask a question and get an answer within 2 seconds 90% of the time? Should I talk less? I know I probably talk too much, as the length of this post proves, and I do make strong efforts to not flood him with all the data in my head like I do on forums
. Should I just give up the ghost and forget about being able to get responses from him? Or is there some wifely secret that you ladies who have been married longer than I have know? Husbands? Got any tips? Because everything I've tried, from nicely trying to explain how it makes me feel to sarcastically giving him a taste of his own medicine has failed and made him angry and defensive. He suggests - somewhat jokingly - that I should just never try to talk to him because it's pointless...he will never hear me. My mother-in-law says not to worry, that by the time we're 50 I will hate him and not ever want to talk to him or care what he does. And I hope to God that I can avoid that, because he's my best friend and I want our relationship to continue to get better with time, not worse.
As the title might suggest, my problem is my husband's selective hearing. I know lots of women face this, and men do too. I don't want to start a big post devoted to talking about how "inferior" men are, because I don't think that's it, and I want honest, well-formulated responses.
I looked this up on Google just to see if I would hit on some other discussion that covered it, but I found a lot of stories that were much worse than mine, and advice for problems that are much different. It's not that my husband is mean, or uncaring, or any of the other horrible things some women report. Sure, he can be uncouth at times, but for the most part, he listens and remembers more things than I give him credit for. The problem lies in his complete inability to hear my attempts at starting a conversation, or the simple questions I ask that need a two second response. Like tonight, he was on the computer and I was watching TV in the same room. I asked him about three questions and patiently waited for answers that never came. And they weren't questions that would be boring to him (at least, not all of them). One of them was, "Hey, honey, when's the Super Bowl?" I mean, talk about his dream...he's been waiting for me to show an interest in football for ten years. I asked twice, spaced about a minute apart, and he never even heard me.
A related problem is that his response time is super slow...excruciatingly slow. It's not just him; his whole family is made of slow-moving, slow acting individuals. They're not dumb by any means, but if you're burning dinner and you ask for a pot holder to save the day, consider the dinner lost to the flames. The help will get there about five minutes too slow, if it ever gets there at all. He just can't jump to a task, no matter how urgent. This goes for answering any question. I never thought I came from a particularly fast family, but compared to his, we all look like a bunch of quick-witted jackrabbits. I have trained myself to not keep prompting him rudely ("huh? well? what do you say? did you even hear me?"), so I know that his answer, if I ever get one, will be at least 10 seconds down the road. I just can't train myself to remember that before asking him some small question or making a trivial statement. It's such a conversation-killer! And super frustrating. Sometimes I even wonder if he has some kind of brain damage because he just trails off in the middle of sentences and thoughts, and forgets that he was even talking. And it's not senility, he's only 29 years old! If he weren't basically a genius, I would be forced to conclude that he is mentally challenged. I think he may just have too much going on in his head, because he does the classic smart kid things: bad handwriting, stuttering because he has too many thoughts, etc.
He says that it's because I talk to him when he's doing things, but he is ALWAYS doing something. I don't know anyone who sits around doing nothing, waiting for a conversation to be started, especially him. He's such an active guy, always reading something or building something, or dreaming up some great new project.
This has caused serious fights in our history together, and I'm really not interested in continuing that pattern. I'm more than willing to accept blame for my attitude and the ways I've tried to remedy the situation, but I just want to put all that behind me and learn how to get him to converse with me easily. It seems like the only time he can do that is Saturday mornings and he gets so feisty and alive then that he's just as likely to pick a fight with me as he is to have a fun conversation. A big part of me gets really hurt (just like a woman!) when he can't hear me. I feel like it's the ultimate insult, to talk and not be given the time of day. But I know he doesn't mean it that way, so to avoid fights I've almost ceased to bring my hurt feelings on the matter to his attention, even though sometimes it's so frustrating that I can't help it.
So what am I doing wrong? Is it unreasonable to expect that I can ask a question and get an answer within 2 seconds 90% of the time? Should I talk less? I know I probably talk too much, as the length of this post proves, and I do make strong efforts to not flood him with all the data in my head like I do on forums
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