Ah. Now I understand.

LovebirdsFlying said:

Many of you have noted that many of my threads about my husband have a similar theme. Communication issues.

Well, we just spent a week with his mother. I'd met her before, but she lives two states away. The first time I met her was at our wedding, and I'd never spent longer than a day or two with her. That's only once every couple of years. So I really didn't know her all that well. After spending a week with her, I've noticed so many of the same communication hiccups.

• You say XYZ, and she'll respond as if you said YZX. Almost, but not *quite* the same thing. And there is no way you're ever going to get XYZ communicated. As far as she's concerned, you said YZX, and we've already covered that ground.
• You can say something, and she'll acknowledge it. Then five or ten minutes later she'll say the same thing as if it's her own discovery, and you didn't say a word before.
• The conversation can be on a different topic now, and she'll try to connect it with an earlier topic, wondering what one has to do with the other. It doesn't.
• She'll sometimes cut into the middle of your sentence to answer what she thinks you're about to say, when you were actually going to say something else.

Yes, she's kinda sorta older, but she's not that old, and she's still got her mind. She's newly in remission from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which may or may not have affected anything.

No, I never said a word of criticism, either to her or to my husband.

But wow, now I get it. Apparently it's just a family quirk. And it's not even a Mars/Venus thing, because this is his mother. They both have the same way of processing words and ideas. I just have to learn to work around it.

OK.

Click to expand...

LovebirdsFlying said:

• You say XYZ, and she'll respond as if you said YZX. Almost, but not *quite* the same thing. And there is no way you're ever going to get XYZ communicated. As far as she's concerned, you said YZX, and we've already covered that ground.

• You can say something, and she'll acknowledge it. Then five or ten minutes later she'll say the same thing as if it's her own discovery, and you didn't say a word before.

• The conversation can be on a different topic now, and she'll try to connect it with an earlier topic, wondering what one has to do with the other. It doesn't.

• She'll sometimes cut into the middle of your sentence to answer what she thinks you're about to say, when you were actually going to say something else.

Click to expand...

LovebirdsFlying said:

I have wondered about that possibility. Hubby drives for a living, so his hearing is given a rudimentary testing periodically. He thinks because he always passes that there is nothing wrong with his hearing. It's not an in-depth test. Just a very basic one. But try telling him that.

Click to expand...

LovebirdsFlying said:

No. I think a lot of silliness goes on that he's learned to tune out so he can concentrate on driving. So he got used to tuning things out, and he forgets to turn his listening ears back on when he gets home.

Click to expand...