LovebirdsFlying
My husband drew this cartoon of me.
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It just happened again with my husband. And I'm not posting this in the marriage forum because it is advice I'm asking for.
We've been married 16 years and he's a wonderful man, but this is a persistent problem. I know I'm not in any form or fashion going to get him to change his behavior. He's set in his ways, for one thing, and he doesn't think he's doing anything wrong. So what can *I* do? What can *I* change?
He constantly interrupts me, is the issue. When I point out that he has interrupted me again, his usual excuse is, "Well, I thought you were finished." Half the time I was at a comma rather than a period, and sometimes I'm still in the middle of a syllable, but he will insist that he thought I was finished. (Even if I was at a period and had completed a sentence, maybe I had another sentence or two I was going to say. I hadn't yet given him all of the information I was going to give him.)
When he is the one speaking, I will throw in occasional comments about what he is saying. "Wow." "How could he have thought that?" "I bet that was frustrating." "What a nut." "That's ridiculous." It's called active listening. He then looks irritated at me and says, "I wasn't finished." He especially makes a point of saying this if, just a few minutes earlier when I was speaking, I yet again had to tell him I wasn't finished.
The way he sees it, I interrupt him just as much as he interrupts me, and he's like, "See? You do it too."
The difference between us--and this is the part he REFUSES to look at--is that HE interrupts; I interject. I am commenting something directly related to what he just said, and I am expecting him to continue. Whereas when he interrupts me, it's to take the conversation off in a whole different direction on a whole different subject. "OK, we're done with what you were talking about, and now it's my turn to speak, and here's the entirely unrelated thing I want to talk about." If I do get to the end of a sentence, he'll jump in real fast before I can say another word, rather than waiting to see if there is anything else I wanted to say. He'll deny doing this. He'll INSIST that he thought I was finished, and that I had nothing more I wanted to say. But he didn't ask, did he? He just assumed.
His hearing is fine. He himself suspects he may be on the spectrum. And this is a constant problem.
Should I just stop trying to have a conversation with him at all, and let him take charge of every word that passes between us? Obviously he's not interested in what comes out of my mouth.
We've been married 16 years and he's a wonderful man, but this is a persistent problem. I know I'm not in any form or fashion going to get him to change his behavior. He's set in his ways, for one thing, and he doesn't think he's doing anything wrong. So what can *I* do? What can *I* change?
He constantly interrupts me, is the issue. When I point out that he has interrupted me again, his usual excuse is, "Well, I thought you were finished." Half the time I was at a comma rather than a period, and sometimes I'm still in the middle of a syllable, but he will insist that he thought I was finished. (Even if I was at a period and had completed a sentence, maybe I had another sentence or two I was going to say. I hadn't yet given him all of the information I was going to give him.)
When he is the one speaking, I will throw in occasional comments about what he is saying. "Wow." "How could he have thought that?" "I bet that was frustrating." "What a nut." "That's ridiculous." It's called active listening. He then looks irritated at me and says, "I wasn't finished." He especially makes a point of saying this if, just a few minutes earlier when I was speaking, I yet again had to tell him I wasn't finished.
The way he sees it, I interrupt him just as much as he interrupts me, and he's like, "See? You do it too."
The difference between us--and this is the part he REFUSES to look at--is that HE interrupts; I interject. I am commenting something directly related to what he just said, and I am expecting him to continue. Whereas when he interrupts me, it's to take the conversation off in a whole different direction on a whole different subject. "OK, we're done with what you were talking about, and now it's my turn to speak, and here's the entirely unrelated thing I want to talk about." If I do get to the end of a sentence, he'll jump in real fast before I can say another word, rather than waiting to see if there is anything else I wanted to say. He'll deny doing this. He'll INSIST that he thought I was finished, and that I had nothing more I wanted to say. But he didn't ask, did he? He just assumed.
His hearing is fine. He himself suspects he may be on the spectrum. And this is a constant problem.
Should I just stop trying to have a conversation with him at all, and let him take charge of every word that passes between us? Obviously he's not interested in what comes out of my mouth.
