AIBU to feel overwhelmed by my husband's constant monologuing?

Yeah he’s ND, sounds like both Autism and ADHD, the autistic side being the in depth detailed account of conversations, he said, then she said, then I said…now I’m doing this and going there. It’s very descriptive and factual.
The ADHD side is the more hyperactive, talking over people, trying to get one up on you all time.
It sounds exhausting, DH can be the ADHD side, especially in company. You can’t run away and hide from all the though, finding excuses to leave the house isn’t sustainable forever is it.

What about being completely honest ask if he is happy tell him you're not.
You need to do some things just for you that you need space maybe separate bedrooms and separate lives if you can't afford to go your separate ways lots of people do this x

Put a recorder on and record him for an hour. Then make him listen to the replay.

Buy yourself headphones.

Loop earplugs or noise cancelling headphones. But seriously I couldn’t put up with that either.

COVID lockdowns destroyed many marriages too.

Sounds intolerable to me. I’d be making a 5 year plan at this rate.

It’s interesting how WFH has upset a many marriages. When people were in offices their social battery was often much depleted by the time they got home. Not so when you’re just at home under one another’s feet constantly.

I would feel suffocated if I thought that was how my life was going to be; second best to my husband forever. Get out now.

Exactly.

@pouletvous it doesn't go down too well when I do do that.

He experiences his monologues as a need - he's self-soothing, I think. And feels very hurt and rejected when I change the subject. He says I'm not being caring, not showing any interest in him and his life, I don't understand the stress he is under, am implying that he's stupid or boring etc etc.

There isn't a simple fix where they figure out the error of the ways and just stop.

just tell him to stfu. I would

Haha thanks for the psychoanalysis...! Mumsnet is fun. No, we are often silent, I love silence. We live on a quiet cul de sac and all you hear is birds. But when we do talk, I talk more than him.

I didn't grow up with my dad, they broke up when I was a baby, but I dreaded visiting him. I'm no fan of Freud anyway, I think it's lazy psychology. People are much more complicated than that

He has a garage, workshop and a greenhouse but never goes in there first 😁

Surely he was like this when you got married?

There 'chit chat' and there's 'boring the pants off the audience', and there's a big difference.

Look up interesting open ended questions online if you really want conversation with your partner. Think of your own open ended questions too.

Recognize the right of your partner to live inside his or her own head, think thoughts, enjoy silence, and have their brain to themselves.

Ask yourself if silence makes you uncomfortable and if so, why? You mentioned your father, who seemed to have a habit of making everyone in the family aware of his presence by filling the home with sounds he generated (stomping down the stairs, throwing keys on the table, etc). Are you nervously trying to fill silence with your own sounds because there's a part of you still waiting for someone else to dominate the space?

He should not do this. Is there a garage or a shed he could use as his venting space? Your home is a sanctuary for you too.

Get yourself a pair of honking big noise canceling headphones. Put them on in the morning. Leave them on all day.

Don't answer his calls if he's out/ on the road.

Start looking for a new job, one that requires workplace hours, and that will pay you enough to leave.

Neither you nor your teens deserve this.

Meantime, record him monologuing for a sample hour, so you can remind yourself of what you've escaped from when you leave, and to illustrate what you're dealing with, in case you think couples therapy might have a chance.

But in your shoes, I'd be doing whatever it took to get the heck out of there permanently.

I’m also the talkative one in my partnership and my OH is quiet (sometimes to the point of being antisocial although I am often very grateful for it). My OH is a tolerant and kind person so he would never in a million years tell me to shut up but he has sometimes obliquely got across to me that he’s heard stuff before. I’m sure he sometimes thinks I’m a chatterbox.

I am someone who is by temperament a bit of a gobshite and who had to learn the hard way that allowing a stream of consciousness from your brain into the environment is usually boring and selfish and will eventually push people away. Its basically social survival to learn this as a woman if you want to have friends or a relationship.

There’s no reason men can’t learn it too, they just choose not to. They have been raised by mothers who indulge it, they tend to push away male peers who could help them learn about appropriate ways to bond and they go on to choose partners who they know are unlikely to challenge them so the hideous circle perpetuates itself.

One of my grandchildren has ADHD he stayed over last night. Went off walking with the dogs this morning with his Papa as he calls grandpa. They spent the morning together.

He said the sweetest thing to DH. I love staying with you because you get me. Papa I think you're like me. Never a truer word spoken. Two generations of ADHD 66 years between them.

It can be a form of self soothing, talking through everything from thread to needle. It can make the verbaliser feel more in control and it can also be excitement and hyperfocus on the situation. For example if talking about a topic that is a special interest for example. My middle son is 14 and autistic. He often offloads onto me after a school day as he’s had to mask all day. Usually home is a safe place to do this, hence the chatty bit, but may behave completely differently in other settings. Imagine them putting their anxiety in a jar all day and the slowly pouring it out to get rid of it at home. Sometimes calm, sometimes comes out aggressively. I can only speak for my own situation, but this is what happens in our house. My youngest is 10 and autistic either a learning delay and he attends a specialist school. Both of them also have PDA traits . It’s a learning curve, for sure. 😅

My DH often comes in the front door cussing out loud about something. I used to go into flight mode before I realised it was not directed at me but something that had happened before he got home

It's bizarre the way he thinks out loud.

It isn't always this, but this is very, very common in autism. Difficulties in understanding the social context, difficulties in remembering the social proprieties (eg turn-taking), hyper-focus, self-absorption. One of my DC can be a bit like this, though less extremely so. They're AuDHD.

He accidentally left me a voicemail (dialled me while driving) and it was a rant about effing selfish drivers, cars the size of an effing house, and then a weird commentary on a young man he’d seen being well built with a winning smile, until the message ran out of time
Oh please, I'm begging you, share the whole message!!!
I'm sobbing in a corner and you have finished me off-I can't go through the rest of my life not knowing!!! 😂
FWIW, I was with someone who started talking at you the second he got in,didn't realise that his phone calls were often not heard as you could put the phone down and then pick it up again 5 minutes later only to hear him in full flow and who, in person, would rewind to the start of a monologue if anyone interrupted him. And who would re-enact whole meetings doing different "personas"- some falsely cheery, some low pitched and guttural and the worst were the 10 minute silences where you were desparate to stop listening outside the door to go for a wee, only to jump out of your skin when he shouted variations on "I did no such thing"/"I take exception to that statement"/"I don't care for your tone and, best of all, "I'VE BEEN VERY PATIENT"
I think I knew there was a bit of a problem when he started to get a strange glint in his eye, lean forwards and be bristling with excitement as he prepared to nod in all the wrong places before leaping in to reume his previous soliloquy. That and the pretend chewing gum mouth he did when he was trying to model active listening.

I had a dad like this. Back then we had no idea about ADHD, Asperger's so we said he was a pompous ass.

My younger brother showed all the signs rocking in his cot, late walking, non verbal until he was three. Didn't fit in at school. Went into the army for seven years. Came out did a degree, masters, PhD. He still missed social cues but married a lovely woman that marriage was a disaster. His second wife is brilliant in her field and loves him. She's Chinese though and seems to have a handle on him .

But I never ever make non-verbal noises like humming, whistling, groaning or huffing or even heavy treading. I absolutely hate noises like that to the point of misophonia and just couldn't live with a dh who did. My dad used to, hurrumph and stomp around and slam his keys onto the table etc. You'd hear him come all the way down the stairs, stomp stomp stomp.

My DM said (jokingly) that one of the reasons she divorced my dad (apart from the adultery, controllingness and money-wasting etc) was the way he had to say out loud whatever "interesting thought" he had, including the dream he'd had that night, and he'd even sometimes wake her up in the night if he couldn't sleep, to talk through something worrying him, and she just wanted him to piss off and let her sleep.

She told us this in front of my now-dh who cracked up because I am like that too. Oh dear

Talking at you, monologuing, narrating everyday life and unable to see things from your point of view?

I'd be seriously wondering about ASD.