To say if you have something to ask me don’t demand a phone call?

He DID send her a text asking her to please call.

I can't say I've noticed that from anything she's said.

I already need help to shop and cook and yes, my partner does some of the shopping and all of the cooking. He doesn't find it that tiring at all - he is a high energy person. If it becomes hard for him then of course we will need carers. I wouldn't expect anyone to do anything that was too much for them.

YANBU

I would prefer a text or voice note as a heads up. My MIL rang the phone off the hook yesterday. They wanted to know how much our house insurance was. I don't need to be war dialled.

He's not the selfish one here.

It's not exhausting as such. It's just unnecessary. So much less intrusive to send a quick message.

Genuine question for all of those who can't handle or find communicating exhausting, how do you think you will manage when, you are elderly and you start to struggle physically and may need help to dress, shop, cook etc Will you just expect those around you to care for you even though they may find it exhausting? Or those of you that are young enough to be having children, how do you/ will you manage when your child wants to hear a story for the 20th time in an hour or continually asks questions?

I HATE it when people hold it like some cliff hanger "oh I've news for you "
Thinking that will be the carrot for you to ring them straight away
When it's just to say Betty down the road is getting a new kitchen put in

He's younger than I am and I'm not shit at texting.

If millennials are going to stereotype boomers, I guess it's OK to reverse this. I'm mid 50s so not a boomer, but I can't relate to this oh woe is me look how many people demand my attention. Many of us have slogged over theses while juggling a multitude of other tasks. That's aside from working mothers and what they have to handle but they just get on with it. You have to wonder why they own phones if phone calls stress them out.

That’s what the OP is saying but judging by her posts, I get the feeling she has has this idea in her mind and twists it to suit her narrative. She sounds insufferable

I guess what I'm trying to say is that at some point, you may regret this.

I hate to be that guy - but my dad died on Sunday. Although he was 77 with quite a few ongoing health issues, he was pretty sprightly. It can happen at anytime, for anyone. A 10 minute phone call isn't much to ask eh?

I think sometimes the worry about phoning is worse than just phoning. Ring him tmo OP and chat for a bit if you can. My DPs are the same, they don't want to text back and forth.

Older people are shit at texting, they do it with one finger and make mistakes. Their eyesight is often impaired. He just wants to talk to you. I think there are deeper issues here though.

Fair enough.

It doesn't sound like she gets much of a choice about taking an interest in his life -it sounds like she's assigned the role of audience whether she likes it or not, although maybe I've misunderstood. And I think she said she thought it very unlikely he'd take much of an interest in her thesis but with the name changing it's harder to check.

I think a compromise would be sensible if it's definitely going to be a quick and easy call (if there is such a thing for the OP - there isn't really for me), but going by the strength of OP's reaction it sounds like it may not be. I know she hasn't said this about her dad explicitly but my experience of people who try to ask you for phone calls when they know (or should know) you don't like them is that they're not great with boundaries if you actually agree to the call. You're not allowed to end the call after 5 minutes even if they've said it won't take long and they will happily pretend they didn't hear you when you say you have to go now if they still want to talk. And then they continue on for another 40 minutes until you're practically crying with exhaustion meaning you also end up having to cancel your plans for the next day so you can recover and the relationship is damaged further. Nothing good ever comes from "can you call me please" in my experience but maybe I'm projecting! I hope I am OP - I hope your dad is genuinely just after a short call to ask a quick question and will let you go when you say you have to go and that your aversion to the phone is not as extreme as mine! My extreme aversion has come from these experiences to be fair😂

It just seems you have a preference for longer text messaging and not calling in person, and he has a preference for phone calls and only short text messages . It could be a generational thing as many older people prefer to speak on the phone or face to face. I don't think he is being particularly difficult, as he just has different communication preferences but you are too tired at the moment to make what you think might end up a long call . He might just lonely and asking for a chat, hence the message. It's up to you to message back stating a convenient time for a call. His message didn't state he expects an immediate call back.

I see MNHQ has addressed it.

Very strange. I thought it wasn't actually possible to do it.

So did I.

Maybe, he’d like her to take some interest in HIS life too, which is very reasonable. As is, a text saying please, call me. I have a question.” Maybe, he wants to find a way she’d like to celebrate submitting her thesis. I still think a compromise by picking a day soon, texting him to make a plan to call would satisfy him and still give her a few days break.

When I say it exhausts me I don't mean it like you mean it though. Exhaustion for people like you is feeling bone tired and possibly more than a little grumpy, yet still managing to go to work the next day, then coming home and being able to interact with and care for your children. For me it means a loss of functionality at the most basic of levels as the energy to do very simple tasks has been completely depleted (and never having had the energy to have a full time job or kids in the first place, let alone both at once).

A phone call that goes on even slightly too long probably means that I won't be able to speak to my partner for the rest of the night - just nod or shake my head, and I won't manage the shower I was planning. If the call goes on for far longer than expected (some phoners are shit with boundaries so this used to happen a lot no matter how firmly I tried to set them), I might still be unable to speak the next day and may have to cancel plans. Or if I can speak the next day, I will have to ration my words, answer yes or no when I want to talk in full sentences to my partner etc. I very rarely answer the phone because of this but I have on occasion been caught out. It's not your neurotypical level of exhaustion and it's not just "a pain" for me like it is for you. There is a strong link/overlap between ADHD and ME/CFS for this reason - things that are easy and relatively low-energy activities for you are not easy, low-energy activities for many of us.

While it sounds like the OP is likely living with a much milder version of what I'm living with, she's still allowed to feel irritated and frustrated if she suspects her time and energy are going to be wasted when it could have been avoided. Especially when she has just been relieved of a mammoth task and will want some down time. And when she might expect the person suggesting the phone call to know how she feels about phone calls. We will have to wait and see what the phone call was actually about. Maybe she is worried over nothing and will be shown consideration.

Ultimately though, a disability is not something that can be overcome with a better attitude or just expending a bit more effort than the average person would put into something. That might be called a condition, or maybe just an attitude problem. Disability means you cannot do something that most people can do - either absolutely or on any sort of reliable or sustainable basis, or without consequences that are massively disruptive to your life or damaging to your health. Given so many people live with these without having a diagnosis (it sounds like the OP might be in this boat), it can't be a bad thing to at least try to understand that what's easy for one person may not be for someone else even when on the surface they may seem capable of it.

@KimMumsnet maybe give OP a call to chat about it 😂

“Hi Dad, I can’t talk right now. Is it super urgent? You can drop me a text or we can chat at lunchtime tomorrow”

My son has ADHD. I know that keeping his room clean and tidy takes genuine monumental effort. However he doesn’t just accept he’s going to live in squalor. He forces himself to do the minimum to keep me happy. Even though I do appreciate it genuinely does exhaust him. So he does it.