To get angry with DH for interrupting me

[interuptus]

When Im talking.
This morning was an example, we were going through new work pattern child care options before he went to work.
As I'm replying to him with my thoughts he starts saying to our 2 year old; "Are you going to the farm park today? That will be fun won't it"

I stop talking and he gets annoyed and says "keep going I am listening"

This happens ALL the fucking time. I shouted "YOU'RE NOT LISTENING IF YOURE TALKING!"

This happens several times a day and it pisses me off. It was worse when we had a cat because he'd suddenly start talking to the cat.

Im not talking to someone who is simultaneously talking.

He left for work saying "I would really like to hear your thoughts on this though" and I said well you'll have to listen then won't you.

ARGGGH SO ANNOYING!!!

Rude, rude, rude. YANBU.

He needs to learn that, whatever his opinion on the matter, this feels rude and hurtful to you, and that he needs to stop doing it if he doesn't want to cause upset and offence.

Question: if he talks over you, IS he actually listening as well, or does he make mistakes/not hear you? If the latter, I would be tempted to record the conversation where you tell him something and are inevitably interrupted, wait for him to miss that information/screw up, wait for him to defend himself by swearing blind that you never said anything, and then play it back.

I did the stopping in the middle of the sentence. It never made any difference.
So the pattern carried in until I just told him
‘Look I was trying to discuss with you something important (and the subject the OP was trying to talk about is important). You clearly have have other things in your mind or are not interested enough. So, I’ll make the decision and tell you about the result at the end’

I can promise you that ending up with decisions that didnt suit him (such as childcare organisation that were harder work for him that he thought) was enough of an incentive for him to take more notice.
The issue of course was the subject he never quite listened to were all stuff deemed to be MY responsibility (such as childcare) so he didn’t see the point thinking about it.
Learning that those ‘boring’ subjects were also his responsibility made a huge difference.

"My mother does this when I'm on the phone to her and it infuriates me. We'll be having a conversation about something and then she'll suddenly start talking to someone else who is in the room at home with her"

My Mum too. Only in her case, it's usually the cat.

When DH does this I stop talking and walk away. He does it much less often than he used to.

I do this. It's a social skill I never really got the hang of. I do it to my DH all the time. I don't listen to him properly either. My mind just wanders. He'd be saying something about the car for example and I'd suddenly interrupt him by saying something totally unrelated like 'do you think we have space for a goat' or something similarly random. It's very rude and I try to not do it. (But I still do).

Yanbu. My DH used to wander around the house when I was talking and I'd find myself following him around. I had to force myself to stop talking the moment he walked off (actually quite hard if I had something I was bursting to tell him!) and it did get better.

He also has a habit of saying "Oh, that's right..." (or similar - as if it's something I've told him already) when I am in the middle of a sentence. It's awful as it makes me feel like I am boring and he's hurrying me up. I just stop speaking instantly (that's become a bit Pavlovian for me - I literally just stop!) and then he has to ask what I was about to say as I haven't already told him!

I have a friend like this! She will interrupt me halfway through something I am telling her and start telling me her experience, I now keep going until she shuts up, or say, "Sorry S, I haven't finished".

One really funny time was when I was telling her about a film or a play I had seen, that I knew she hadn't seen, she was so keen to interrupt she started telling me about another friends experience of seeing the same film/play . I was very firm that day, and pointed out that valuable as Xs experience was she wasn't in the room to discuss it whereas I was!

Aaaaarrrrhhhhh!! My DH does similar too and it gives me such rage!! He will ask a question or even if I am just telling him something and he will interrupt me with follow up questions before I've actually finished speaking and its usually something that I was about to actually say as part of my original answer/comment!!! I've told him so many times that frankly if he would shut up, listen and let me finish that he would know the answer or all the information more efficiently!! Didn't make a difference. Now if he interupts I just stop speaking completely and wait until he realises he's done it AGAIN and he generally appologises and allows me to continue uninterupred!

My mother does this and talks to other people in the room (more difficult now she’s widowed) and puts me on loud speaker and walks away from the phone to do “stuff” resulting in not being able to hear me properly. All in all she just doesn’t like me talking. Prefers monologing and holding court!

None of these things smack of respecting me. YANBU.

@Astella22 omg yes! My mum does that too but usually it’s my dad in the background asking questions to everything I’ve said to her, they’re like Seinfeld, I need them both on the phone so I feel like I’m only conversing with one!

My DP is a bit like this. Not randomly starting talking to someone else in the middle of a convo, but will just start talking before you've finished. I got really annoyed when we first met and lost it with him. He still does it occasionally so I just stop talking and give him 'the face' .. It made no sense until I met his family. His DDad is the mega quiet but then will just pipe up randomly about nothing related, and his DMum starts talking in the middle of other peoples sentences too. It's learned behaviour.

My DH does this to me but I'll be saying something about one topic say what options for tea are and he'll talk over me to me about something else entirely! He eats what I want those nights. And sometimes it's like he's started the conversation in his head then carried on out loud to me i.e 'Yeah so I told dad he needs to do the kitchen first before the garden' etc and I'm there like where the fuck did that come from!? His dad is just as bad, will ask me how our DS is doing and in the middle of my reply will start talking to DH about a new car he's looking to buy! Drives me mad! And DH wonders why I don't speak much around his family, they all do it!

That would drive me up the wall, OP. I had a friend who, mid conversation, would suddenly talk to her children. And we're not speaking about attending to children's needs, or the child initiating the conversation. Once the child actually said to her mother that she could first finish her conversation with Aridane!

I used to do this
My lovely fella used to get so annoyed. And I realised actually I was just being disrespectful and whatever needed to be said to kids either could wait or I’d say ‘sorry, just a second...’ and deal with them and come back.
He likes me more now lol

He then started doing it- and when he realised he was embarrassed too. We’re a lot more considerate to each other these days.
In my defence, I’m nogoing great socially and he’s the longest relationship I’ve had, so I’m learning what it is to be in a relationship along with being good socially too- quite a learning curve!

My dp doesn't do that so much (does occasionally) what he does though that drives me round the bend is wait until he or I have left a room and then start talking to me!
It doesn't sound like much but I'm developing problems with my hearing so I find it difficult enough without adding whole rooms of space between us.

People interrupting is my biggest pet peeve. It is SO rude. No matter how hard people try to justify it, at the end of the day what it fundamentally means is that the interrupter thinks that whatever they have to say is more important. YANBU!

In terms of advice, my solution when people do this to me is just to stop talking completely. They then realise and usually tell you to go on, at which point I usually smile and say 'it's ok, it can wait until you're done'. I'm really non-confrontational but if I say this in a nice way it usually makes people realise what they've done without making me feel too awkward or uncomfortable!

Ginky dh does that to me too. Then I walk back in and ask what he was saying and he says "doesn't matter"

Watching this with interest. I've been seeing someone for about six months, and have noticed that he does this some times.

I don't mind overlapping conversation, but a couple of times he has just cut straight across me with some random observation about something completely unconnected to what I was saying. Both times he did it I stopped what I was saying and waited for him to finish rambling. When he'd rambled to a standstill he said "Sorry, what were you saying?". I said "No, that's fine, I'd finished." He looked a bit baffled and uncertain, and I assumed he'd got the message. But then he did it again.

So that even we had a very serious chat about it. I described exactly the behaviour I was upset about and how it made me feel - viz. that he considered what I was saying was boring and of no importance. I said that the second time it happened I had considered simply getting up and walking out of the pub, since I took this extremely seriously. If he wasn't interested in what I thought, then what was the point of my being in his company?

He was stricken and remorseful - he acknowledged that he did this, that previous partners had brought it up (and from reading between the lines, had been part of a cluster of behaviours related to focus/attention that had ended at least one relationship). He said he really tried not to do it, and seemed genuinely distraught that, despite his best efforts, it had been happening again with me.

Since then, he hasn't done it. He is still chatty and overlapping, but he hasn't directly cut across me with a change of subject (@PebblesPony described it perfectly with the randomness of "should we get a goat?" - that's the sort of thing he would say.)

Have people had success with this behaviour genuinely changing? Or will it always reassert once they stop bothering?

My OH also interrupts. The only difference to you guys is that he doesn't even pretend he was listening.

YANBU. My mum does it constantly - she’ll ask a question, but after I answer she’ll start talking to the baby who was playing happily on her own. Or she’ll just talk over me about something that’s just pooped into her mind, or a mix of the two:

Mum: have you heard about that job yet?
Me: no, the closing date was only Tuesday so-
Mum: Sharon at work applied for a job last week and she’s got her interview tomorrow. Oooo that’s what I meant to tell you, Brian next door had his shed door fall off with all that wind we had
Me: right...so yeah I should probably hear back about my jo-
Mum: hello sweetheart! Bababa! You’re beautiful!
Me:

I used to ignore it but I have started saying ‘mum, I was talking then and you just interrupted!’

Ooh stealth I know, like somehow because you've not got the ears of a bat!

^popped into her mind not pooped

This happens to me too. Also he walks out of the room saying "I'm still listening" but if I say something when he's not in the room he says he can't hear me. Argh you can't have it both ways!

Hmm, I do find I can listen to an adult and attend to a child at the same time (depending on the scale of the interruption of course) and it's much more difficult to follow if the adult stops talking. A bit like listening to the radio, it's easier to listen, lose concentration for a moment but tune straight back in to the flow of the person talking, than to stop, start, stop, start, 'where were we? start, stop.

But, I do recognise the 'holding court' aka 'being the manager' phenomenon. I know someone who does this and, though they won't admit it, lives their life on the basis of their own preferences and assumptions. They'll ask a question, then, as soon as they've heard the bit they want to hear, that fits their pre-constructed narrative, switch off, talk over, talk to someone else or move away. As far as they're concerned they heard the important bit and the rest is waffle. They miss anything that doesn't fit their pre-conceptions, so fail to learn anything new (other than the specific answer sought), see other points of view, or notice that other people don't agree with them (for a reason, rather than just being wrong).