Not want to talk when I get home

[popsadaisy]

AIBU to not want to talk to my OH when I get home from work? I have a job which means I talk none stop all day and when I get home the last thing I want to go is talk some more! Is it unreasonable of me to tell my OH not to talk to me on the weekday evenings? We can have a good catch up on the weekend.

[Cherylshaw]

Is this real life??

[wasgoingmadinthecountry]

I get it.

[CrispbuttyNo1]

I can sort of understand where you are coming from. I do a very stressful job and when I walk (or more accurately limp) through the door at night all I want is to flop on the sofa with a glass of anything icy cold and alcoholic, and just relax in silence for a good half hour. Luckily DP is the same and is probably one of the reasons we get on as well as we do.

My dad was the same but even after 30 odd years of marriage my mother didn't get it and wanted to nag or talk inane crap the moment he walked through the door each night. I always understood why he spent most nights pottering about in the shed or walking the dog for some peace.

[KarmaStar]

Hi OP,just wondering how your oh feels about this?communication is so important in a relationship and to only engage with each other for two out of seven days could surely be exceedingly difficult for your oh.
Who does he talk to?does he have someone who is prepared to listen to him?
Be careful of this path you are walking op.

[Butterfly84]

I do get wanting a break from non-stop talking when you've been talking all day. But not wanting to talk to your OH at all in the evenings seems very cold and strange. Do you not want to talk about each other's days? You don't need to be talking constantly, just relaxing and chatting. You're being a bit weird OP and your relationship doesn't seem to be up to much if you don't even want to talk to him.

[Thunderspuds]

DP and I do this in that we tend to like to do our own things in different rooms of the house once the children are in bed. I'm a very quiet person and he is too though, but I reckon there's a happy medium - a bit of separate time then chatting over your meal together or watching something?

I think if both of you like your own time and peace & quiet then that'd be ok but if one of you is forcing the other then that's no good at all and could just create resentment.

[Etino]

Reading your OP I thought yabu, knowing your job I have more sympathy. But feeling like this isn’t healthy or sustainable.
What support do you have at work @popsadaisy? I do a similar job and can hand on heart say I rarely bring anything home emotionally. I have a fantastic team, daily debrief and monthly supervision. Do you have anything like that?

[adaline]

I get it OP.

I have a 45 minute commute as my time to decompress from work but if I didn't I would imagine I'd need a decent chunk of peace after a day of non-stop listening and talking and being switched "on" to other people.

However, I love my husband and would be really upset if he didn't want to talk to me every night. So we compromise - I get home and have a shower or bath and that's my silent time, then we have dinner and watch TV together and chat away most nights.

But sometimes I'll come to bed early and MN or read, or he'll go for a bike ride or out with the dog - best of both worlds

[Starlight456]

I think there is a huge difference between the people you speak to at work and Dp.

If he has a rough day needs to wait till the weekend.

I think y need to look at how to reset yourself after work, go for bath , shower , half an hour reading a book .

But not to talk at all seems really uncomfortable .

What do you plan to do instead ?

[itsinchicago]

I get you, and I don't even talk to lots of people at work!

DH loves to give me a long-winded run-down of his entire working day, and I so wish he wouldn't. I'm at home, I want to be able to switch off and don't want to think about my own job, let alone his.

[MitziK]

I think it's not unreasonable to need time to collect yourself, but the length of time you're suggesting is.

I come in from work sometimes and I can't handle any stimulus at all. When I feel like that, I say to DP 'I need - nothing'.

The TV goes off, he stops watching anything on his phone in the kitchen (or takes it upstairs), anything that's playing upstairs (how he manages to function as a human being with three sources of noise at once, God only knows) is switched off, all lights other than some fairy lights/kitchen cupboard LED strips are switched off and I either sit on the settee or, when I'm mega overwhelmed, go and lie down with all the curtains drawn and just try to stop thinking for half an hour. The most interaction DP forces is walking in quietly and putting a cup of tea down beside me before leaving again. He also puts in his wireless earphones so I'm not disturbed.

If I've been bellowed at, listened to 15 kids all playing drums at once, there has been shouting and general hassle all day from the Offspring of the Parish, I just can't handle coming in and having a conversation.

After that half hour, I'll emerge and normal service is resumed.


It's an absolute lifesaver at times.

[morallowground]

If you’re job is affecting your personal life to the extent you don’t want to converse with your dp except for weekends I’d be looking for another job tbh.

I work in a&e it’s constant. It’s busy and it never lets up. I listen to problems, deal with physical social and mental health issues all day. I sometimes feel frazzled when I get in but usually after the drive home, a shower and dinner (breakfast or lunch) or whatever time I get in. I want to converse and spend time with my partner.

If my job made me feel so frazzled that I literally wanted to zone out Monday - Friday and only get along with people at weekend I’m going to be honest and say I’d want a new one. That’s no work life balance at all.

[MumUnderTheMoon]

If you meant for an 45 minutes/hour while you unwind in the bath or in front of the telly for example I'd say no but if you mean all evening then yes YABU.

[category12]

Maybe you should look for a bit of support - given your job, I think it's understandable you're feeling the way you do, but you don't want to burn out - the balance needs to be adjusted a bit so you have something left for homelife.

[morallowground]

I don’t think yabu I’d you genuinely feel that frazzled but I think you need to evaluate if the job is worth so much of your free time too.

I know with mine the second I’m spending equal time at home thinking about my job or trying to wind down after the day. It probably time to rethink my priorities. And if works your priority that’s fine too but it might not bode well in the long term for your home life. I’d hate to be ignored all week and spoken to at weekend by my partner. Maybe yours is fine with it, but personally I wouldn’t be.

[BrusselPout]

I am the same, but it's unreasonable to expect no talking in the evenings, so I ask for an hour. I come in, shower, sit in the bed and when I've had a bit of me time, I emerge!

[Myoldtable]

Not sure what a reverse is! Is it that the OPsDH may have already posted from their point of view or am I totally off track?

[Ginger1982]

A reverse would be if the OP was really her husband posting about this but pretending he was his wife.

[OohYeBelter47]

Maybe take up meditation and do this when you get in for 20-30mins in a quiet room, then you might have re-calibrated yourself. Or go to the gym, work it off.

[powershowerforanhour]

Another vote for about half an hour to get your head literally or metaphorically showered, then back to the land of the living. If that isn't long enough then get a new job.

[OneDayillSleep]

I’d be giving my husband his marching orders if he told me he didn’t want to speak to me 5 days a week. In fact on the odd occasion my husband hasn’t really spoken to me in the evening I’ve ended up falling out with him. He’d had a long day and was sat head buried in his phone not responding. Who wants to be ignored?

It defeats the object of being in a relationship surely? If you don’t want to have company just be single, that would be the easiest solution. All night every night alone in silence, perfect.

[powershowerforanhour]

Mind you if his idea of nice evening chat is:
"Do you want peppers in this stew? How big should I chop them? What knife should I use? Where's the chopping board? Have you seen my work trousers for tomorrow? Anyway, so I was working with Dave R today, remember I told you about Dave R, he's the one who used to live in Sheffield but then they moved here, whose brother Bob's an electrician and we might get to do that job for us, Bob is really sound, I met him last week, you'd like him, he goes sea trout fishing a lot and told me some great places to go, anyway Dave and I did the work for the client, and it took ages, a lot longer than we thought, cos a machine broke, and we needed size 34 negative profile titanium/porridge composite full twisting doubleback somersault blades to fix it, so I had go and get some, but I got them, here are 34 photos I took of the job, and some video, no watch it to the end, you need the sound on, oh and here's a funny youtube thing Dave showed me of some lad in America making a bollocks of a job, turn the sound up a bit..."
"You're not even listening"

...then he needs to learn how to have a peaceful two way conversation with someone who's had their head fried all day.

[AcrossthePond55]

Oh, I hear you! I worked a public facing extremely stressful job in the public sector. I used to have a 35-40 minute commute and it was perfect 'winding down time' spent in silence with my own thoughts. When I got home I was ready to 'converse' and be immersed in home life. Then my location changed and my commute was only about 7-10 minutes. It was really hard to lose that 'me time' to decompress. And when you have children there's nothing you can do about it. They just don't really understand. But if it had just been me and DH, I would have explained that I needed 15-20 minutes of quiet when I got home to de-stress and he would have understood. As I would have understood if he'd asked for the same.

We're retired now and I admit that I stay up later than him so I can get that time to myself. He gets up early and if he's up when I wake I'll often just lay in bed playing on my phone for 20 or so minutes before I get up and join him.

[somuchinfo]

I'm new here so just had to look up what "is this reverse" means. As a few of you have posted that comment. AIBU? Defo yes. How would you feel if it was the other way around? Sounds like you would prefer to live alone and be single.