To answer questions this way?

[Danceswithkids]

This is hard to explain but DH will ask me a question, and I give the information I have to hand that can be used to get to the answer but I don't work it out for him. This annoys him because 'Im not answering the question'. I feel I am! For context we have small kids and I am often already doing three things at once when the questions come in.

Examples
him - when do we need to leave to get to the party? me - it's a 40 minute drive and we need to get there at 10:30.
him - what time is the teddy bears picnic? me - it's on the calendar.
him - how many pieces of chicken is my share? me - I cooked 10 between 4 people.
him - do the children need sun hats? me - I checked the forecast earlier and it's going to be sunny all day.

Aibu to answer this way or would your partner answering like this annoy the crap out of you?

Although I find your questions infuriating 🤣 I also think it’s genius.

Why doesn’t he know if his own kids need sun hats?
Any reason he’s asked you sooner than check the calendar?

Why should you have to be the bearer of all knowledge?

This!
I feel anxious just reading those replies!

YANBU.

He's expecting you to do all the thinking and working out and you're showing him its not that straightforward. Why should you be the only one with the mental load cluttering your head?

Sorry but yabu and it would bug me, he just wants a simple answer not to have to do maths or potentially get the answer wrong because you havent just given him the answer to HIS question

It sounds very PA imo. My DH would feel like I was being snarky to him.

Hmm yes it would drive me mad but then so would having a husband who needed me to wipe his arse for him.

You are both being unreasonable.

Why do you answer like this? Yes he could work the answer out from what you’ve said, but why do you do this? Just answer the bloody question. It sounds like you do it to be deliberately annoying 🤣

You sound exhausting. It would drive me up the wall if my husband answered like this and I'm pretty sure he'd feel the same way if I answered like that.
Either answer the question or say you don't know and let him figure out the answer.

My husband is the same, he needs his dick holding for a pee I need to have all the info & all the answers, its utterly exhausting, & now it really annoys me.
Why am I the only one required to have & use my brain ?

What time are we leaving for the station? involves me working it backwards, & giving him a time, he will then contradict me, & tell me I'm wrong. (because I drive better & faster & know where to park possibly)
Also when I tell him something he will come back & ask me about it, as if he hasn't been able to understand (I have already discussed it, I don't need to do it again) or I didn't give him all the info necessary, or, he will say I never told him at all.

So I just say "I don't know" now, I don't tell him most stuff, I just give instructions.
& Yes our marriage is broken

I have to say I don't know what the 'straightforward' answer to the chicken question is?

'2, 3, or 4' seems pretty unclear. Whereas by saying there's 10 pieces of chicken he can work out he gets at least two, and then judge from how the kids are eating whether he is likely to get more or not. (Is my logic, but I accept that many on here find it twattish).

My husband does this, it's a bit like talking to a politician: I never get a straight answer However for context, I don't treat him like a PA. It's just really hard to generally ask him about his plans and actually understand what he's doing and when. It's infuriating!

DP used to be like this too. Every. Tiny. Thing. He had to ask me detailed questions when he could easily work it out himself. It's the mental load. I don't always want to be the one working out when we have to go out, whether we need to buy peas (look in the freezer) or whether we need snacks (yes, unless we are going out for less than 2 hours)

So, I'm with you OP. YANBU.

I think you're both as bad as eachother. Why is he asking you if the kids need sun hats? I couldn't live with a man who required that much hand-holding. Does he have to contact his boss at work to check what time he needs to leave for various meetings? Equally the way you answer questions would tip me over the edge. So I think you balance eachother out.

But if I just say 'I don't know' then he doesn't have the information to get to the answer. That seems much more annoying to me.

I get it. DH always asks what time he needs to get somewhere. I don't know the answer, I just know what time he needs to be there.

Now I put everything on the calendar and direct him there, he has the same access to Google maps as me.

This avoids me being blamed if he is late or early as I can't predict traffic, weather or anything else.

With the hats I would answer the same way as if I just said no and then it was sunny, that would be my fault rather than unpredictable weather. Although he wouldn't think to pack hats so I always have them in a bag along with suncream, medicines, inhaler etc. and he complains I pack too much but also expects me to have everything on hand.

Can you tell we're not getting on at the moment?

I'm amazed by the majority of answers here. Why should OP have to give him all this info?

Why is it a problem and annoying for him to have to work out the answer from the info given, but OP is just expected to have already done the annoying problematic working out so that she can present him with a nice simple answer?

For the leaving time one for eg - by giving him the relevant info (which he could have found out for himself) it makes them both responsible for arriving on time, so if they're then late he couldn't turn around and say 'you said we needed to leave at x time, we should of left earlier', and it makes them more likely to arrive on time.
Whereas if OP 'just answers the question' the responsibility of everything is purely on her.

I wonder what the broader context of responsibility sharing is within their relationship.

God....are you the riddler

When people post on here that their Dh asks inane questions out of laziness and passing the mental load, the suggestions are always to reply as you do OP. I have no idea why you're getting a hard time on this thread!

I get you and do the same to my children and DH if Im in the middle of something and don’t have the exact answer in my head, why can’t they work it out for themselves?!

Agree with you! It’s mental load stuff that you’re expected to know. YANBU

I understand answering like this sometimes if you feel like he’s asking too many questions, but to do it every single time he asks anything would get annoying very quickly if I was him. Sometimes it’s just easier if you know the answer just to say ‘it’s this’ or ‘it’s that’ rather than being awkward about it.

Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer. Asking about the sun hats and about info that is on the calendar?? 🙄 what’s the point in writing stuff of the calendar for people if they don’t look at it.

If you know the answer but don't want to make his life too easy then that would BU but I don't think that it what you are saying. If you're in the middle of something and you don't remember what time the picnic is then letting him know where to find the answer is fine. If you just haven't quite figured out the departure time and think out loud to say 'we have to be here by x and it takes x long' then I don't see the problem.

"How did you answer when he proposed?😂"

Lmao! 😭

Exactly with the sun hats thing - why the fuck would OP know any better than him what the weather was going to be like? They’re both adults living in the world with eyes and access to phones etc.