To ask how to get my husband to stop singing.

[Imevery]

My husband is a very nice person. (He’s also bloody annoying a lot of the time, and I’m sure I am too.) About 18 months ago he took up the guitar as a hobby. I’m glad he has a hobby but he plays it about 4 hours a day all round the house, not very well but bearable. Worse, he sings along and he has a terrible out of tune singing voice. He also has ADHD and Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria so gets really upset at any suggestion that he can’t sing as he really likes music. It’s torture. I am quite musical, can sing well and have recently taken up a new instrument but I practise for an hour a day in a room with a closed door. He is driving me potty. How do I deal with this without hurting his feelings, I’m worried one day I’m going to snap and it will lead to a huge row and he’ll be really hurt.

Option a) he continues to practise 4h per day. That loads! Surely he will be miles better in a few months? Problem solved.
Option b) he does not continue. It's a passing fad and you just need to wait it out. Problem solved

Do nothing.

Option a or b will eventually solve it for you without hurting his feelings. Maybe buy some earplugs in the short term.

Well that took a turn.

Thank you to those posters who get it, and I’m sorry you have to go through this too.

i don’t feel superior nor did I bring this up to poke fun at him. I was frustrated and posted hoping for helpful advice and n how to raise it in a non-hurtful way. Don’t we all try to be non-hurtful with those we love? I would hope he would do the same with me. Maybe this is why we’ve been together for more than 30 years.

The designated music room is a good idea. I shall pick my moment and suggest it.

There is no amount of cancelling you can do that we stop people thinking by themselves.

I am sorry you can't sing, this however doesn't step on anyone's boundaries.

ps: everyone is anxious when hosting! It's a joke between my mum and I how we feel more and more paralysed with anxiety as the date approaches... but in the same way that you did, we end up making it work, have (sometimes) a good time and survive.

If you can’t do a job yourself the best solution is to outsource it. So what you do is say wow you’re really working hard on your music, we should record it and put it on YouTube or even get him to do busking or an open mic. Then the public will do your job for you and he’ll soon give up

He’s a grown man, tell him to stop screeching. People are too sensitive these days

Because they are small minded, ignorant and a bit thick... ‘It doesn’t happen to me therefor it doesn’t exist’

@Imevery I live with a very singy/hummy/whistley wife and a noisy stimming ND child with RSD. I’m ND and really really hate noise… I also have RSD so I know what it’s like from both sides.

Id tell your husband that the noise is bothering you and to play in a room with the door shut. Don’t mention the quality of the noise as that will set off the RSD for sure. That is a reasonable compromise for two adults, especially since that is what you do with your playing time.

If he gets upset anyway, well that’s a shame but you don’t have to be driven mad by horrible noise- it’s basically impossible to never trigger RSD, that’s just the nature of the beast and as an adult he should have at least some coping mechanisms to deal with it.

@Mamoun you still don't get it. And clearly you are far too narrow minded to either educate yourself or open your mind to the possibility that other people don't experience the world in the same way you do. Other posters have gone away, done some research and come back and apologised for their initial attitude.

I'm sorry you are so closed minded and unable to be big enough to admit your ignorance.

I won't waste anymore time arguing with you.

This thread is illuminating as to the attitudes that people actually have towards me - despite the overt acceptance, scratch the surface and this is what they really think.

Fuck me it's depressing.

I completely get it that everyone has a different experience of the world and being alive. Is that a justification to step on other people's boundaries and impose your view of the world to anyone else? I don't think so.

Believe what you want but I'm free to believe what I want.

And by the way, RSD isn’t an officially accepted medical condition.

My specialist psychiatrist would disagree with you there. It’s a widely accepted well known condition. Which he brought up and explained to me.

It doesn’t give anyone the ‘right’ to do anything- it’s a condition that produces symptoms of varying severity, and people with the condition are able to manage those symptoms to varying degrees.

You know, like all other symptoms of illness and disability.

Funny how one of the reasons I take ritalin is to help with my RSD.

Seeing as it's imaginary and all that.

@rorret and @Bigstones

Whether you like it or not I am only quoting the relevant medical literature.

I'll get one with my day now.

Have a good one.

How does he react if you reject or critique him?

If it was from a narcissist or anyone else, it would be seen as abusive.

Even from someone who has borderline personality disorder (such as myself) - if we react in certain ways to perceived abandonment or rejection, we are told we are abusive and rightly so as our behaviours often are abusive to others.

It's quite possible to have the symptoms of your RSD be abusive to those in your life.

You shouldn't be tiptoeing around him in case he gets upset or angry.

Whether you like it or not- you are incorrect.

Do you tell people with ME or fibro that it's made up? Just wondering.

This was my point- RSD is absolutely a real, recognised symptom of a disability (one that is caused by a physical difference in brain chemistry)- what that means is to some level it’s good to take it into consideration (to the same level you might expect an amount of snappyness from someone who is recently bereaved or something like that).

However, if it’s causing behaviour that feels abusive to the other person, that isn’t ok. The person with RSD needs to acknowledge that and do everything possible to change their behaviour- be that therapy, medication, meditation or whatever.

Its taken years for me to gain the insight into what is happening when my RSD is triggered, and to get the right medication etc to help- I have said some horrible things and essentially thrown tantrums and been an absolute bitch to be around- my wife hasn’t just quietly accepted that, she has forced me to face up to it every time. As you would with anyone who is behaving unreasonably for any reason!

If they won’t, then bloody leave!

Funny how one of the reasons I take ritalin is to help with my RSD.

Seeing as it's imaginary and all that.

Funny that, isn't it? I guess the fact that ADHD medication is so effective is also rather mysterious given so many people claim that is "made up" as well.

ME sufferers had decades of ignorant people - including doctors - trying to tell them their severe exhaustion and pain was "psychological". Now, all of a sudden, when a great many doctors have been struck with "Long Covid" (ME) suddenly they accept it is real and finally research is going on and hey presto, biological markers have been found.

There seems to be no limit to the determination of some people to belittle other people's health problems and pretend they don't exist just because they can't see them. One can only conclude that such people have very limited intelligence and a very warped view of humanity if they think that tens of thousands of people would "make up" chronic health problems just for shits and giggles.

Well said!

👏

@Bigstones great argument 👏 😂.

@rorret I would have thought that both ME and fibro are medically recognised condition.

What's funny @Mamoun ?

There is no amount of cancelling you can do that we stop people thinking by themselves.

This one made me laugh though.

If only many posters on the thread were capable of thinking, even at the level of my infant school children! Thinking is not the same as forming random prejudices and "beliefs". Perhaps if they were capable of actual rational thought then they might have had the self awareness not to post opinions on a topic (particularly one about rejection sensitivity, where even from the name of the condition anybody with even an average IQ would be able to ascertain that making dismissive and ridiculing comments would be a particularly spiteful and deliberately damaging thing to do...) without bothering to even google it first. Who does stuff like this?

The only possible conclusions really are that such posters are either: too emotionally stunted to realise how offensive and damaging such comments would be; or that they are so mentally challenged that they still haven't managed to figure out even as adults that "opinions" based on zero knowledge are not of equal value to those that are well-informed and researched, and that other people are infinitesimally unlikely to be interested in hearing such ignorant and randomly formed opinions which are, in fact, the only "made up" thing in the thread. If I want to hear random stories about what people "believe" I'll talk to my small children about unicorns and dragons.

Or, I suppose, I third possible conclusion is that they are such spiteful and vile people they are deliberately trying to cause damage to others.

I wonder which it is: are they emotionally stunted and totally devoid of empathy, or totally thick and incapable of rational thought and distinguishing opinions from knowledge, or simply vindictive and spiteful and deliberately trying to attack already vulnerable people? Or maybe some combination of all three.

Why is it ok to talk about ND people in the way we have been talked about on this thread?

I don't understand.

It may not be 'official' though many psychiatrists, therapists and counsellors, myself included, recognize it.

It does exist. It does have a monumentalnimpact on the lives of those who have it and it should not ever be dismissed.