Is generally not believing & always double checking a red flag

[unchangedname]

Hello,

Just that really. Family member's OH. She dropped it into a conversation with me that if she tells him something he will never believe it but always double check it for himself - no exceptions. She said it like it was an endearing trait - I think? - not sure why she mentioned it as it was a bit tangential to our conversation.
It surprised me as she is one of the most intelligent people I, and I would go so far as to say many people, will ever meet - I would not feel I needed to 'fact check' anything she told me, for instance. She is very scientific and unwoolly, I guess he is too (I say this as I am somewhat woolly) to give a little context.

The background is he has a history of making sly underhand comments 'to the air' about me and my tastes/life/IQ I guess. I'm learning how to deal with that so it's less of an issue.

Also he is possibly moving towards isolating behaviour - belittling us (the extended family) via above comment technique, being eye-rolling and snide when we visit, making us feel unwelcome in their home, etc. He also intersperses this with occasional slices of geniality to us, which is confusing. Has also been cold towards at least one of her childhood friends when she visited their home as friend confided to me.

However as she is so bright, bold and assertive I only feel miffed about his behaviour toward me and do not think she is at risk from him.
But I want to keep my eyes on this situation.

They have been together about 3 years and have a baby. He started off very welcoming and accommodating to us.

Main question pertains to first paragraph - is this odd behaviour from an OH

i) in isolation
ii) given the context.

Thanks for any opinions.

To add, I haven't seen him act to her like he does to us, and really don't think he does to be honest. In their exchanges she seems very forthright.

100% red flags everywhere imo -- everything you have noticed is bad both in isolation (if you mean on its own) and in context (if you mean the whole thing together). It's nothing to do with woolly/non-woolly.

The eye rolling, the snideness 'to the air', the coldness towards friends and family, the fact checking -- and importantly the fact that they have a baby now. He will first isolate her by roping her in with the attitude towards family, undermining her confidence in them, helping her see them in a different light, while she sees him as some sort of insightful guru, and then he will start turning the eye rolling on her and a comment or two 'to the air' interspersed with niceness, and it will develop from there. It may already have started. She has a baby and abuse often gets started during pregnancy or in the early days of parenthood.

She might be forthright in public, but if he is behaving as you describe in private it is very difficult to counter any of that sort of behaviour verbally. It's all so plausibly deniable and impossible to nail down or challenge when there are just two of them in a room.

Are the things he checks like

A) darling, did you know women now comprise over 50% of gamers?..."that can't be! I'm going to look it up. "

Or

B) I didn't do much today, just lunch with sue.... "I'm calling sue to check up on you!"

As I think it makes a bit of a difference.

Regarding the other things though, yy to pp.

Thank you mathanxiety. That is very insightful indeed.

I think I have made a mistake during the conversation with my family member.

You see, her OH has been acting this way toward me for a solid year, with scattered incidents going back further, and I am a bit socially unaware sometimes, so could not add up his behaviour as definitively bad. I came on this website a little while ago concerned only about what I could do to get on better with him, and it was more or less laid out to me that not only was he not going to change, and that I simply had the choice whether to continue taking his crap or to begin to protect myself from his behaviour, my family member may be at risk.

So when she started talking about him (first time she had properly done so since I'd sought MN advice) a look must have flickered across my face and she brought me up on it. I thought about it, and thought of myself (selfishly) I suppose, and said 'I think we have a personality clash, so I find it hard to enjoy hearing about him when you discuss him'.

This got her back up immediately and the conversation more or less ended there.

Only on reflection did the tidbit of actual information begin to alarm me - it struck me as an odd thing to do with an OH. Obviously I wished I'd given my statement more thought now.

Now, because I 'cut her off' from talking about him, to protect my own feelings, I worry she won't feel she can come back and talk to me.

I'm not sure how I can undo my comment to her! I wish I could run things past MN for advice mid-sentence sometimes. In honesty about myself, I think I don't know how to 'listen' or, rather, demonstrate listening - I am of course listening, but it may look like I'm not, as I try and jump in with solutions. Also because I can't often gauge whether behaviour is inappropriate without some outside input (firstly her OH's behaviour towards me, and secondly that which she described towards her), my responses may be ill-judged, as above.

So I am not really sure how to proceed from here!

He will have (and I can feel it from her) started to colour her view of me and I possibly just fed into it.

Hi Coughle, unbelievably a x-post as I must have spent 25 minutes trying to compose my last post

It is definitely (A). None of (B).

However I thought to mention it as she is so clever, she is honestly the last person who one would double check that sort of thing for. Plus, she emphasised that he did it with everything - every last thing.

I think the message any checking of her facts sends to her is that her say-so is dubious. This is quite a kick in the pants to deliver to a woman who is scientific and unwoolly and presumably able to read, hear properly, and absorb information. I think it's a form of gaslighting actually -- he goes and checks simple things she read or heard somewhere as if she is some sort of idiot and his verdict constitutes the final decision on whether her version of the story is true or not.

It strikes me it would also be really hard to discuss any matter of opinion with him if this is how he behaves. If you told him the forecast was for rain on Thursday, or remarked on a volcano erupting in Iceland just in order to elicit a little chit chat, wouldn't it kill off the conversation if he said he was going to check that..

It would be like presenting your information to the expert for validation all the time. That puts her in the position of student to teacher, person whose information is garbled and unreliable to person who is factual and able to sort out truth from rubbish on google. The impression he gives when he does this is that he is the authority in this situation in other words, while every time she opens her mouth she runs the risk of making a fool of herself. This will erode her confidence little by little.

It would be interesting to know if he checked information she presented to him about pregnancy and childbirth and baby care.

What math says.

I'd find the fact checking really annoying. I am scientific too and tend to be very careful about things I know, things I'm only pretty sure (but not 100%) and things I think I remember but we should check. Or just don't know.

I would wonder if he does it at work, as it may be a trait of his, although I wouldn't find it endearing.

As for
However as she is so bright, bold and assertive I only feel miffed about his behaviour toward me and do not think she is at risk from him.
She is. And perhaps more so because she is bright, bold and assertive that she won't think herself at risk and people outside will have trouble believing it.

As for damage limitation, I think you should face it and apologise to her. It was something in your head at the time but you will be happy to hear about anything about her life.
It could prompt a discussion about how he behaves towards you. Perhaps ask her about it and what she thinks of that behaviour. If she does it to anyone else or just you. Does he do it to her...
You could essentially ask her about him when she talks about him, without making direct judgement calls, but perhaps planting the seed for her to think about it.
For example, ask her how it makes her feel when he questions everything. Or, as we did here, if he does it with other people and who.

Checking up on statements, depending on how it's done, is an expression of either arrogance or insecurity. We've all scurried to Google to solve an argument from time to time but to do it as a matter of routine says that either he's trying to cover up his ignorance (unlikely) or he's actively looking for slip-ups & no-one is allowed to know more than he does. Contempt and arrogance fits with the rest of the information you're giving. To use a technical term... he's a 'cock'. :)

There would have to be more information to determine whether he is acting maliciously or if his motives are sinister but he sounds very unpleasant, sneering and pompous. If she thinks that kind of attitude is charming, I feel sorry for her.