Fiance asks me strange questions that make me uncomfortable. Does his behaviour seem abnormal?

[lijana]

I work a full time job and also a part time job on weekends. In my work, there is a forced leave period during christmas for 2 weeks. This year, on top of this forced leave, I took an extra day break on a Monday before I went back to work on Tuesday.
When I told my fiance about this, he asked me 'why do you take an extra day off?' My response to this was 'I just want an extra holiday'. The way he asked me was in a questioning tone and in a blunt manner. He then appeared unsatisfied with my answer, and continued to question me, he said 'isnt a 14 day holiday enough? Why do you want to take an extra day on top of the 14 day holiday?' He then said that most people take two weeks not two weeks and 1 day as it seems unusual.
I didn't know the answer to this. For me it is just an extra day off, there are no other or further reasons as to why I would take an extra day. To me of course any extra holidays are better than not having any holidays, but an extra day would be better than an extra 1 week as I can save more on annual leave.
He appeared to be annoyed and agitated at my inability to answer him. I got annoyed at him and decided to turn the questioning on him. There was a period of time where before he met me, he decided to quit his job and after that had more than 1 year off work. He quit his job by choice. He could have stayed at his job and found another one and moved to another job, however he quit and didn't work for 1 year and lived off his parents.
So I decided to fire this and question him on this aspect. I asked him 'why he didn't work and decided to quit the job and have a 1 year holiday.' I said most people try to keep their jobs and find another one before quitting. I said how could he not get worried living off his parents.
He gave me the following response 'that he quit because he felt the job didnt give him enough experience' and that he didn't mind living off his parents because they had no mortgage to pay and food is not that expensive.' (he lived in Ukraine back then)
Then I questioned him as to why he would ask me about my extra day off, what his motive was behind asking such a question.
He said that he had no motive behind it, that he doesnt mind if I take an extra day off and doesnt care about money or that sort of thing. He said that he just wanted to get an understanding behind why I wanted to take an extra day off after 14 days of holidays and why 14 days was not enough. He wanted to understand the logic behind why I wanted to take an extra day off he said.
However I find that hard to believe, as if it is just a light hearted curiosity, why would you ask it so seriously and be unsatisfied with my answer? He would ask, then I would answer and he would move on as it is no big deal.
He then said to me that I could have answered that by saying that I wanted an extra day to have a rest. The funny thing is I answered him in a similar manner however he wasn't satisfied with the answer in the first place!
Does this behaviour or question seem completely ridiculous? Im beginning to think he has some very different thinking patterns and enjoys to proof things when things are so insiginificant. I am beginning to think there is something completely autistic about this and I am starting to lose my respect for him.
Another example once was this:
I told him that cockroaches can climb up sinks when dropped into a sink. My parents also told him this that they have seen it with their own eyes that cockroaches can climb up sinks.
However he still appeared to not believe this as he had not seen it with his own eyes. He appeared to believe that they can't climb up as they will slip.
One day he came home and a cockroach was in the kitchen, he caught it and decided to test the 'theory'. He put the cockroach in the sink and the cockroach climbed up very fast in 1 second up the side of the sink.
He then believed the theory.
Another example was this:
We caught a mouse in a mouse trap. He looked at the mouse and found that it was a little big in the stomach. He thought that this mouse was pregnant but not 100% sure. So therefore he dissected the dead mouse and opened up the stomach which revealed that it had unborn babies.
He felt he had to prove that he was right by doing this. He felt that he had to prove himself right.
Do men normally do this?? Is this something that men are more likely to do?
He told me that he always felt different to others, and that he felt hard to connect with others but he doesnt know what it is.
After being with him for 3 yrs I dont know what it is about him either. At times I feel he is completely normal but other times I feel like there is some serious disconnect with his brain to the average person. However it is hard for me to define the average person as everyone is different..
What is your opinions on this?

TBH, OP YOU are the one with very fixed ideas of how things 'should' be and an apparent lack of insight into the fact that others won't necessarily agree with your very particular world-view. Both of which could be taken as signs of autism (if we're playing that largely pointless long-distance guessing game).

Perhaps I too have some form of autism. Perhaps we are highly compatible then!

Is there any way at all that you could just RELAX a bit?

Do you WANT to marry this man? Do you like him? Do you love him?

When he is not on about ridiculous insignificant arguments, Im fine. I enjoy his company and love to spend time with him. I admire his practical skills and time adherence and ability to focus on the stuff he is doing without getting distracted by things (unlike me).

Honestly OP, he sounds like a perfectly lovely guy, but just not for you. You obviously communicate on different levels, and he needs someone either more willing to nod and smile at his need for logic, or someone that thinks more like him. A diagnosis isn't going to change who he is, or make your relationship suddenly work.

This.

Dh and I both have science backgrounds and like to investigate / calculate things. We don't just take people's word for things because - well - have you ever read some of the crap on Wikipedia!? Our old microwave had a big scorch mark on the inside due to our investigation to prove the wavelength of the waves for example.

Personally I "dissect" dead animals daily (mainly chickens as I have a fussy 2 year old who doesn't like chewy stuff but sometimes pigs, sheep and beef) so although I wouldn't do the mouse thing personally I don't have a problem with it. He had a logical reason for it (is there also a daddy mouse stomping around!) so it makes sense.

I also like to understand people's motivations - people interest me - I also like to understand my own motivations so would have a ready answer to why I was taking the "extra day" as I would have thought it out (I've done it sometimes - usually to mean that I only have to go back to a 4 day week rather than a 5 day week- much less unpleasant the night before.)

Personally I wouldn't fancy watching the dead people thing. (Never heard of it.) But I also don't like watching nature programs. (They make me sad - either for the poor dead gazelle or the poor hungry lion - despite the science I score high on empathy tests.) But lots of people do like nature programs - they are probably not all psychopaths!

On reading your 2 threads on this board, it would appear that you and your fiance are fundamentally incompatible and there will need to be a lot of give and take on both sides if you're to build a bridge that will span the cultural divide that exists between you.

Your Chinese heritage has made you far more driven to achieve material wealth and success at an early age than your Ukranian fiance and you resent him sending money to his family members while they are not, to your mind, in 'need' through ill-health or old age or some other affliction.

In this, it would seem that you are not aware of the poverty and lack of opportunity which exists in countries that were formerly members of the USSR, or of the fact that Ukraine is in crisis due to the slow speed of reform and continued decline in living standards and the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation.

It's laudable that you're holding down 2 jobs in your desire to 'get ahead' by getting your mortgage paid off quickly but it's not only unreasonable of you to expect your fiance to follow suit, it also puts the quality of your already somewhat fraught relationship into question if you both work so many hours that you have little time for each other.

Your ambition is such that it's probable you will look to buy further properties when you've paid for your current home and gives rise to an endless treadmill with little opportunity to stand still and savour each and every achievement instead of rushing to the next self-imposed challenge.

Imo gifting your fiance with an equal share in a property to which he has contributed considerably less than you and your dps was a grave error of judgrement and you're best advised to endeavour to buy him out for a sum that is not much more than what he's actually put in to date and either look to sell or take in a lodger, or lodgers, to make up the shortfall in the mortgage that will be caused by his absence.

My limited experience of Russian men has left me with the impression that inside their severely pragmatic exterior lies the tortured soul of a romantic poet and these divergent aspects of the Slavic personality occasionally reach an accomodation with each other by means of lots of navel gazing philosophising accompanied by copious amounts of vodka and some exuberant dancing. I love 'em... but I wouldn't want to live with one

You sounds odd because you are picking at tiny, little things about your fiancé - the man you love? - and asking a bunch of strangers to diagnose him.

If you aren't happy at this stage in your lives, then do both of yourselves a favour and don't marry him because after 10 or 20 years everything will annoy the life out of you and you'll make his life a misery over them too.

Firstly I admit that I haven't read the whole thread. I am an engineer and I work with all types of engineers, and worse than that academic engineers, and I don't find his behaviour odd at all . I would have done the cockroach thing out of curiosity, not the mouse, but that's probably just because I am very squeamish. As engineers we are taught to be curious about how things work and to require proof. Having said I don't think he's odd that doesn't mean that other people would not think he was, if you do them maybe he isn't for you. He is unlikely to change.

What did you hope to achieve with this thread? Did you genuinely want the opinions of others? I ask this because you don't seem to be engaging much with posters here. You're not entring into discussion over points raised about your compatibility or about his unusual behaviours. So, I wonder where you want to go with all of this. Do you want reassurance that he is indeed unusual, as you believe, or do you want reassurance that you will both work these differences out long term? Are you seeking 'permission' to end this relationship? You say you have lost respect for him - where do you see things going in the future? If you see youself staying with him, then realistically, how will you overcoming this loss of respect and both learn to tolerate each other?

Don't marry a man you have so many doubts about. You will be just as unhappy, AND bound by a marriage contract.

He doesn't sound so bad to me. I like logically precise, questioning and rational people who have a healthy curiosity about the world. I dislike irrational, overly emotive people who can't explain their thinking. And yes, if i ask someone a very simple question such as "why do you need an extra day off when you have had 14? it is such a simple question I would expect some sort of answer, and yes I might likely question the rationale behind that too!

Very often what is interesting isn't what people think, but how they think. People can tell you very easily what they are thinking, but rarely can emotive people who rely on feeling and emotional intelligence who make subjective judgments or rely on authority opinion, tell you how they reach their "opinion"

Opinion isn't really worth much, feel free to ignore mine

My fiance and I went to a cheap hot dog place yesterday. I found the place on the internet and they had $1 hot dogs every Tuesday so I suggested we check it out.

When we arrived, the place was busy and loud and there were no other tables around as they were all reserved and people who wanted to eat either had to stand around or just sit on a reserved table before the people who reserved comes in. He then starts commenting on the efficiency of things in the restaurant, e.g. they should make a long table instead of having scattered tables around the place. This would allow people to all sit. I said to him they wanted to have scattered tables to have more intimate settings.

My fiance was annoyed with the environment of the restaurant and its inefficiency and started be withdrawn..looking around and not really speaking to me or enjoying the moment. I looked around and saw other couples who were talking and laughing without caring about the logistics of the restaurant and the nuisance of having to stand and wait. We ordered the hot dogs and it turned out that we had to buy something on top of the 1 dollar hotdogs to get the deal and therefore bought the chips which cost $8. The waitress also said they can't do takeaway.

When he looks at people e.g. the waitress, it is very serious and I can feel they feel uncomfortable. I'm quite an intuitive person when it comes to other people's emotions.

We brought some bags and took the hot dogs with us. When we took the food out and started eating, he kept going on about how the advertising was misleading and how the $1 hot dogs were contingent upon buying another items which were mostly overpriced e.g. drinks cost $15 and small chips cost $8. This maybe true, however in the big picture of things, we spent $12 amongst two ppl ($6 each so its not a big deal or that expensive).

He went on about this for a while, talking about how expensive it was and that we were duped. He said it would be cheaper to make it at home as a comparison (not that we should make it at home).

The other day, we went to a fish and chips place and the fish and chips cost about $23 together for one person. He complained about how expensive it was, and how we can make it at home for cheaper. We tried it at home and he calculated the cost of all the materials e.g. fish, spice, sauce etc and it was about $5 to 6 per fish.

We have a mortgage however are making okay wages at the moment to cover it off. If we put all our money in, which we mostly are, I think we can pay it off in like 5 years or under. We never go out and eat much, the above two examples are where we went twice in 1 year. Our total of going to restaurants is like 6 times this year (and not that fancy ones). We live with my parents to save money while renting out the apartment we have.

To me complaining about the price is okay, just once or twice but continuing harping on about it is quite annoying. He himself noted 'I'll stop bitching about prices now' after noticing himself going on about it.

I wouldn't say Im a spendthrift at all, Im a big saver too (Im Chinese but grew up in Australia). However when I met with my fiance on dates in the beginning, he usually never harped on about cost of things and they were much more expensive than what we are spending now.

What do people think of this behaviour? Do you think it will get worse? Is this a red flag of something to come?

Is this behaviour personally to you annoying if you find someone close to you in your life is engaging in the above?

Pretty much everyone has told you that what you think is what's important.

If you are resenting and being unhappy for his behaviour, then don't marry him.
Does it matter how other people would find it?

I think this relationship is coming to an end and you should split up. It doesn't seem to be improving and you don't need to spend your life with someone with whom you are not happy. Better to split up now than marry, divorce and have to share your assets.

Is he wondering whether living with your parents while renting out a home you could be occupying is worth it?

My dh knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. He will always say it's cheaper at home and that we can make it (whatever it is) better, which is generally not true imo. It is annoying and his carping puts me off going out for food, though that used to be one of my favourite things. The last time we ate out was on my birthday the year before last - May 2014. I do NOT advocate following my example.

You are not compatible, and the divisions between you will become great divides, abysses. Bite the bullet, buy him out.

This is a bizarre thread.. You both sound like two peas in a very weird pod

Maybe he disected the mouse incase the babies where still alive?!