My husband does not speak. *MNHQ edited title*

[HelpWendy]

My husband is so so so so so quiet. Unless he is making idle chit chat with a friend or acquittance. Very good at asking surface level questions and maintaining a fairly unenergetic but basic conversation. Absolutely nothing more than that, it's like he physically can't.

I've gone through the ringer thinking I expect too much, memories of pre marriage now make me think that he just went along with me or entertained my chat.

But there's nothing. I am finding it unbearable and horrifically lonely and depressing. 2 little kids and my heart is breaking thinking of a broken or not broken marriage.

But I'm stuck and although he has absolutely nothing to say about anything other than the dishwasher or whether we need milk he is a good person.

What would you do. I'm 40 and genuinely scared of a dead future.

I've posted before but keen to know of any other women whose husband's literally say nothing substantial.

Haven't RTFT, but I think with all this WFH and suppression of socialising and activities outside the home, a lot of couples are struggling to come up with anything of interest to talk about. But it sounds as though he's generally a good bloke, and you have children together, so worth putting in the effort.

Can you think of a project that you could embark upon together that would bring you closer and give you a common goal to work towards? You could try Couch To Five K, or Park Run. Or maybe theres an evening class you could attend together, once such things are happening again...learning Italian, having guitar lessons. Or perhaps there is a room of your house that could do with refurbishment, or part of your garden. Sit down together and plan out how you would like it to look...an aquarium? A garden pond?

Alternatively, have a look at online journals such as The Conversation or The Atlantic for ideas. You might find a topic that both of you find interesting, and it sparks debate.

Hi @HelpWendy, I have had a look at your previous posts and it seems your DH is being assessed for ASD which may explains some of his difficulties communicating to you in the way you would like.

However, difficulties or not, you seem very unhappy in this marriage and the dilemma is perhaps your guilt at wanting/needing to get out? I can totally understand that feeling but do you really need to sacrifice yourself to keep the status quo.

My ex husband was dismissive avoidant. He could not tolerate intimacy and couldn't understand why anyone else would want that. He behaved in very selfish ways that maintained his need for independence. Marriage, his way, made him happy and content. It made me lonely, resentful and miserable. To the outside world he looked the good guy.

Did it make me a bad person to get out? To some people, yes, it did but they weren't living my life. Could I have stayed? No, I would have ended up having a mental breakdown. It is very difficult to leave a marriage when you think you don't have a good enough reason, particularly when other people don't understand your pain but ultimately do you want to spend the rest of your life accommodating this?

Hi @HelpWendy, I have had a look at your previous posts and it seems your DH is being assessed for ASD which may explains some of his difficulties communicating to you in the way you would like.

However, difficulties or not, you seem very unhappy in this marriage and the dilemma is perhaps your guilt at wanting/needing to get out? I can totally understand that feeling but do you really need to sacrifice yourself to keep the status quo.

My ex husband was dismissive avoidant. He could not tolerate intimacy and couldn't understand why anyone else would want that. He behaved in very selfish ways that maintained his need for independence. Marriage, his way, made him happy and content. It made me lonely, resentful and miserable. To the outside world he looked the good guy.

Did it make me a bad person to get out? To some people, yes, it did but they weren't living my life. Could I have stayed? No, I would have ended up having a mental breakdown. It is very difficult to leave a marriage when you think you don't have a good enough reason, particularly when other people don't understand your pain but ultimately do you want to spend the rest of your life accommodating this?

Thank you so much for all the replies. I will get to reply once home fr work and kiddos in bed!

Are you asking open and probing questions, ones that could encourage some creative thinking, such as "what is your wildest fantasy?" Or "if you were prime minister, what change would you make that I wouldn't expect?"

OP's married to the man, not interviewing him for middle management in a telesales company!

@WyldStallions

Generalising madly:

Many women, and many NT people use speech as bonding. They have conversational rituals and routines which are not really about what you say but about shared culture (eg how are you? I'm fine, how are you?). They enjoy speaking about trivial things that can't really matter to the other person, such as a nice cake they ate - but then the other person relates about a nice cake they are, and so there is a shared experience and this feels like closeness in terms of shared values etc

Some men, Neurodiverse people, and especially autistic people, often bond over subjects. They are typically less interested in content-lite bonding speech and more interested in discussing matters that are important to them. This is where you get someone who doesn't "chat" much but if you ask them about their area of interest (let's say, Middle Eastern politics ) they will talk with enthusiasm and passion and at length. And if they find another person who shares that passion, or will indulge it, the conversation will flow all evening.

This can feel like a personal rejection if you have been trying to chat with the same person and got nowhere. But it's not really personal. It's different brain types doing their thing.

You have a point here but. . .

MY FIL is almost certainly on the spectrum (not diagnosed) and can talk with enthusiasm and passion about how margarine was developed. (Food science was the area he worked in before he retired.). But who wants to hear about that all evening, repeatedly?

If he had MORE areas of interest, that would help enormously. But he doesn't. Hardly reads, never has. Hardly watches TV, never has. He has a PhD etc but seems almost entirely lacking in curiosity.

In addition, he lacks any kind of warmth or even, it would appear, basic humanity. States boldly that the Holocaust was "partly the Jews' fault." Comments like this mean that I don't want to talk with him about anything, and I don't suppose I'm alone in that.

I accept that his communication problems are not meant personally. . . .but that doesn't make it any easier. I'm just thankful I don't live with him. To have someone like this as a partner would be soul-destroying.

Was he like this pre-marriage?

I think if he was always this way then it's not really reasonable to expect him to change now.

Hi everyone. Firstly wow thank you so much all the comments. Thanks for taking the time to write. You've raised so many things that I think about everyday, it's all consuming. There are a few on point comments I want to respond to but I will have to tomorrow as my week has turned out mental.

But for now in the round.

Someone mentioned bonding over chat and someone else the to and fro or receprocity of conversations, this is one of the keys things. It's like talking to a sponge that just absorbs you words. I'm a chatter but certainly not a chatter box, I have my own inner world but I guess I get energy from conversations sometimes. There is no and fro, it's jolted and awkward at times when I see the look in his eyes when I can see that he is scrambling to come up with something, anything that he thinks I'll want to hear. Since I raised this, pretty early in our marriage, he tries, more in the last year from marriage counselling but it doesn't feel authentic at all and there is no flow.

Did I notice it before marriage. Sure I knew he wasn't wild and wasn't going to grab the microphone in the middle of a party, but I didn't realize the extent at all. Yes maybe he masked and that got tired. Also marriage there is a best foot forward bells and whistles but I didn't expect it to fade to the extent it has. I do ask him questions but to be honest I've noticed I have started to withdraw either because it is exhausting when it is one sided and or also because he doesn't seem to have anything of substance or sort of anything believable back. Again almost scripted. I initiate everything but I've gotten tired and my sense of hope has seriously dwindled.

He is academically intelligent but has no curiosity at all, doesn't seem to ponder me or anything. Which grates with me because that's was I thrive on. I guess when we married he had the basics and he was happy enough with that.

Someone mentioned that I am perhaps feeling so guilty that I need this from a life partner and that it's breaths life into me. I don't need constant chat or constant laughter but some to keep life going. He has admitted that laughter doesn't appear to be that important to him relative to me. It's always so flat.

Am I guilty? Yes. Racked with guilt. Guilt of making him feel inadequate. Guilt I might abandon him, guilt for wishing there were parts to him that there aren't and of course guilt that I may break up our family. When he is a good father and good hearted man. But it's becoming appearent that there is nothing he can do. He's pretty much admitted it and I can see that it is breaking his heart.

I am finding it so hard to accept that these fundamental basic and gorgeous moments in life won't happen between me in him. That my kids won't grow up in a rich I suppose environment. Surely this will influence their characters in the future. That frightens me.

I frightened that I am not as strong as I think I am and about how I will manage. Sometimes, pretty occasionally in fairness I feel some anger, that I've been cheated.

Yes he is going through an ASD type assessment and guess what I feel so many things about that, guilty that I have steered him in that direction, and terrified of what will unfold for him and then may be me abondoning him.

Re Covid yes I'm sure this has influenced things, but I remember being pregnant with my first child and saying to my mother in a dismayed baffled kind of way, he just doesn't talk to me mum. And her putting it down to adjusting to married life and me thinking I must have been out of whack with hormones etc.

As time went on and I had my second it became more and more obvious, the second baby was IVF so between it on, were pretty celibate tbh.

I used to be great fun! Engaging, outwardly caring, micheivous in a good way and I can feel these parts of me fall away. I know it is a struggle with young kids but I'm started to realize now that I'm so sad there hasn't been the regular happiness at this early stage. That there has been this flatness throughout.

And then he would do anything for me. Anything he can. And there lies the problem and I am devastated that I am causing him turmoil and terrified of the outlook.

Also one or two last things.

I have tried to get me head around this for a good few years. And I fear it's become almost an obsession because I cannot fix it. And I am stuck and can't move forward or back. As well I know I'm getting more and more down about it. I cannot visualize any future, I was all about the future in the past and what it might bring. He never ponders the future or what we want from life and if I ask hell admit that his needs are pretty basic. I don't want to be down for my kids. I am scared that before I do anything it will get worse and I won't cope.

And finally the real head f@#k is that only I few people get it. My own family cannot understand or won't even entertain me when I try to talk about it because on the surface he can to the chat and ask the questions, like work, weather etc but from the outside I can see that he has perfected this and they may not notice but he doesn't contribute a lot in those conversations, he relies on the other to make the joke or interesting observation until it peters out. But in writing that I feel like I'm not being fair. He does chat about a few things that interest him, not in an animated way but enough.

So if I leave everyone is going to thinking I am a walking ungrateful bit@h.

Maybe I've just made my bed.

Finding the concept of leaving surreal and make believe.

@Dogoodfeelgood I think your comment is pretty bang on. It has taken 7 years of marriage to figure it out and I am exhausted.

Mine is like that. I too feel there may be shades of ASD but what we now know, after him being a year in psychodynamic therapy is that the lack of curiosity and engagement came from being part of a family where the adults had no interest in anything beyond who was doing what amongst their relatives, and where the children were absolutely crushed, were allowed no input, choice, voice.

If he, as a little child, managed to create any joy for himself and expressed it, the reaction was to punish him, or yell at him, or shame him. So he became frightened of being, or appearing to be happy, and shut himself down so as to survive by becoming as invisible as he could. As an adult this fear manifested as OCD and all sorts of fears and anxieties, and I must say I thought we’d ne

But gradually, he is becoming the person he wants to be. Its expensive, slow and painful, but so rewarding to witness and share.

OP,
Don't have any more children.

This is who he is.
Highly unlikely he'll change.
This is who he is.

You don't need permission to leave your marriage.

Make your plans over the next couple of years.

Develop a life without him.
Take up a sport, book club.

Spend time away from him.

Make sure he spends time on his own looking after the children to prepare for separation.

I hope you are working?
Start saving and figuring out how you will do it alone.

It is so much lonlier to live with someone you have zero connection than to live on your alone.

I think I'd stay a little longer to support him the through the diagnosis process and then make steps to leave the marriage. It's very sad yes, but you can't go on like this forever. Your fundamental needs aren't being met and can't be met by your husband. It's not his fault but it doesn't mean you have to stay.

If he's a good man/father like you say, perhaps you could have a really amicable co-parenting relationship. It's a very tough situation but ultimately your wellbeing is sliding and you'll be a shell of your former self after decades of this.

I used to be great fun! Engaging, outwardly caring, micheivous in a good way and I can feel these parts of me fall away. I know it is a struggle with young kids but I'm started to realize now that I'm so sad there hasn't been the regular happiness at this early stage. That there has been this flatness throughout.

OP you don't have to sacrifice yourself for him. Yes, relationships involve compromise but this goes beyond that. And I know it's easier said than done, but try to ignore what other people might think. They're not on the inside of the relationship. Many people who are perfectly fine to spend half an hour with now and then are not my ideal life partner and I think most people recognise this.

I agree with PP - stay through his process of diagnosis but then start making plans to leave. Find the old, mischievous you. The alternative for the children is watching you become sadder and sadder and having a fairly disengaged father. Neither you nor he is at fault really, I don't think. It just isn't working and probably cannot work in the long term. I suspect once you've started to make plans to leave you'll actually get a sense of relief (as well as maybe terror!)

And finally the real head f@#k is that only I few people get it. My own family cannot understand or won't even entertain me when I try to talk about it because on the surface he can to the chat and ask the questions, like work, weather etc but from the outside I can see that he has perfected this and they may not notice but he doesn't contribute a lot in those conversations, he relies on the other to make the joke or interesting observation until it peters out. But in writing that I feel like I'm not being fair. He does chat about a few things that interest him, not in an animated way but enough.

I can totally relate to that and even now after ten years out of the marriage I still feel resentful and annoyed that no one else could see or understand what he was like in private compared to his 'public face'.

Especially as I realised through therapy that he was emotionally abusive throughout the marriage using manipulation and passive aggressiveness to keep me in place. I do think he knew he was lacking as a marriage partner but didn't want others to know. People still describe him as a good guy which doesn't make me guilty anymore but irks my sense of justice and fairness. I suffered a lot of flack from other people when I left, including my own family, but it was worth it for the life I have now.

It doesn't actually matter what other people think. They don't walk in your shoes and live the unfulfilled life you are suffering with him. He may genuinely be a good guy but people don't own other people and if you need to get out, get out. He will survive, as will you.

@GelfBride

Is he thick? I have met 'quiet' people but a lot of them are quiet because they don't have an original thought in their head due to being thick as two short planks.

If this is the case, it could be worse. He could be thick and yammering on letting the world know he's thick. Not that that's any comfort.

My SIL is genuinely so thick it's a miracle she has reached adulthood. My DBro has come to realise it and his life is stifling as a result. I can't see him sticking the marriage out if I'm honest. He goes out all the time just to mix with 'normals'. It's no life.

I think 'thick' people often don't have deep conversations, but they're quite often not quiet at all. They may shout and scream. There's also the trope of the very intelligent person who doesn't speak much. Some of them are so arrogant that they think there's no point them trying to explain things to us normals.

@psychomath

Are you asking open and probing questions, ones that could encourage some creative thinking, such as "what is your wildest fantasy?" Or "if you were prime minister, what change would you make that I wouldn't expect?"

OP's married to the man, not interviewing him for middle management in a telesales company!

Lol.

There's also the trope of the very intelligent person who doesn't speak much. Some of them are so arrogant that they think there's no point them trying to explain things to us normals.

There's a lot of tall poppy syndrome, in England at least, and it starts at school with bright children being bullied. I quickly learned to keep quiet as saying anything, even just answering easy questions in class, would at best result in jeering. You really didn't want to be the clever kid.

I mean you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Speak up and you're an arrogant know-it-all, keep quiet and you're too arrogant to bother explaining stuff. The latter however is much less effort.

I agree with you about Tall Poppy Syndrome and bright kids being sneered at and bullied in school Bertam

However I also recognise the type of person described here:

I have no doubt that a future government will look to improve the Co-operation Agreement.

I've been on the wrong end of a few of those in my time.