Communication often goes wrong with DP and I just can't work out why

[Clara9283]

I'm at my wits end...DP is loving, very patient, doesn't have a bad temper etc and we recently got engaged (he proposed). We're also TTC. Everything is going well, we both agree that life is good right now. No stress at work either. But whenever we have a conversation that involves some sort of planning, he just gets very defensive and it ends in a fight. Latest example - wedding plans. I've asked him what his ideas are, like where we should get married, when, etc...I imagined this being a happy and positive conversation. But all he could see were issues. 'This won't work because of abc, that won't work because of xyz'. I'm really not difficult about the wedding, I'm open for any ideas, from a big wedding somewhere to eloping just the two of us, so I don't see why this conversation would cause him stress. In the end he told me that I should just make a plan.

So today, one week later, we had a lovely Sunday, walk in the park, and I mentioned a wedding venue to him...I said that this one is currently on my list of possibilities, and asked him what he thought of it. But he got defensive again, asked me why I ask him because I know that he would be happy to go along with whatever I plan.....(to add, he just looked very uncomfortable from the moment I brought up the topic wedding).

I just don't understand what the problem is. It's in my mind a low stake, happy conversation. We're not even in a rush to book a venue yet, it's just talking about ideas.
I asked him, of course, and he just keeps insisting that he is fine and not upset, and then he asks me why I am upset.

Considering that he proposed very recently, I don't think that he doesn't want to get married. I asked him if he wants to get married but doesn't want a wedding and suggested to do registry office only, but again he asked me why I think that he has a problem with a wedding.

It's not the first time this happened. Although we are TTC (again he was the driving force at the beginning, he always wanted children. I'm on board as well, of course) he doesn't want to talk about how we'd organise ourselves with childcare etc. He wouldn't object if I just told him what to do, but he gets defensive when I try to make plans as a team. Very similar to the wedding situation - I know that he'd happily go along with whatever venue and setting I choose, but he seems to be unable to have a conversation with me about it.

Can anyone help me shed some light on this behaviour? Is he genuinely struggling with talking about plans?

Sounds like he’s being railroaded into marriage and children tbh. Sorry if I’m wrong OP but does he actually know you’re TTC?

Is there a reason for this rush? He doesn’t sound ready for any of it. How did you live together, did you move yourself into his house? Did he have a choice. Or was it you saying oh we should live together and he was like I’m yeah ok I spose so…

Whatever the truth if it all is, I’d have the wedding first in three years time and then the baby.

@Clara9283 "He's not lazy usually, he pulls his weight at home and if I ask him to do anything, he would do it. "

What happens if you don't ask him? Would you have clean clothes and plates? A full fridge? Dinner?

Op please don’t ttc until you have got to the bottom of this. I now believe that the self awareness is one of the most attractive attributes in a man. Unfortunately it took marrying someone who never apologised and never self reflected to learn that lesson.

Unless he is willing to do the self reflectIon to understand his behaviour then he will make a terrible husband and father and you’ll be here in ten years still asking for advice.

This!

I’d go very quiet about wedding plans and see what happens. See if he brings it up at all. If not, maybe he’s a commitment phobe? Likes the idea but mentally backs off afterwards.

(You can still get some venue ideas together and all the other stuff. Just don’t tell him and see what happens.)

You’re putting the cart before the horse too, TTC at this time. What’s he going to be like, as others have suggested, when planning life around child care?

Why not wait until after you’re married for TTC if you ever get that far.

Day to day stuff works without my prompting, like he would decide what we will have for dinner, go shopping and cook dinner without me saying anything or asking him to do it. It's the bigger stuff that needs some further thinking which is tricky. If it's something he needs to decide at work (although his job is not decision heavy) or if I give a task to him - I recently left it entirely to him to renovate a room in our house - he would make quick decisions without much contemplation, the downside being that it is often not the best one financially for him. I guess I'm the opposite, I overthink every single decision, so we are really not well matched in this aspect.

My DH struggles a lot with planning 'big' things like holidays etc. Not because he doesn't want to do it, but because he finds it totally overwhelming. He would spend hours researching every tiny detail and overthinking everything. So I do the planning and tell him when I've got a plan and I just say to him 'we're going to do X and X and X, that ok?'

I'm a bit like him, I think. Anything in my wheelhouse or where I feel confident I have all the knowledge I need, I can plan and make snap decisions easily. Other things I feel more overwhelmed by - I feel like I need to do a huge amount of research before I can even have a conversation. Otherwise all I bring to the conversation is a panicked "I don't know what I want, I don't know the answer to that". Especially when it's something where there are a million consumer options and prices and I just want the best deal. Buying a new fridge completely defeated me and I did just shove that job at DP.

DP is also a bit like this as well though, which is both good and bad. But it means we understand that when we're planning a holiday, for instance, this cannot be a spontaneous conversation that we spring on the other. We'll say, let's talk holidays this weekend, then over the week we'll go off and research flights, locations etc, then we have actual information to bring to the conversation. Or we'll do it over email.

Interesting that most posters are quick to leap to the "he's lazy, dump him" reaction. I've always felt that MN posters are more practical and organised than most, and extremely unsympathetic to people who are impractical and disorganised.

My first DH was like this. He avoided decision making so that he could blame me for anything that went wrong (as well as avoiding responsibility so that I shouldered most things).

After we split up, he sought treatment for anxiety and is now on citalopram among other things.

I hate to say this, but I wouldn't have a child with someone like that. If there are two people raising a child, you need both of them to be adults.

Hold fire on getting pregnant! You may well change your mind about this man

The wedding planning is fair enough it might not interest him

But you need to talk about what life would look like once kids arrive. How long your maternity leave is? Can you cope financially on SMP? It’s not very lovey dovey but these conversations need to be had sadly if you’re TTC.

My ex didn’t realise that being engaged meant planning a wedding.

He saw engagement as the next step in a relationship that may or may not end up in marriage.

If I had realised that sooner, dumping him would have been so much easier!

I’m exactly the same! Whatever it may be, if someone
asks me something my brain just collapses on itself and I start to feel overwhelmed. It’s weird, and it can be something really simple. My DH was doing some fencing at the weekend and asked if I wanted a gate put in in a particular place and I just couldn’t deal with it there and then. It’s ok if I have time to think about it.

This is exactly it.
This is the worrying part: he doesn't want to talk about how we'd organise ourselves with childcare etc. He intends to leave everything to you. Please be careful. You’ll be doing 100% of the work, decision making and arranging. The physical, mental and emotional load for you will be huge.

OP’s DP isn’t being put on the spot to make instant decisions though and he has had time to think about it. They’ve had several conversations about the wedding and he comes up with objections to every suggestion.

"The wedding planning is fair enough it might not interest him "

It's not "fair enough". It interests the OP- and part of being in a relationship is sometimes doing stuff you don't particularly want to because the other person DOES want to!

It doesn't sound like he actually wants to get married soon tbh.
Don't ttc yet. Decide if you want to be married to each other first

Don't do it OP, not until you've had couple's counselling. I married a similar man where I had to do all the thinking, planning and executing. It's frustrating and exhausting. And it's a stick he beats me with. I have to make decisions because he won't, then he blames me for making the wrong (in his eyes) decisions. It immobilises you as everything is always your fault. That will be your future.

Get counselling or leave. He's not behaving as a partner/equal.

My husband is like this. He cannot make decisions. Hates it. Will do anything he's told with no fuss or grumbling, and doesn't blame me for any decisions that go wrong. If anything he reassures me that he knows it's all on me and beats himself up that he should offer more input. I thought in the early days there were benefits. I suppose there are. But it's exhausting and lonely. Picking every hotel and holiday destination. Choosing the schools. The house. The car. The route to the airport. Which supermarket we use. What days we go out on. Where we'll eat. Should we fix the mortgage? It sometimes feels like another child. I'd never leave him nor do I want to- but I do daydream about chatting about which holiday we should go on next or debating whether we should have Indian or Chinese- I imagine those conversations as happy/ jokey and overwhelmingly "couply" in a way - whatever you babe - just isn't.

Quite honestly I don't think he wants to marry you. I certainly would not even think about TTC until you have sorted this out.
Unless you want to be bringing up a baby unmarried and have hardly any rights that married couples have.
It sounds very much like he is stringing you along.
There is no way I'd be marrying anyone showing this complete lack of interest in the wedding and the children's care.
At the very least I would expect complete honesty about what he actually wants and he isn't being honest at all.

@Gettingbysomehow
"Unless you want to be bringing up a baby unmarried and have hardly any rights that married couples have."

Those rights are easily obtained by unmarried people by a straightforward administrative process.

Have you talked about your communication issues with him? For example, when you're making up after the argument. Have you said - "I think we communicate in different ways, and that's why we clash. I tend to do [this], and you tend to do [that]. Then we misinterpreted each other in the moment, when we just want the same thing, but have different ways of getting there". And say that in the kindest, most loving way possible.

My DH and I have very different communication styles, which leads to misunderstanding and arguments. After we started to acknowledge our default ways of talking, and how the other person interpreted it, it helped a lot. Now we often go into the difficult conversations being more open about our intent and acknowledging how it might make the other person feel, but stating we don't want that outcome.

I.e., "I want to talk about [this aspect of our wedding]. I'm not bringing it up to make you feel pressured, but I have some ideas. I genuinely want to know what you think. Do you imagine there could be a problem with doing [this thing]." And he might say: "I'm not trying to be negative or dismissive, but that immediately sets off [this worry] because I think it sounds very expensive. We are trying to save for [this] as well." Then you might say "so I what I hear you saying is: you don't dislike the idea itself, but it feels unaffordable due to [reason]. OK, let me look at the costs and then we can go from there. You're right it might be way above our budget and we don't want to overspend".

Approaching things this way has massively helped me and my DH. It helps us communicate our core message "that sounds exciting but expensive", and diminish the 'details' that get in the way of communication due to misinterpretation/poor or different communication style (e.g. you're always dismissive, you never listen to my ideas, you always pressure me about costs, you're never realistic about finances).

Some people are better at planning and considering and discussing than others and/or enjoy it more than others. I accept that and this is true for both NT and ND people.

However, just because I don't enjoy something or aren't particularly good at it, doesn't mean that I can just decide not to do it.

Overall, I think society is more inclined to agree that if a man doesn't like doing something or finds it hard, he can just not do it (not all the time, not exclusively etc etc but often).

Dh is terrible at planning. He's not good at it and he hates it. In light of how his broader family and DS are, I'm pretty sure he has ADD and/or executive function difficulties. But the result was that over a long time, I took on more and more and it felt like I was a parent of 3 children and not just 2. And the tension and frustration in our relationship built and built and built.

Luckily, Dh is a sensible, kind, and considerate man and while it has been hard for him to realise that he doesn't get to just choose what he does and doesn't do, he has made a real effort and things are better.

Also, don't even consider having children with a man who is unwilling to discuss how the practicalities are going to work. Because this suggests that he thinks if he just ignores it, someone else will deal with it.

TTC with someone without having a very frank, sensible conversation to discuss what exactly life with a baby looks like for both of you (crucially when it comes to decision about working / mat leave / finances) is absolutely bloody mental.

Really, really not a good idea to do this OP. I think it would be best for you to stop TTC until you've had that conversation and only start again if you're proactively on the same page.

Don't rely on him just going along with what you want. Becoming a parent is too important, and too big a responsibility, to take risks like that rather than have difficult conversations.

And if you can't have a difficult conversation with someone, you definitely shouldn't be TTC with them.

I have one of these.

He isn’t lazy. He gets defensive because he hates being put on the spot (as some posters as have mentioned they do.) He has PDA so isn’t neurotypical.

What works:

Telling him that he doesn’t need to give me an answer but these are some things I’d like him to look at and come back to me on by the end of the week. (Ie consider in his own time).

Giving him closed choices. A or B not lots of possibilities