Communication issues

[JumpstartMondays]

I've NC for this one.

DH and I have been together for about 18yrs and have two small children under 4.

DH has difficulty with communicating and I no longer have the patience or headspace with him for it, it's driving me insane.

He'll start a conversation with a single word and assume I know the rest of the information intrinsically. E.g. "photo". Then he'll slowly build up from there with guiding questions from me:

DH "photo "
Me: "Pardon?
DH: "you know that photo "
Me: "What photo do you mean?"
DH "Passport photo"
Me "Oh you need a new passport photo then?"
DH "No we can use one we already have."
Me "Hang on, you need a passport photo for something?
DH "yeah my parents"
Me "so your parents need a passport photo?"
DH: "no not them"
etc etc

Then we go around in circles for about 10 minutes like this until the almost full information is shared and it transpires that he spoke to his parents 2 weeks ago and they have signed up our child to something or other without my knowledge and require a passport photo to complete the application which they have been chasing DH for because it's been 2 weeks since they asked for one.

This is how all conversations end up these days and I just don't have the patience for it any more with 2 small children and me as the default go-to parent.

The analogy I would give to explain it is an alphabet one: he starts at z, then with probing he'll return to d, back to a, skip to s, return to u, back to m, miss out n, o, p and then land at y when really he needs to start with a, then end at z.

Where can I point him towards to help him understand / learn how to effectively communicate!?

Wondering if this is new, or if he has always been like this, OP.

I'm not sure if he's always been like this to be honest but I do know that it's been a very long time and certainly from before we had kids (back when I had an abundance of patience). These days admittedly my patience is spent on our two small children.

@JumpstartMondays jesus!!! no wonder you took so long to have kids!!!! time. bed. shower. hug. sex........

Stop guessing what lies behind the one word.
The only response is, 'I don't know what you're talking about '.

Followed by 'still don't know' till he can talk in complete sentences

I've tried this approach and it ends up with him interpreting that I can't hear him 😫

Ahh well that's a classic "he said he wasn't ready" story. Now he wishes we'd had the babies 5 years earlier because he's not adverse to having a third child.

Sometimes I feel like he's the third child!

Sorry, I've got no advice that doesn't involve violence. And clearly that's not OK.

@thistimelastweek 😫 throwing a little book of grammar at him?

Certainly extremely frustrating and stressful.
I asked about the length of time because it sounds as if there may be a neurological aspect to it.
If so, it would be beyond the scope of a GP, but have you ever asked about it?

Is there something wrong with him? Developmentally? I would lose my mind dealing with that - even before you throw two tiny children into the mix!

You are so much nicer than I am.
I was thinking more along the lines of baseball bats.

This sounds like the 3 year olds I work with. You'll have to tell him to 'use his words' and maybe give him a reward sticker when he does!! Joking aside, is he exhausted, do the kids sleep? Dh says when I was really sleep deprived I used to slur my words a bit. He may be too exhausted to engage and can't process properly. If this is the case definitely talk to a GP. One of the causes of my exhaustion was medical.

First I think you need to tell him exactly what he is doing and why it isn't OK. He is making you do the thinking and talking for him. I think stop enabling him by guessing. Just say OK then, tell me the rest when you are ready. Don't help him find the right words. If you have time just wait expectantly saying nothing until he clarifies. If he talks in code just say I'm sorry I don't understand that. He will soon break the habit, hopefully.

Actually I have wondered that for a while now and encouraged raising a question about it with the GP for years but he is so reluctant. He can also be really forgetful and uses that as a response in an argument "but you know I can't remember things!" and yet chooses to do nothing about it.

I think he doesn't like to believe there might be something underlying.

Yes, it's difficult for a lot of people, I think men especially, to accept that there may be something wrong.
How is his health generally?

I am often guilty of having "the other half of the conversation " in my head and then forgetting that my DP wasn't actually privy to it. That doesn't sound like what's going on here though,and I really do think that a trip to the GP might be in order. His thought processes don't sound particularly healthy.

@Alalalalalongalalalalalonglonglilong he gets the most sleep of all of us, I do all the night wakings (3 or 4 for the youngest, a few times a week for the eldest) so I'm not convinced it's that.

It might be that he has some sort of processing issue perhaps.

He knows exactly what he's doing and whenever we talk about it it ends in argument where it's always my fault. But then again 'what it is' that is my fault I'm none the wiser.

I'll stop enabling him by guessing and see where we get to.

Start playing him at his own game.

"Photo"
"Giraffe"
"Passport Photo"
"Giraffe in a tutu"
"Kids passport photo"
"Giraffe in a tutu playing the bagpipes"
"What are you on about?"
"I don't know, what the fuck are you on about?"

@JumpstartMondays here is something for him to watch! oops was going to send you a video but it wont allow me! try looking for " how to make a sentence"!!!

OP you have the patience of a saint. I'd just tell him after the first word that I won't be helping unless he tells me what he wants clearly, in a complete sentence

"Photo" - it's not a question, so ignore him until he asks one.
I think some ND is behind this, he talks as it appears in his brain and he doesn't even have all the pieces himself until you've gradually prized it out.
Photo, is the notion stage, then he's working out himself why it came randomly into his head at that moment. He's a man who gets random thoughts about stuff that does actually need doing but hasn't interpreted why it's appeared.
You could try
Him: "photo"
You "think around it some more until you know how it links in to other things, then tell me, at the moment you are being abstract".
If he has to work through each stage verbally, because when he does it in his head he's forgotten by the end what he was on about, I'd take a punt on it being ADHD.

I hate to say it but I also talk like this, although I’m getting better. I had a traumatic childhood and was constantly overwhelmed and preoccupied. I only had half a brain in the real world at any one time and the other half was in lala land. So my brain would grope around for whichever piece of news it needed to share and it would come up with a couple of key words that it threw out. The rest of the message was a piece together exercise.
adhd meds will help but they aren’t really getting to the root of the problem. Your husband doesn’t want to go to the doctors because he knows his brain is working fine, it’s just in a self soothing white noise world.

Is he like this with other people?

This must cause him serious problems at work. How does he manage that?

Yes. Unfortunately his parents joke about it saying "you have MET my son, haven't you?"

He works from home and conducts most of his business by email so he has time to process, construct and proof read what he needs to express.