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Original poster

Communication issues

28 replies

JumpstartMondays · 31/03/2024 16:14

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!?

OP posts:
Original poster
JumpstartMondays · 02/04/2024 13:15

Happyinarcon · 01/04/2024 15:51

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.

I wonder what the root of his problem is.
I'm sorry to hear of your past trauma, thank you for sharing.

OP posts:
Original poster
JumpstartMondays · 02/04/2024 13:17

Opentooffers · 01/04/2024 15:43

"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.

How does ADHD present in adults?

OP posts:
gannett · 02/04/2024 13:34

JumpstartMondays · 02/04/2024 13:12

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

Edited
Show quote history

This sounds beyond irritating but if he's been like this all his life to the point where his parents joke about, I'm afraid he won't be changing any time soon.

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