Husband won’t listen about my day

[deafears26]

But I have to listen about his.

DH works long hours in a difficult environment. Think prison services etc, so it can be quite intense although he has a niche role which definitely has its upsides for him.

He will get home and will need to “offload” about his day. Telling me about what he did and the latest upsets between colleagues etc.

Occasionally he might ask a purely perfunctory question about my day but then will immediately say he has to go do something and will leave the room before I had the chance to answer!

It makes me feel like he has zero interest in me, and my function is to simply allow him to offload and decompress. If I question it, he says he’s had to deal and manage difficult situations all day and he’s basically at capacity in dealing with other people (including me it seems).

It’s basically made me switch off completely. I changed jobs a couple of years ago and I remember thinking at the time that DH would likely never have found out about it unless I directly told him, because he never would have asked!

I don’t know why it’s grinding me down so much.

It’s grinding you down because he’s treating you like a support human! What does he say when you say ‘Nigel, I’ve just listened for an hour to you giving a blow by blow account of a riot on B wing. Why can’t you spare five minutes to listen to me talk about my feud with Mel in HR/ Angela in Accounts having a fling with her head of dept etc?’

Suggest you take turns to speak about your day first?

Has he got a therapist? (Apart from you!)

@AllMyPunySorrows that’s when he says he’s been dealing with difficult people/situations all day and he’s at capacity.

You’re absolutely right - I feel like a support human

@NosdacariadI could suggest that. Again though, I think he’d just be mentally waiting for his turn which would make the whole thing a sham.

No, no therapist. He wouldn’t agree to that, and it’s not like he needs intensive therapy just to talk about his day! As I say, quite a lot of it is just the petty “office politics” and it’s not big psychological stuff

What he's saying might be true, but I hope the rest of your relationship isn't as one-sided as this?

What's he like during your conversations generally - does he ask about you, value your opinions? Is he interested in spending quality time with you where you get to have conversation, not just sit in front of a screen? What's he like with sex? Compromises during disagreements? Does he show an interest in your interests, or in sharing things together?

If you feel like he has zero interest in you generally, listen to this feeling,not what he's saying or protestations to the contrary.

It might be that you're coming to the gradual realisation that what a lot of men seem to want isn't another human to love.

It's another human to be support human / assistant / therapist / sex provider / housekeeper / social diary organiser for them, and who they find useful in various ways.

That's not the same thing as love, and doesn't mean they'll ever be interested in you beyond the services you provide or what's directly relevant to them.

That is so disrespectful and would annoy me to! What’s he like when he hasn’t been at work all day? Does he listen to you then?

He’s very self centred! I’d make a point by changing the subject when he drones on only about his day, go run yourself a bath or paint your toenails if he won’t stop.

Then he needs to offload in some other context, whether that's to a colleague, supervisor, therapist, Chatgpt etc etc, rather than infodump on you and then claim he's 'at capacity', and can't bear to ask about your day. He's treating you like a toilet visit after a long car journey or something.

High-intensity roles usually have a built-in mechanism whereby there's someone to offload to regularly, though probably not daily. My sister has had a number of highly-challenging specialist roles, including counselling paedophiles, and there's always a supervisor to talk to. He needs to seek that out, or, if it doesn't exist, to find one.

I would tell him I wasn't up for being his support human.

Suggest that when he gets home, he goes and takes 30-60 minutes to himself to decompress. He could write it down if he needs to offload.

And when he comes back down, you expect him to treat you as an equal and offer you the same amount of interest, engagement and support as he does.

If he keeps doing it, in this particular circumstance, I might well be tempted to say "Dave, I've told you I'm not going to be your support human any longer. If you are at capacity, please go take some space for yourself. If you keep talking at me like this, I will leave the room". And following through until he learnt not to.

Yeah I'd be wandering off while he witters on in your shoes OP, why would you stand there absorbing his stress when there's no reciprocity? He's clearly not going to take on board that it's one sided or make any effort to change so you need to change your behaviour instead, just stop listening.

Every time he starts talking, walk off and say you have no capacity to listen after a long day. Maybe if he sees how horrible it feels he’ll change. And if he doesn’t then he’s a prick who is happy to make you feel you aren’t worth his time.

Do the same in return I guess. My DH drivels on about his job a lot and I admit I shut off most of the time. He talks about colleagues I’ve never met like I know them. Discusses issues at length but will then repeat the same issues later or the next day. It’s really tedious and boring to listen to so I zone out. He doesn’t often realise I’ve done this and just keeps going. It’s frustrating because I rarely talk about work to him, unless he asks and actively seems to want to know.

Just walk away or stonewall him when he starts drivelling on.

Treat him the same way he treats you - when he starts blithering on, say you have to go and do X now and walk off.

My wife comes home tells me all about her day at work and everything thats gone on and never ever asks about my day and in honesty i dont care. If she feels need to get things off her chest then I am happy to listen. If he treats you well besides this is it really something to massively fall out over. Of course if he is not listening If you have important things to say then its a completely different issue.

I

When he starts talking about his day say ‘I have to go stare at the wall’ and walk out. When he asks what you’re playing at say that’s what he does to you so why can’t you do it backs

In my experience a lot of men are very prone to this. Their work is obviously more important and their brows need soothing far more than anyone else's (especially a woman's). Basically they want mummy.

Would he be helpful though if he did listen? I would offload to dh and he'd say 'just leave then' or ' just get a new job then'.

He didn't understand that I wanted simply to vent.

I get the impression that he is pretty stressed and needs to offload (DH once worked for the emergency services and is still like this sometimes), so I get where he's coming from. Doesn't make it any easier for you though, does it?!

Maybe he views listening to you taking about your day as simply yet another problem for him to solve, and he just can't take any more.

Perhaps the solution to this would be to explain to him that you completely understand the stress he is under, and that you aren't intending to burden him with any more issues to add to his workload. Say that sometimes, you too just need to talk, and that all he needs to do is listen. Make sure he knows you are not expecting him to come up with ways for him to 'fix' the problems in your day. Just say that you are each one half of a couple, and it would be good if you were both able to just talk sometimes.

It’s the same for me, except my husband hardly ever talks about his day - we hardly talk at all.

Suggest to him that he needs to consider looking for a new job. He's clearly not coping with his current role and he seems unaware that it's taking such a big toll on his personal life. The current situation isn't sustainable.

When he comes in and starts going on about his day you get up and say I’m sorry but I’m at full capacity today and can’t deal with anymore and walk away do to him what he does to you shut him down he sounds like a selfish prick

He sounds tiresome.

Why would you assume that he always has to talk about serious work issues whereas her issues are about trivial little disagreements rather than serious working issues?

Absolutely this. When I used to try to talk to him about my own (also very stressful) job, I just got unrealistic platitudes. I also just wanted to vent and I didn't want unworkable “solutions”.

He knows I’ve got something very stressful going on at work at the moment and he’s not asked me once about it.

I get this, but he’s not talking about “the riot on B wing” as mentioned above. It’s more of the “Bob pissed off Jane again today and Clive needs to pull his finger out” office politics bollocks.