My partner is unable to fully engage with me on life matters

[ffspls]

My partner is unable to have deep conversations with me whether it is about my life, past or present, or about my hopes and dreams, or about our vision, ambition or hopes and plans for our family to be socioeconically stronger. He would typically just go quiet like shutting down or would change the subject to something uninmmportant or unintelligent or would tell jokes to deflect or undermine the importance of the subject.
Does anyone experience this and how do you manage it?

He sounds very emotionally and spiritually immature. What age are you both?

Sounds like my my MIL. Insecure, neurotic socially awkward and incapable of conversation beyond superficiality.

I dont know how to advise apart from make him understand you can't have a relationship where serious matters can't be discussed. He sounds emotionally immature so you'll have to tackle it with him head on and not skirt around it because that's what he would prefer out of avoidance habit.

Frustrating trait so you have my sympathy.

If my husband started wanting to talk about making our family “socioeconomically stronger” I’d likely glaze over a bit too until he got to the actual point he was trying to make.

Do you mean you want him to get a job that pays more, that you want him to start wearing a suit and to buy a BMW to impress the neighbours or are you wanting to double-barrel your name?

The answer is in your words in the OP.

He's unable and unintelligent. We can't change people, so you need to choose if you want to keep him as a boyfriend or move on to someone more compatible.

How long have you been together? How often do you have these conversations? If you continually try to have these deep conversations, perhaps he simply switches off.

A friend married a bloke like this. Nothing sensible to add to any conversation about ANYTHING. Just a pointless idiot. My mind boggles as to how she thought getting involved with him was a good idea. It must destroy her soul. It would mine.

You're mismatched due to being brighter than he is. If you want to stay with him you're going to have to do the heavy lifting of making a better life....this will only work if he's at least willing to take direction.

I very rarely jump onto the bandwagon of "leave ,OP". Because that is usually just an overly simplistic solution to things that could be discussed, worked out with healthy communication..

However, in this case, my advice is to not force it. If you identify that the emotional maturity and level of conversations he is able to have with you are not up to what you would need to be happy, you need to chalk it up as a loss, and move on. You don't "manage" something like that. You cannot change someone's way of thinking, you cannot force how they should feel according to your needs. This means you do not want the same thing from the relationship.

Some things you can compromise on, some things you can manage or get used to. But this? Sticking with this setup will result in years wasted, you growing sad, depressed and resentful. Ask yourself - where will this leave you in 5-10 years time? Unhappy, most likely.

You need someone who can meet your emotional intelligence, your level of thinking.. How could you form a meaningful, deep romantic relationship with someone who has the competence of a pebble? I mean no disrespect to him, but respect is also key in any relationship...

my dh can not have deep conversations well, I love them, so its frustrating for me and quiet lonely. I then find out he is Autistic not just quiet, years after becoming parents and our dd was diagnosed.

He is either immature or he doesn’t care about your hopes and dreams. By joking or changing the subject he is minimising it. More context is needed, how old are you, do you live together, what was his upbringing like…are his family the same ? Or does he not see your relationship as long term so these goals don’t matter to him ? Or is he just unambitious and doesn’t care about socioeconomic status ? It’s difficult to know without further context. I think you start by asking him why he is unable to have a serious mature conversation about these things as they are important to you. You might be mismatched if you don’t want or care about the same things.

There are many people who don't do intense planning. It's not necessarily a bad trait, so long as not taken to extremes. You have to do some planning, but socioeconically stronger does sound a heavy approach to the topic.

Is he responsible, do you have enough money generally?

Are you certain he's the under thinker, rather than you being the over thinker? Could it be there's an extreme on both sides?

What would happen if you made some financial plans and just put them to him?

We are in our 40s.
We have been together for 3 years and have a child together. We love together so of course we need to have important conversations naturally throughout our days.
Examples of conversations could be how to look for schools for our LO, hope and dream for LO, how we should present ourselves and our LO so they are not stereotyped or othered, how to coordinate to look for a new home as our landlord has served us notice,whether we could come up with some income generating ideas that will make us more passionate about work as he hates the 9-5 life, what kinds of friends we are keeping and what this means for our family, our boundaries and values as a family that we want LO to grow to learn, family holiday planning, discussions at doctors appointments where he wasn't present, issues at work and how to approach it. It could literally be anything - small goals, big goals. Just anything that's progressive beyond food, drink, sleep and socialise.

My DH is the same. It is what I liked about him initially, it was some lightness to my life when things had been so serious and deep before. It does get frustrating sometimes but I just go to my friends and colleagues for more intellectual discussion.

I dunno, it all sounds a bit pompous to me, “how to present ourselves” “what kind of friends we are keeping”, these types of things would make me eye roll and not want to engage either. What’s wrong with just being friends with people you enjoy spending time with?

You're both incompatible, you wrote he's unable to have the conversations you want, so you'll need to make the plans alone, or live separately and co-parent.

This is an intense list.

Could you maybe do some of this in a journal, and only discuss the more necessary bits?

If you're overthinking and he's under thinking you could get stuck in a battle of wills.

Some of the list is practical and some is emotional.

I could not handle being with someone with this list of worries.

What kind of friends you are keeping and what that means for your family? I’ve never discussed this, or thought about it.

As to “how to coordinate to look for a new home” that sounds like planning to make a plan. Why not just suggest a few homes to him and see if he has a preference?

To worry about this when being evicted from your home with a young child is quite strange.

I can’t imagine telling DH that we need to discuss what his circle of friends says to other people about our social standing.

“Could you please stop being friends with John? He has an England flag on his Maserati.”

We have 'superficial new parent friends' who take advantage of his simplicity and lack of plans and dictate and use up his time to serve them but there is no reciprocity. So, for example they will not make time for him 1-2-1 or allow our kids play together or they will exclude him from golf or cafe invites or they won't engage him in conversations in their group chat but they will ask him to babysit if they are out of options or go for walks with their wives or to continue to visit them (their wives) in their expensive homes but they will never honour our invites. We have visited friends over 10 times who live 5 minutes away but they always decline to come to our own home. The most they do is pass by and wave or text that they passed. I try to have conversations about why we need to ensure we have friends who pour into us too and to teach our LO these values, he can't handle it.

Also, my partner likes to dress in hoodies and those kinds of clothing and wants our LO to dress alike. We are professionals but I notice how people treat us differently based on how we look. We live in a high brow area where these things matter. There have been times that we've almost not been allowed into places for coffee or dinner or even viewing of children nurseries because of appearance. I'm not asking to be pretentious. I try to talk about how we need to dress our age and present ourselves better.
He can moan about how bad the experiences were but when I try to raise conversations on how the world works and how we could give our family an advantage, he can't or won't engage.

These are the most minor conversations. There are practical things like I book home viewings, we go to view and he is unable to discuss the homes we just viewed. He just buried his head in the sand until I raise it.

“We are professionals but I notice how people treat us differently based on how we look. We live in a high brow area where these things matter.”

You are renting and are being evicted, you need to better prioritise your concerns.

Also that’s not what highbrow means, it’s not a synonym for posh, or wealthy, or desirable.

He wishes we could go on a family holiday. I mention that LO will need a passport for that. He shuts down and leaves me to sort it all out and it was like pulling teeth to get him to pause to choose dates and destination so we can book hotel and flights. He just wants the final outcome without being overwhelmed by the process.

I see your point OP and I think variations of the conversations you describe are important too. Does he make jokes because he's embarrassed? Or he's just a bit dim?

You aren't compatible.
It happens.

He sounds like a normal bloke, while you have middle class aspirations. Is English your first language?

You sound like very different people. That can work but you need to acknowledge that first rather than keep trying to make him change.

Deep and meaningful conversations about hopes and dreams ... I'm not sure what you mean. If you are one of those people who wants to spend ages waffling on about vision amd inspiration rather than actually cracking on with doing it and/or coming up with tangible suggestions of what it means practically, then that sounds pointless and irritating.

If you mean that all life changes and decisions need to be made and driven by you, then I get that is frustrating. My husband is similar. He'd have a vague idea that for example we will have another child ... one day, that we'd move to a bigger house ... one day, that he's up for a summer holiday abroad but those things stayed vague until I took charge, did all the research and preparation and made it happen. He'd have the power of veto and I'd give options such as what would be your first preference out of two or three options.

It's annoying in one sense because he gets a lovely life with lots of things all sorted by me. BUT the big advantage for me is that I pretty much choose everything - how many kids we've had and when, when to move house and which one to buy, how is decorated and furnished and where we go on holiday. That's the pay off and I'm happy to live with it. Would it help you to see things like that?

I have to say though, leave the poor man to choose how to dress himself. He's comfy in his hoodies! I'm a partner in a law firm amd on my WFH days I wear leggings and hoodies. It does not bother my clients on Teams calls (they are mostly wearing comfies themselves and they are posher/richer than me). If my husband nagged me to wear a smart shirt and blazer when i wanted to be comfortable I'd tell him to fuck off and stop trying to control me.

If your friends and neighbours judge him for what he wears rather than for who he is, then I think they are the shallow and vacuous ones.

I may have totally misunderstood. If so, sorry!