DH’s loud talking, interrupting, talking over everyone…at the end of my rope

[Anonymous]

*Sorry I am not sure why I said “fit”
Maybe the juxtaposition surprised me.

That must be it. It’s like a hidden disability

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Female here. I am dating now in my 40s.
Three fit guys I dated had hearing problems. Same age range as me. I found it strange at first. Each had some excuse

Now I think a good amount men in their 4os must having hearing loss. it’s a thing

Constant use of headphones? I’m not kidding. My husband wears them a lot, and I’m increasing finding that I have to repeat myself with him quite a bit.

[Anonymous]

NP. A couple of things:

1) agree with PP who says speak quieter when he talks louder

2) I do cues so he can do "anticipatory listening." Basically I'm assigning him a job. Looks like this:

"I'm going to tell you what happened as I was checking out at Safeway today, just listen to the whole thing then we can discuss"

"I have to tell you about my shoulder--I've already got the problem solved though, so just listen. It's taken care of. I just want you to know what's going on." (in this example I'm stopping the 'jump-to-fix-the-problem' phenomenon.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you think he has hearing loss? That could explain a lot of this.

Agree. This was my first thought. My dad is hearing impaired and there were many years where he didn’t realize.

[Anonymous]

I don't spend any time socializing with DH and other people for this reason

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Female here. I am dating now in my 40s.
Three fit guys I dated had hearing problems. Same age range as me. I found it strange at first. Each had some excuse

Now I think a good amount men in their 4os must having hearing loss. it’s a thing

Constant use of headphones? I’m not kidding. My husband wears them a lot, and I’m increasing finding that I have to repeat myself with him quite a bit.

Could be, for sure. Or loud music / concerts. I ran w an audiologist who said that there is some specific decimal number to aim for. I bet no one follows that. Men can be more extreme than women (just my experience).

[Anonymous]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0271530921000525

"To sustain the energy of social occasions, Italians often engage in a form of casual conversation that prioritizes sociability and the production of cheerful and vociferous ‘talking together’. This form of mundane talking (chiacchierare) features much simultaneous speaking and no competition for turns at talk, hence differs significantly from common conversational practices in many Anglo-American societies, demonstrating how the rules for conversation are far from universal. Conversational techniques used to accomplish talking together are described, including vocal gestures, repetition, prosody, rhythmic speaking, crescendos, and celebrations. Alongside voicing, listening is considered, and shown to be a critical component of sociable simultaneous talk."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Female here. I am dating now in my 40s.
Three fit guys I dated had hearing problems. Same age range as me. I found it strange at first. Each had some excuse

Now I think a good amount men in their 4os must having hearing loss. it’s a thing

Constant use of headphones? I’m not kidding. My husband wears them a lot, and I’m increasing finding that I have to repeat myself with him quite a bit.

Could be, but also lots of ear infections as a kid, loud music without headphones, being in the military, careers involving loud sounds without ear protection (dentists often have hearing loss), taking ototoxic meds. I know a lot of men with hearing loss.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:ADHD

+1

My MIL does this. When DC was diagnosed with adhd, it occurred to me MIL’s nonstop talking is from anxiety and/or adhd.

Spouse tells MIL to stop or point out the interrupting. While they seem aware and even ashamed at times, they keep doing it. It’s like they can’t control it.

DC who has adhd can talk nonstop but seems able to be aware and stop doing it too.

[Anonymous]

Meanwhile, this poor male loud-talker … we have diagnosed him with several things now. … and perhaps he is just turning into his father and honing his old-man jokes.

Here is the thing: The alternatives are all the same. Variations of the same. Hang in there!

[Anonymous]

My lifelong best friend is married to a guy who behaves exactly like this. In addition to interrupting always with exhaustive personal anecdotes, he pontificates about stuff he knows even if he just learned it and the worst thing he does is he tells nearly the entire plots of movies or books despite the listener begging repeatedly for him to stop revealing spoilers. He’s ruined so many movies for me I refuse to talk about anything except the superhero ones because I don’t watch them anyway.

I live downstairs from them in a split level we share - so in the times when I don’t have music or videos on, I can hear the monologues almost word for word he is that loud. He talks 3-4 times louder than my friend or her daughter. Sadly in recent years as she’s getting into her teen years, the daughter has started to exhibit similar conversation habits - very loud center of attention voice and rambles on and on about the same thing despite the point having clearly been made. At Xmas this year she engaged in a couple such episodes so it was like a back and forth between her and her dad who was dominating the conversation over nearly a dozen other people.

Both of them suffer from social anxiety disorder and I suspect this is at the root. They aren’t actually comfortable in their own skins and feel a compulsion to talk to fill space and in some way control the situation. A therapist might know how to help them with skills if they admitted the issue but he’s never had any interest in that route.

I have a lot of sympathy for my friend because her life is not just a ton of servitude (she does the overwhelming load of housework and family management) but she rarely if ever gets any quiet time except if they are both out of the house. Probably not a big surprise to hear that neither of them listens very well when she has something to say.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I think he may be on the autism spectrum in terms of not knowing when to shut up, not knowing interrupting is rude, and not understanding your years-long complaints.

But also he may have hearing loss that has progressed over the course of his life and that he does not admit to himself.

You need to get a whole lot more direct and annoyed, and insist on a audiology test until he gets one.

Also record conversations and play them back so he hears how loud he is compared to others. Tell him it's embarrassing in public. Refuse to go out with him, and tell him why.

Riiiiight....because everything in the OP points to ASD......

~DW and mother of people with ASD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Female here. I am dating now in my 40s.
Three fit guys I dated had hearing problems. Same age range as me. I found it strange at first. Each had some excuse

Now I think a good amount men in their 4os must having hearing loss. it’s a thing

Constant use of headphones? I’m not kidding. My husband wears them a lot, and I’m increasing finding that I have to repeat myself with him quite a bit.

My father always had an earphone in his ears when I was growing up. His hearing loss is profound. Now my DS walks around constantly wearing earbuds with music playing in the background as he goes about his day. I can see the hearing loss coming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I think he may be on the autism spectrum in terms of not knowing when to shut up, not knowing interrupting is rude, and not understanding your years-long complaints.

But also he may have hearing loss that has progressed over the course of his life and that he does not admit to himself.

You need to get a whole lot more direct and annoyed, and insist on a audiology test until he gets one.

Also record conversations and play them back so he hears how loud he is compared to others. Tell him it's embarrassing in public. Refuse to go out with him, and tell him why.

According to women here anyone with an unusual behavior must be on the spectrum lol.

DP. My dad does all this and is not on the spectrum. It’s just a lifetime of being treated as/thinking he is the wisest guy in a room.

IMO, it comes from a place of insecurity. My dad is a bit like this. He's a really smart man, but he was never educated (from a war torn country). He's very talkative and a showey person. My mom said he's lost a lot of friends over the years because of this. He now has almost no friends, and takes his frustrations out on my mom who was always a quiet person.

I also knew another guy who was like this and would always one-up someone's story. I know this guy had insecurity issues, too.

[Anonymous]

I second the idea to record him so he can hear how he comes across.

Have hearing checked and an ADD screen, both are likely. I used to interrupt more before diagnosis and treatment. Being less impulsive has benefited me in lots of other ways too.

I would try therapy and talk about how this impacts his relationships not just with potential friends but also you, his spouse, the kids, etc. It likely holds him back at work, too.