How do I communicate with someone who can’t?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Someone who can’t read a two-word phrase, process it, and act on it is indeed stupid and/or using weaponized incompetence as a relationship tool.

This exactly. It’s not about the pasta. It’s about the fact that she can’t pass 1 simple task to him and he complete it effectively. In this relationship, she is clearly shouldering 95% of the mental load and it’s not that she’s angry about the type of pasta but more irritated that he can’t complete one task, meanwhile she’s keeping everything else afloat.

Additionally, it’s not a situation of her setting him up to fail or anything. She clearly wrote what she needed. Then when asked about it, he effectively shuts down the conversation by saying “you’re making me feel stupid!” Or “how was I supposed to know?”. Yeah sure she could let it go about the pasta, or the dog medicine or this or that… but at what point is she going to feel like she doesn’t need him? He’s not contributing to the teamwork of running a household. He’s creating more problems.

Yup, one step FW, two steps back.
He’s sidelined himself and needs more sidelining.

At some point one needs to ask, why is he even there?

It’s not like he makes enough income to hire a house keeper, errand boy, and repairman to fix all his mistakes and messes. He’s a net liability to the household big time. And worse if you factor in all his rages and explosions.

[Anonymous]

The same thing used to happen with my ADHD/ASD husband at the peak time of work+kid stress. He couldn't hear/couldn't process/would forget our conversations, and then, due to emotional dysregulation, anxiety and mental rigidity, had no bandwidth to own his mistakes honestly and not break down into a ridiculous, manipulative man-tantrum.

I considered divorce many times. We went to couple's therapy, which did not help, and I had MANY conversations with him about respectful communication methods. It helped somewhat, and then in times of extra stress, such as a change in routine, he'd revert to false accusations of gaslighting, and say we were all out to get him, etc... Lots of ups and downs. The main reason I didn't divorce is that I realized he'd be an even shittier co-parent than what he was at the time. He pulled all sorts of authoritative crap on the kids as well, and I wanted to be there to protect them.

What finally helped is that he's now not working as much and the kids are older and don't need constant supervision and help. When he's not stressed, he's perfectly reasonable. The man is just not equipped to multi-task effectively.

You have to have a long, serious, conversation (or several), and get through to him that he lacks basic respect for you and has to entirely overhaul his way of listening and communicating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: I showed him the text and said “I asked you to get pasta shells. What happened?”

This doesn’t sound like great communication on your part either. You sound like you are his mother and he is your child. Even if you’re not doing it on purpose, who does want to be spoken to as if they were stupid?

Oh hell no. He’s yelling at her to tell him what kind of pasta to get. Why doesn’t he have any responsibility to read? Acknowledge he made a mistake?

Maybe he knows from experience that if he doesn’t do things precisely the way she wants, he will be criticized. No good deed going unpunished and all that. This isn’t about a single grocery list item.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP I will bet you $1,000,000 that your husband has an auditory processing disorder. It is a form of learning disability frequently found in combination with ADD.

He’s careless, thoughtless, and mindless.

He could READ a simple text grocery list of three items. For a recipe they always eat.

His listening skills are probably worse than his reading skills. AT HOME.

But not at the OFFICE!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like borderline personality disorder.
They can’t take criticism, have explosive tempers, and twist things you say to make you the perpetrator and them the victim.

That isn’t actually BPD

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think he has autism with comorbid personality issues, anxiety, and auditory processing. It just gets worse with age and that’s what you are noticing. Like how people get dementia when they are older. It means his brain will never be neurotypical and you will beat yourself up trying to make situations go as planned. The loopholes is a strong trait of someone with high anxiety and depression. The person who said to make things light and turn it into fun is spot on. It will help both you and him have a better relationship if you find the loopholes and just move on and make each blunder a positive. Because of the disorder they are very sensitive to criticism. It’s immaturity but there isn’t Anything you can do about it other than to just go along with the blunder. People like this can be very loyal but they will not tolerate criticism. You don’t have to accept it’s correct. You just have to work with what happened in a pleasant way.

My spouse is adhd/asd I, but it’s not loyalty that they stay or tag along.
It’s that they are highly dependent on you and cannot make life decisions on their own. It’s too overwhelming.

[Anonymous]

“instead, he escalates, blows up, DARVO pattern, and starts an argument to deflect. That’s verbal and emotional abuse.”

This. Doesn’t matter whether he has disabilities - it’s not okay to behave like he does.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like borderline personality disorder.
They can’t take criticism, have explosive tempers, and twist things you say to make you the perpetrator and them the victim.

Bipolar II is comorbid and same terrible symptoms and behaviors too. So different meds would help.

What’s more likely is he has developed childish, negative coping mechanisms for all his chronic mishaps. Yelling, deflecting, blaming others, gaslighting (I never said that! I never did that!) stonewalling.

This doesn’t work so hot at home though because the excuses and bad behaviors start repeating fast. It does work at the office, and jr employees and assistants pick up the slack but don’t know why.

[Anonymous]

The armchair psychology on this thread including diagnoses of a man no one has bet is really offensive.

[Anonymous]

It is positively insane that a bunch of strangers are clinically diagnosing someone they’ve never met on the internet. What a huge circle jerk. A circle jerk that is likely only serving to make OP’s marriage worse!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do some research on Chris Watts and autism and you can see how when they first started dating he had autistic tendencies and she taught him how to work with people better but then that led to him resenting her. There is a video of him giving speeches in a class which makes this obvious. Their life ended up with him realizing he couldn’t keep up with all the family pressure, finding a mistress and killing his wife and kids. The wife was also narcissistic, high energy, thought nothing of giving him small criticisms like pasta shells and taking on high risk with money and more kids causing more stress for him and didn’t realize that he wasn’t on board with decisions or could handle these stressors. His family had lots of loopholes because that’s how they deal with stress. His dad is an addict and also autistic. They can’t cope with the world well unless everyone is positive and forgiving with one another all day long. Life is transactional and it’s just expected that multiple errors will occur all day so that the transactions can continue without raising anxiety. Reducing anxiety is the whole purpose of life. Try just making light of things and overlooking the mistakes and see if things get better emotionally. They won’t learn to fix mistakes because they can’t but you can get along better together and find other things to appreciate about each other. People like this can be very loyal but can’t remember back to yesterday and what you did for them and calculate effort with feeling. They just remember how you make them feel.

This is all true.

But to tell a NT wife and kids to go live like a simple hermit to accommodate a dysfunctional and unhealthy father is healthy for any of them.

He likely grew up in a household that stayed home, only did simple things - no holidays, vacations, sports, and never socialized or spoke much.

That is their normal.

He hit a wall with wife and kids and now all are suffering. He should exit stage left and just swing by for dinner once a week when he has the energy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And OP, if he loves you and is trying to work on things, take it as a blessing. There just aren't a lot of men out there than can do life's administration besides their own. They don't exist. And if they do, they are taken or they are helping everyone and don't have that much time for family.

This is so wrong. There are men out there who are completely competent and come to the table as equal partners. OP (and apparently you) just didn't select those men.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He doesn’t care Op.

He does not care.

Don’t bother wondering why- misogynist, narcissist, lazy, adhd, learning disorders.

Go out with your friends more and minimize your time with him. You’ll be happy and he’ll be a smaller and smaller part of your orbit.

Plus he prob won’t even notice! Nor care you’re out having fun.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DH has what I perceive to be major communication deficits that he refuses to acknowledge. When I communicate things verbally, he often mishears or does not remember what I’ve said. So, after many years of struggles and problems, we agreed that important and non-important things must be communicated in writing. Tedious, but fine. In theory it should work better. But it doesn’t, and when something goes wrong because he’s ignored what I wrote or made up something entirely different and he is faced with the consequences, he deflects and throws blame at me, and gets so upset when caught in his mistakes that he’ll raise his voice and essentially tantrum while demanding that I “drop it.” Our neighbors live very close so this is effective…but also manipulative and doesn’t improve our communication.

Today he blew up for the dumbest thing ever. I texted a 3-item grocery list at his request, which included “pasta shells” for a pasta salad that I frequently make or have him help me make.

While I was driving and unable to see his text reply, he asked “penne? Rotini?”

I came home and both types of pasta were on the counter. No shells. I showed him the text and said “I asked you to get pasta shells. What happened?”

He said, “how was I supposed to know what kind of pasta you wanted?” And it blew up from there. Instead of owning the mistake, he blamed me for mentioning the mistake and said I was making him feel stupid and we couldn’t talk about it anymore because “you’re just trying to make me feel stupid.” I wasn’t, but I do think he felt stupid and I also don’t know how to manage being on the receiving end of his joint communication/ego problems.

I have NO idea how to go forward- I literally cannot communicate any more specifically and I also cannot take over grocery shopping, which is one of the last tasks I don’t already do due to blowups like this.

How can I communicate with someone like this? I’m lost and frustrated and feel stuck.

To preemptively answer your questions:
1) he is on ADHD medication
2) he was not like this before we married or had kids, but he did travel a lot for work and was free to focus on nothing else. He is very very successful at work but not so successful that we can hire someone to buy proverbial pasta shells for us.

“I asked you go get pasta shells. What happened?” Says a lot about YOUR communication style. It’s accusatory and critical. And if you address him like this, it’s probably accumulated in him and he feels like nothing he does is ever good enough. It’s a common dynamic in a dysfunctional relationship where the woman sees herself as a task master and is a perfectionist. The blow ups indicate this accumulation.

Really? I think it's pretty calm. It invites the possibility for him to say "they were out of shells, so I made do" or any number of other reasonable explanations. But doesn't sound like OP's husband is a reasonable man.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The same thing used to happen with my ADHD/ASD husband at the peak time of work+kid stress. He couldn't hear/couldn't process/would forget our conversations, and then, due to emotional dysregulation, anxiety and mental rigidity, had no bandwidth to own his mistakes honestly and not break down into a ridiculous, manipulative man-tantrum.

I considered divorce many times. We went to couple's therapy, which did not help, and I had MANY conversations with him about respectful communication methods. It helped somewhat, and then in times of extra stress, such as a change in routine, he'd revert to false accusations of gaslighting, and say we were all out to get him, etc... Lots of ups and downs. The main reason I didn't divorce is that I realized he'd be an even shittier co-parent than what he was at the time. He pulled all sorts of authoritative crap on the kids as well, and I wanted to be there to protect them.

What finally helped is that he's now not working as much and the kids are older and don't need constant supervision and help. When he's not stressed, he's perfectly reasonable. The man is just not equipped to multi-task effectively.

You have to have a long, serious, conversation (or several), and get through to him that he lacks basic respect for you and has to entirely overhaul his way of listening and communicating.

Gently, what would you suggest OP in such a series of conversation that would work for her that did not work for you?

Also, how do you not have resentment after all of what you went through? How can you stay once the kids are older?