My wife, 30F and I, 36M have been together for almost 3 years. This is my second marriage, her first. We’ve passed the honeymoon phase and are trying to figure out life together now that the shine has dulled a bit. I am so thankful to have her in my life, she is a wonderful partner and I hate the possibility of hurting her, even unintentionally.
Lately, we’ve been having the same disagreement over my attention level while we’re watching a show. She will make a comment, sometimes about the show, sometimes not. More often than not, I will not hear her. It’s not that she’s not talking loud enough, because last night she said she was practically yelling at me. I didn’t hear any of it. I was way too focused on the episode we were watching.
As a bit of background, this is something I have dealt with my entire life. As a kid, I would sit down and read a book, people would talk to me and I simply wouldn’t hear them. They would have to come up real close and yell my name or tap me to get my attention. It was a point of contention in my first marriage as well.
This only happens when we’re watching tv. I try to be quite attentive most of the time, mainly because one of the things that attracted me most to her was that we could talk about anything for hours. I really enjoy talking with her, and it makes me sad that she is trying to talk with me and I am, albeit unintentionally, ignoring her. And I have absolutely no qualms about talking during a show, I do it myself sometimes.
I’ve considered trying to get a referral to see a psychiatrist for ADD evaluation but she thinks that I’m taking it to an extreme, and that I should be able to just hear her.
Another part of this is that it isn’t consistent. In other people’s houses, with other people, I don’t have this issue. I think that it’s a comfort thing—my brain has stored the information about my surroundings at home and shuts down everything apart from the tv. She seems to take it personally, that she’s the reason. It was particularly frustrating to her when a few months back, she mentioned that an actor on the show we were watching was in another one of our shows. I didn’t respond, and shortly afterwards, I said to her essentially the same thing about the actor. She got a little mad and said “are you kidding me? I just said that”. I apologized and said I didn’t hear her, but I do wonder if she believes me.
I want to validate my wife’s feelings about not being heard, but I have a hard time separating that from my own feelings of just being a shitty husband.
How can I show my wife that I do care about her and want to hear her but that in that short time in the evening while watching tv, my body does not want to cooperate?
Tl;dr! My wife thinks I am purposely ignoring her during tv shows but it is not intentional.