My partner (33M) and I (29F) have the same argument time and time again. I don’t enunciate words clearly and when I tell stories I get excited, and the conversation doesn’t really flow. He gets frustrated trying to understand me and can give me attitude and quite a bit grief from it.
For me, I try to speak slower and be more conscientious about what I say. But I’m starting to lose my confidence as he is always giving me criticism daily.
I’ve given him feedback to be critical but remember to give me some compliments too but this is often forgotten. It has gotten to the point, where I feel very negative. I feel tired of not feeling confident and not understood. I’m sure he feels tired and frustrated for continuously having to ask me to clarify as well.
It doesn’t help I’m more tired recently working longer hours, impairing the conversation more. It also doesn’t help he’s a logical person and doesn’t execute the emotional support I need as well.
I don’t mind arguing, but it has gotten frequent and I want us to both put in effort to at least reduce it. But I don’t know the best way to go around it.
We have spoke about it, and it hurts my heart knowing we are both not sure about the future. I wished he gave me more confidence in us and told me he would try his best and that he loves me.
What are some concrete things to do? I realistically know it might not work out, but I want to try our best to work things out together before giving up. So please don’t advise to just to break up like in most posts. In reality this post I’m writing in is not as straightforward as it is.
Thank you
Tldr: partner says I don’t speak clearly. I’m starting to lose confidence and he is getting frustrated. He is quite unemotional and blunt when we talk, which hurts someone emotional like me. I feel overwhelmed and he wants me to be more independent . How do we minimise the arguments we have about this?
6 comments
Time to put your foot down.
He has given his feedback, you have heard him, and you do what you can to accommodate. You are not doing anything wrong or malicious. It is what it is. Further criticism won’t help improve the situation.
My wife has trauma and I relate to your situation. She struggles with logically explaining in a sensible manner her inner workings to me, and likewise I struggle to understand what she is trying to communicate and how to interpret it. In my struggle to understand, I might signal frustration at what seems incomprehensible to me.
However, my job is not to understand.
My job is to validate.
I need to see past the story and the logic and read the emotions and her needs.
Your partner first need to assess and accept his role as a listener within the context of the situation. Are you planning something, discussing a subject, venting emotions, or expressing a need, or simply telling a story. How should a partner listen or engage in the conversation based on the different contexts? Everything isn’t discussion. Him understanding the details or sequences or all the aspects isn’t then important. Is this easy for a partner to become a better listener? No, it’s hard and takes time and effort. It’s a two way street where both can improve.
However, criticism and frustrations have been tried and it is madness to expect a different result next time. It’s unfair of him to set unrealistic expectations of you when he should know by know what you are like.
And to give some reassurance, this is the one of the most common reasons couples seek therapy.
There is time outs. Stop, talk again later when you are calm and in a better state of mind. Moods are extremely important for a good conversation as you point out with being tired.
Mental check in. Before, during and after an emotional conversation. “How are you feeling right now? What is on your mind? What do you need?” Make sure you get other disturbing emotions and thoughts out of the way first.
Non violent communication. It’s a way to phrase things which improves communication.
Write things down. Stop the conversation if it is a planning or a discussion and instead write down what you want to say, because it is easier to make a text structured. Don’t send emails to each other, but note down bullet points that helps the conversation flow when you resume it.
Read books and research online. I am currently reading one about the six main emotions simply in order to better validate my wife. I have therapy on Monday to help further plan how to do this. My situation is a bit more extreme than yours, but if I can invest the effort, so can your partner.
He’s picking on you for who you are, you personality and your speech mannerisms. These are not things that are easily changed, and he must have known this about you when you started dating. There’s better ways to clarify a story than getting annoyed and starting a repetitive argument. What is different now that he’s suddenly so intolerant of what makes you, you? You sound incompatible with each other.
I don’t understand why you say he is logical, when the problems you are having are due to him being overly emotional and controlling it poorly. He gets frustrated and acts out. He needs to learn to control his frustration without lashing out at other people.
If he really does find your manner of speaking to be something he isn’t comfortable with, that would be okay, except that he shouldn’t be in a relationship with you. That’s such a basic thing that by being with you, he is accepting that about you. To be with you and try to change it is really nasty and inappropriate.
If you two don’t want to break up, he can try therapy to learn to manage his emotions better and help break his bad criticism habit.
For different reasons you each need to learn to have patience, but he needs patience with you and you need patience within yourself. Think before you speak should be both your mantras.
Communication can really make or break relationships, so the fact that this causes arguments may unfortunately just be about how you are different people. Change is possible, but you have to decide how much of yourself you want to change before it’s just trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
If he’s so critical, I don’t think it will matter what you do because he’s not going to be a kind, validating partner.
However, you can try writing down your main conversation points before talking, taking a break if you’re too emotional/tired, and making sure that you’re starting from the beginning. (I don’t know about you, but for me my stories are often confusing because I start from wherever I am in my head. I need to step and confirm that I’m actually communicating a full idea and not just in my head.)
My partner can get a bit exasperated at me because when I’m tired I speak quietly and sometimes my phrasing is a bit weird. He just asks me to repeat myself. Sometimes there’s a bit of tone (frustration, tiredness) if I’ve been that way all evening. But neither of us taking it personally, he wants to hear me and I want to be heard. It just takes some extra patience on both our ends. If I called him out on his tone he would apologize and state the above, that he was just having difficulty understanding and it frustrated him, that it wasn’t my fault. So, it’s possible to be a bad communicator and still have patience even when it’s not perfect from the other person.
Thanks for this! When his tone of voice is annoyed, sometimes I brush it off but sometimes it really gets me. How do you not take it personally?
I think my partner does need to be more accepting but there is also a part of me which thinks I need to be less sensitive .. but I wouldn’t know how to do that in the first place!