I don’t know if I wrote the title in a way that makes any sense. For most of my life, I’ve (41F) had a hard time with communication because I felt like my parents never validated my feelings and just dismissed them. I bottled a lot of things up inside. Then I met my now husband (45M), and he believes in upfront communication. We’ve been together for around 20 years. He loves to talk and doesn’t like for issues to go unaddressed. I did many years of therapy for various reasons, but one was to help me feel comfortable opening up more to be able to communicate better.
My husband not only likes to communicate openly, but he’s a “fixer”. He likes to take immediate action when there’s a problem. I, on the other hand, need to talk situations out when I encounter a problem so that I can figure out if it’s something I need to address or if I should just let it go. I need to think things through a lot.
Once my husband realizes I just want to talk it out, and may not want any action taken, he loses interest and checks out. He looks visibly frustrated, Sometimes I tell him upfront that there’s a situation I want to discuss but I am not looking for any action to be taken at this time. Sometimes I realize that only after talking it out, but when we get to that point in the conversation then he no longer wants to be a part of it. It can be a situation at work, a frustration I feel with a friend, or something I’m concerned about with our son. He feels like there’s no point to even have those conversations. It frustrates me because he values open communication so much, but when I push past my comfort zone to talk about things that are bothering me out loud with him, he doesn’t want to be part of the communication unless it’s resolved in the way he thinks it should be resolved. It makes me not want to bring up these situations because again I feel like I’m being dismissed and invalidated.
Has anyone else experienced this? How did you handle it?
TL;DR: My husband doesn’t want to discuss issues or problems unless there’s an action to take. I need to talk things out to decide how I really feel and how I want to handle it. How can we resolve our communication issues?
3 comments
Have you been to therapy? I know that it can be frustrating for ‘fixer’ types to figure out how to engage when there’s no action to be taken, but immediately losing interest when your partner wants to talk something out is not good. Couples counseling could help him work through that and develop mechanisms for staying engaged.
Sometimes, the simple act of listening is the “action that to be taken” if the simple venting of an issue is all that needs to happen to make you feel better. I am surprised your partner hasn’t figured that out after 2 decades of marriage.
How can he not know that?
Yes, guys like to fix problems. They can become frustrated when they don’t know how to fix the problem. Seasoned guys know how to listen and be a sounding board.
You should go to couples’ counseling. He needs to learn why it’s important to listen even when there’s no immediate solution. And maybe you can find some middle ground.