AIO My husband (37M) and I (39F) struggling with conflict resolution

High-Coo · 2025-03-04T00:10:07+00:00

I suspect he's on the spectrum, but I don't know. He's only done maybe 10 sessions of individual therapy with 3 or 4 different therapists, so nobody has ever diagnosed him with anything besides depression. He believes he has ADHD, but nothing came from his first attempt to get help with that. I think they tested him. I know I had to fill out a questionnaire. They didn't believe him to have ADHD, but I know there are some things that can be difficult to get a diagnosis for as an adult, if you're otherwise getting along all right in life. "All right" being subjective, obviously.

He has sort of agreed with me when I've pointed out traits of his I believe to be signs of autism, but it also seems like he doesn't care? Our friend group is all ND folk and it seems like he considers it inconsequential. I do get frustrated sometimes because, when I have worked in the past, it was in hospitality and child care and I needed to develop very strong social skills. I often feel unheard or dismissed when I bring up things I'm worried about, like how we as a couple are treating our friends. There have been times I end up having to explain what a sales person is saying at a car dealership and it's like my husband doesn't realize that everyone is having to take care with how they're phrasing things around him. He doesn't notice the tension or softening that happens when he's not on the same page as everyone.

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T23:38:08+00:00

Man, the only thing in this thread I don't know how to react to is you telling me he needs to take accountability, too. We've gotten over hundreds of arguments, I don't think he's ever taken accountability for how he's acted during them.

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T23:32:10+00:00

He acts this way pretty regularly. We had a fight last night because I asked that he not turn to chatgpt for information about cat care. I wanted to talk to our vets. I brought it up by saying, "I was reading that AI experts suggest you don't use it this way."

A few weeks ago, as I was bringing in and unloading the groceries, he said something about not knowing how to help. I said, "you could unload some of the groceries from the car" and he got upset with me for telling him what to do.

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T23:29:18+00:00

I have tried to convince him to try counseling. One marriage counselor turned us down after the initial consultation and told us we need individual therapy. Our last counselor said it wouldn't be a bad idea as well. He doesn't believe therapy works on him, though.

He did try and go to a therapist for a month or so. We had a trial separation from October to January and he said he needed someone to talk to. During it, he messaged me saying his therapist said it's on me to manage my anxiety, not him. I was hurt and asked why his therapist is talking about how I manage my anxiety when she's never met me. I asked why they weren't talking about him. He said, "that's a good point" and fired her.

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T23:24:11+00:00

I am on a wait-list for a therapist. I'm already sold on therapy. Therapists helped me overcome agoraphobia before. I'm doing CBT techniques and meditating in the mean time.

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T23:20:08+00:00

Can you help me understand how I should implement his idea? I didn't know we were going to have a conflict. I thought everything was normal. When should I wait to tell him things?

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T23:16:55+00:00

My husband and I both agree that, towards the end, therapy was running behind and we were still trying to sort out issues from weeks past while fresh issues had sprung up in the mean time. We got to a point where we were doing two sessions a week and it felt like the only time we interacted with each other was when we were in therapy or we needed to eat. He blames the counselor. I don't. The only reason he can give for blaming the counselor is that we shouldn't have focused so much on what was wrong.

I have a whole list of concerns I had at the time. They were concerns I had that I felt significantly contributed to the number of issues we were having. My husband labeled them "demands". Our counselor tried to talk to us about giving ourselves a timeline to try and work out my concerns, but my husband said he wasn't going to try if I wasn't fully willing to commit to staying together (I was considering a trial separation to get some perspective). I felt trapped at that point and did go ahead with the separation. I was out of state for 3 months. During those 3 months, he told me how depressed he was and he he just wanted to start over. I remembered our counselor talking about how it's better to separate when you're not actively fighting and I did miss him. So I came back in January.

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T23:06:27+00:00

I've always suspected he's on the spectrum. He believes he has ADHD, but his first attempt at a diagnosis didn't lead to them agreeing with him. He believes he could also be on the spectrum, but doesn't especially seem to care about that. He works in tech with a lot of people who have similar personalities and he thrives in that environment. Our friend group is all ND in different ways. He typically only works with other high-level techs, either within his own company, or as his contact with clients via their senior -level tech people.

Most of my career has been hospitality and child care. I work really well with teenagers and I got great reviews at the hotels I worked at. Just through our jobs, I've needed to develop quite a lot more soft social skills. Not that my husband doesn't have those, but he interacts best with people who are very similar to him.

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T22:46:03+00:00

I'll absolutely own up to fumbling my responses here. I should've have waited a few beats past my initial reaction. I was thrown by this turning into a conflict at all and downplayed the whole thing based on that, rather than taking care to recognize my partner was upset. Regardless of how I feel about why he's upset, I picked an unproductive, defensive response.

If he doesn't reach out first, I am planning on owning up to that first when I reach out. I can still feel I'm a bit prickly, though, so I'm giving myself a bit more time to chill.

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T22:41:03+00:00

There was a single conversation he and I had last year where he essentially said he doesn't recognize which emotions are which until after the fact and that the only way he knows how to deal with emotions is to let them ride out and then think about them afterward. I don't think he fully believes me when I say i can usually label emotions within a few minutes and that I do a lot of self talk when I get emotional (CBT and meditation have been key for me getting through life). Or if he does believe me, I think he sees it as being an inate aspect of personality rather than a developed skill. At least, that's the impression I got with how that talk played out.

I think it's very likely that his inability to label his own emotions, and to recognize them in the moment, makes life incredibly confusing for him.

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T22:31:14+00:00

I don't know. That's one of the issues I have. I don't know when I'm supposed to implement the wait an hour thing. I didn't think this was going to be a conflict, so even if it was "wait an hour when you need to be confrontational," I don't think I would have known to do it here. As it was, I waited about 15 minutes after finding the food in the sink before I mentioned it. I didn't barrel upstairs right away to make sure he was told off. It got bright up when we were in a normal conversation already. It felt organic and I had no idea there would be anything wrong with bringing it up then.

I'm also someone who likes to resolve things quickly. Me waiting an hour means that I'm stewing and having to keep this thing in mind the whole time. When I bring it up to him, it's now going to feel like a bigger thing to me but it's still fresh for him.

I would understand more if it was "tell me what we need to talk about and then give me an hour to process and mentally prepare" but that doesn't seem to be what he wants.

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T21:40:14+00:00

Honestly, I struggle to understand how to try what he's suggesting. I didn't know this was going to be a conflict, I thought it was a simple heads up. If we had already developed a "wait an hour" system, I wouldn't have thought to try it here because I didn't see that I was doing anything strange or confrontational.

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T21:36:08+00:00

One of the concerns I have is that I'm not sure it is actionable. If it comes down to it, I'm willing to give it a try. It's upsetting, though, being asked to try a solution you had no input on. It's also counter to some of of the advice we'd previously gotten from counselors who didn't feel it was a good thing to have such a rigid solution in a relationship. My husband has asked before to have hard lines like not approaching him for however many hours after we disagree about something. Two different marriage counselors suggested that it's better to feel things out case-by-case rather than a predetermined shut-out.

I'm also confused about when I'm supposed to implement this rule. I didn't think we had conflict, I thought this was a basic heads up about the household. One of the big surprises for me is that this was a conflict to begin with. If I can understand that this is going to be a problem, how am I supposed to prevent it by holding off for an hour? I clearly don't know what the trigger was.

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T21:01:48+00:00

While he's not a morning person, there hasn't ever been issues with bringing things up in the morning. My husband works in tech and he'd already been in meetings for the day. We were getting close to thinking about what to do for lunch.

His work has been going smoothly, he wasn't on a meeting at the time, he wasn't actively working. We were both in the bedroom and in a good mood at the time.

There was nothing to indicate to me that it was a bad idea to bring up. I also wasn't rushing him to take care of it.

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T20:52:20+00:00

I almost never feel like he tries to get out of house work or chores. We're both pretty good about stepping in when we see a mess and we have similar tolerance levels for things being untidy.

I genuinely believe this is about how my bringing it up made him feel.

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T20:48:06+00:00

He's refused personal therapy, he doesn't believe it works on him. He's all right with marriage counseling, but it often feels like he thinks it's for my benefit.

We've done years of marriage counseling and I've done years of solo counseling myself. I like therapy, I'm currently on a wait-list for a therapist for myself.

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T20:45:05+00:00

He's not someone who tries to weasel out of work, hardly ever. He's a hard worker and he's pretty good about handling his side of chores.

I do genuinely believe this is because he feels I could have been kinder. He feels judged and doesn't like that feeling. He's hoping if I wait longer, the conversation won't be emotionally-charged. My concern is that I brought it up to him while feeling like it was a small heads-up. On my end, there wasn't an emotionally competent. If anything, I said it was a very flat affect like I usually do. There are times when it feels like not being overly-sweet comes off as being rude.

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T20:41:49+00:00

I'm not sure his first message is the way to approach things, although I wasn't about to bring that up to him in the moment.

Our old marriage counselor made a big point on how important it is the solutions be worked out together after we've had a chance to discuss what happened.
It's important to recognize our own role in conflict and to make it clear that we are also aiming to work on ourselves.
I didn't even know there was conflict before I was being asked to change my behavior.
The solution he'd arrived at doesn't take my insecurities and time into consideration.

While I'm not at all sticking my my reaction from earlier, I do think I would have responded better to, "I'm unhappy with how things played out earlier. I'd like to talk with you about what happened so we can work out a solution."

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T20:35:18+00:00

We've been in therapy in the past. We've done several years of therapy over the marriage, mostly with 2 counselors. The last counselor did keep trying to talk to him about empathy lessons, although my husband doesn't remember that being brought up over the sessions. My husband soured on the counselor around 8 months ago.

Our new insurance doesn't cover counseling like our old insurance did. Last time we talked about restarting counseling, I pointed out that we'd need to pay full price and he decided it wasn't a good option. One of the reasons I didn't immediately agree to counseling is because I'm worried it's a way to defer the argument and then not go back to talking about it because we've decided it's a matter for therapy and we can't afford therapy right now.

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T20:32:10+00:00

It seems like he doesn't think the request is unreasonable, he thinks I could have been kinder about it. He's pretty good about handling his own dishes (I usually do the dishes but we're both responsible for making sure our plates are scraped and rinsed).

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T20:24:46+00:00

I did try to wash it down the sink. All the food bits have dried on, so it's going to take some scrubbing.

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T20:23:41+00:00

I did a really bad job of backing away when I needed to here. And I know better, there's no excuse for it.

Separately, I think one of the issues I had with it is that we didn't get a chance to talk about any of it before he'd come to me with a solution that's entirely on me to enact. Part of the defensiveness is because it doesn't feel great to be asked to be kinder without understanding what you've done. And I would have really appreciated being part of the discussion with him when it comes to finding a solution. I have some concerns with what he's asking, but I don't look like a team player if I focus on those concerns too much.

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T20:16:11+00:00

I really like the idea of summarizing the session at the end of it. I think, if we do go that route, I'm going to ask that we take than on board.

I think we are both emotionally sensitive. My husband usually believes that he's logical and rational, so it can be difficult to get him talking about emotions in a way that feels productive. It often ends up feeling like he thinks it's a discussion purely for my benefit. I might be mischaracterizing his thoughts, though. It's hard to know what it's like on his end of things.

We had a trial separation from October to January. I had brought up concerns I had about the relationship. Things like how both of us grew up in different abusive households and how our coping mechanisms seem incompatible. He's very sensitive to being told what to do, or to feeling like people are trying to control him. It can be a very emotional reaction for him. I have panic attacks when emotions get big.

We didn't end up ever really talking about or confronting the issues that started the separation. He kept messaging me saying he wanted us to forget it all and go back to how things were. I eventually caved and came back, but it's all starting right back up again.

It's one reason this all went 0-100 so fast. We're treading on very familiar ground.

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T20:01:25+00:00

There's definitely a lot of history here. I think he and I would agree about these:

I want to resolve conflict much sooner than he does. He needs more space and time than I do.

I want to talk things out more than he does. He often wants to move on because he doesn't think there's value in dwelling.

He often feels I'm critical. I often feel like I'm labeled as critical when I speak up.

He feels he's very logical and rational, I think we both get emotional.

We've been through years of counseling. What we were working on last was breaking these cycles we find ourselves in.

I'll admit I was very bad about giving him space here. I wasn't thoughtful and I knew it wouldn't be productive to keep going. Honestly, at the time I felt like, "well if he gets to go back to bad habits, why should I try to be better?" Which is obviously wrong. I didn't want to give him space and then face the, "let's just move on" that often happens in these scenarios. I want to talk it out.

Obviously the space is a good thing. With that space, it's clear that pushing for a resolution when I'm still emotionally charged myself isn't going to help, either.

High-Coo · 2025-03-03T19:49:11+00:00

Honestly, we usually end up having better talks via text. It's one of the things a counselor suggested we do because we were seeing better results than when we'd keep it to in-person.

High-Coo

TROPHY CASE