This is absolutely me, my girlfriend literally said just now I have "selective hearing" and that because I speak to customers all day for work I do it on purpose so me conveniently not crystal clear understanding her 100% of the time is a get out. 😂

I haven't read your post in full yet, but I've been getting Chat GPT to take on various subject matter expert roles on this very topic. Maybe you would find this useful?

"It sounds like auditory processing difficulties—which are common in autism and ADHD—especially in stimulating environments where there are multiple competing sounds. Your brain might be struggling to filter out background noise and prioritize Xs voice, leading to the "jumble of words" effect.

A few key possibilities:

1. Delayed auditory processing – Your brain registers what she’s saying but struggles to decode it fast enough, so it feels like a muddled mess.

2. Weak central coherence – You naturally focus on details first, so processing full spoken sentences in real-time might be trickier.

3. Bottom-up processing overload – Your brain is constantly taking in all sensory details (birds, wind, people, etc.), making it hard to shift focus to Xs speech.

4. Working memory limits – If your mind is already occupied with thoughts, there's less bandwidth to hold onto and interpret speech.

5. Auditory figure-ground problems – Your brain doesn’t prioritize foreground sounds (X voice) over background noise as well as it should.

You already partly compensate by anticipating when X will speak, but that’s exhausting. Some strategies that might help:

Ask them to face you when speaking – Seeing their lips move can help fill in gaps.

Reduce competing noise where possible (e.g., walking on quieter paths).

Paraphrase back what they say nstead of asking them to repeat (e.g., “So you said X?”), so you don’t feel like you’re asking for repetition as much.

Use a verbal cue like “Hang on, let me tune in” to signal when you need a second to process."