My husband’s also a talker. And he thinks aloud. And comments on what he’s reading, watching, seeing, doing… Last night, I sat here, thinking shut up shut up shut up shut up. But I didn’t say it. (He was really happy about something and excited by it, and I didn’t want to throw a bucket of cold water on him. Metaphorically.)
Sometimes, quiet is nice. Tomorrow will be quiet–home alone day for me. Then, with some time to myself, I can listen again.
Sorry folks - life got in the way of ranting… Thanks for commenting, though. I was feeling very grumpy Wednesday evening and he was in his “I’m never wrong about anything,” mode.
Nope, we have been together for nearly 11 years.
LOL! I do, actually. I’m the quiet one in the family.
In his defense, sometime he does realize that I’m not really listening to him and laughs and admits he knows that I don’t care.
I love the sound of his voice, and so does he.
Amen sister-wife.
I have a friend like that, but I see him so seldom that I just let him ramble on. I know it drives his wife insane, though, but they’ve been married for nearly 40 years, so there is some 'familiarity breeds contempt" mixed in there.
And today is my quiet time day. So far it’s very nice.
Actually the most annoying thing is the sympathetic interruption. I’ll be responding to “how was your day” with (bizarrely) a couple of stories about my day. Usually fine, we chat, it’s nice. But if something bad/annoying has happened, the worse it is and the more I want to get it off my chest, the more my partner will jump in with sympathetic outrage, advice, ranting on my behalf, etc. Sweetie, it’s nice that you feel my pain. But could you JUST OCCASIONALLY let me finish telling you about my pain before you start talking? Half the time I give up mid-sentence and just let the sympathetic interruption rumble on to its conclusion. My story never gets finished, and the brilliant way I solved the situation goes uncelebrated (or my continuing grievance goes unrecognised). And then when/if it comes up again, I get, “Well you didn’t tell me that part”. No, light of my life, I didn’t. I wandered off while you were ranting and drank the rest of the wine. Oh well. It’s been nearly twelve years now; I’m used to it.
I’ve had to enforce a rule with my wife: If you can’t see me, you can’t have a conversation with me.
I imagine she’s on another message board complaining that her husband ignores her when she’s trying to talk to him across the house. I am the worst.
Better posting about you somewhere else than reading this one. 
I’ve often wondered about that… I’ve even told my wife about things I’m posting here, and I half expect to find out she’s lurking to see what I’m bitching about now.
Except for the fact that I married a woman with better things to do than read The Dope.
(But maybe I’ll slip something like “How 'bout Starving Artist defending Paterno, huh?” Or “Think Shredder Guy’ll get another job?” and see how she reacts)
Ooh, I know! I’ll just trick her by making reference to a “1930’s Death Ray” and see if she corrects me… or use 2 items in a list and see if I get a shoutout to Opal.
(NO, I’m NOT going to say “Maybe I’ll go down to the quarry…”)
I was going to say that Honesty was the Best Policy, but yes, Sneaky is Better.
Ooh, that’s a good one. I think we’ll add that one to the “Grunt of Acknowledgement” - you don’t have to engage in a lengthy conversation when I tell you something, but I do expect a Grunt of Acknowledgement to let me know you heard me.
“…and so, anyway, Marcy and me were going to Bloomies for the shoe sale, but Ellen wanted to see Twilight again, so we talked it over and went to Nordstrom’s instead, which is a pretty good compromise, and by the way, I’m fucking your brother, but Susan started telling us about her intra-uterine tattoo, so we kinda got distracted…”
(Grunt)
A week later: “But I told you about that! Weren’t you listening?”
The bikers have a saying: if it has wheels or tits, sooner or later, its a hassle.
Umph.
My god, Hero, did my husband get a sex change and a divorce without my noticing?
More frustrating than his trying to have a conversation with me when I can neither see nor hear him has been his total inability to understand *why *I might find it annoying. I finally had to say, “If I can’t *see *you - if I’m not actually looking at you - I can’t *hear *you.”
I have a twist on annoying conversation tics - no matter where he is, where I am or what either of us is doing, when my husband wants to talk he’ll call me for me to come to him. Apparently he doesn’t like to yell across the house but while it’s not important enough for him to come to me it is important enough to ask me to come to him.
Ongoing battle but I’m making progress.
See, that wasn’t that hard, was it?
murph.
I thought it was just me!
We don’t live in a McMansion, so there is some acoustic carry to a voice from room to room, but our collective hearing is going so the behavior isn’t productive, to say the least.
Also, tangentially to this subject, I complained to a therapist once about similar behavior exhibited by my wife, to the effect that at the end of the day, I need to plop down have some quiet time to myself and maybe a beer or a smoke. What I often get instead is a nonstop monologue from her that I simply must escape.
The therapist remarked that, generally, men have a certain daily maximum ration of spoken words which are often exhausted by the end of an ordinary day.
And that generally women’s ration is three orders of magnitude greater.
Which now explains why I see so many men in their garages, and why I’m about to follow suit.