Heh. I tune my wife out when I’m having a direct face to face conversation about something important with no other distractions. I think the problem is that she’s not very good at having a two way conversation, and I’m not very good at listening to (what I consider to be) excessive detail. What she’ll do is tell me about something, and it may be something I’m interested in talking about, but she’ll cover the topic herself 100% from start to finish, filling in every little detail along the way. In turn my eyes glaze over and I’m given no opportunity to engage in a conversation because she leaves no room for questioning or comment. It’s all a one way flow of information. I find it very tiring and do my best to pick out the pertinent points in case there is a test later :). What I’d like is for her to start out with a broad summary, “hey I saw Mike today.” Then pause to allow me to inquire further. I may just say “huh.” Then she can gradually expand on what she has to say, taking clues from my responses to guide the conversation in a direction that we both find interesting.
On the other hand I don’t watch much TV but when I do I consider it to trump conversation. Why? Because the show is on just once and right now, while whatever she has to tell me can wait for the ad break. So on the rare occasions when I’m intently watching something on TV, I will deliberately ignore her. Pisses her off to.
Another form of tuning out I do is when playing the piano. I can actually listen pretty well to someone when I’m playing but don’t expect a response, I simply can’t put thought into speech while playing music, I can make simple grunting yes/no type responses, but that’s it. I can sing ok while playing, but that’s different, the singing is a part of the music.
I do try and be a good listener. If she interrupts an Xbox game to talk to me I will pause it while we talk. And if I’m playing the piano and she’s telling me something important I’ll stop so that I can give a decent answer. This is partly because she is not always talking to me, so I don’t mind breaking what I’m doing because I know I’ll probably have an hour or two of peace afterward.
The best response I’ve heard from someone who’s wife was nattering inane things to him was, “I’m not interested in that shit dear.” Heard from a nearly 60 year old who seemed to have a good relationship, he just had to remind her sometimes that he doesn’t give a damn about who said what to who and why. It sounds terrible but I think they’d thrashed it all out years ago.
You must have met my mother. She’ll say something like, “The sky is kind of blue, huh?” on a sunny day. I’ll usually say, “mmm hmmm” or something similar because such obvious comments aren’t the type I consider in need of serious consideration. Her response is, “Isn’t it?” If I don’t hear her or don’t realize that she really wants an answer or to discuss the subject, she’ll repeat again, “Isn’t it?” Then if I fail to respond, she’ll pout, “No one listens to me.”
Anyway, the wife in the OP, provided she’s not truly annoying or the OP’s not purposely ignoring her, should know her husband well enough not to be offended. In other words, she should realize that it’s not her the OP is ignoring - it’s everything. That said, the OP and the wife should agree on something to break the OP’s conversation if his wife wants to chat.
My husband accuses me of tuning him out–I don’t think he realizes how engrossed I get in certain activities. I think I’m going to try having him call me by name. That sounds practical.
Given such info, I suggest you study hard for the “what do you think?” exam and maybe even hire a tutor for the “does this dress make me look fat?” exam.
I may need a tutor. “That’s the greatest idea ever” is not a good response.
Oh, and fyi for anyone, when you accidentally stare at your celebrity crush on tv (e.g. Taylor Swift) and your fiancee says, “I don’t know why you like her so much, she doesn’t suck your cock.”
The correct answer is NOT “Oh man, that’d be so awesome.”
My mother says I concentrate “like a bouilloun cube.” When I’m concentrated, my world is reduced to whatever I’m doing; I’ve even been known to miss meals as a teenager because I was doing homework. And yes, at that age I ate like a vacuum cleaner, so it’s not like I wasn’t interested in food; I was just too concentrated on what I was doing to notice any messages from the rest of the world. Dad was the same, when he was concentrated you could have had the Swedish Bikini Team walk through the room and he would notice only if they physically got between him and his task.
I explain to people that calling my name and giving me time to process it is the best way to grab my attention: if they go “Hey blahblahblah yadda what do you think Nava?” I’ll go “eh? Sorry, what?” It’s not that I’m ignoring them on purpose, it’s that I genuinely don’t hear them!
Tuning someone out when you know they’re talking to you = rude (although it can be excused if it’s the third time in two hours that they tell you the same story)
Not realizing that someone is talking to you = sorry, but they also need to make sure you’ve realized it.
That only works if you’ve realized someone is talking to you
I’ve gotten in trouble for this a few times. I’ll be reading something or playing on the computer and my wife will come in and want to talk. This is fine. I’ll divert my attention away from whatever I’m doing and talk with her.
When the conversation is over I will then return to my previous task. My wife will wait for 20 or 30 seconds and then either try to start an entirely new conversation or try continue the previous one. I then get yelled at for ignoring her.
I’ve started getting confirmation that the conversation is, indeed, over and I can continue doing whatever it was I was doing. When this confirmation is granted she’ll still try to start or continue a conversation about 50% of the time (and I am, again, in trouble for ignoring her), but it’s a step in the right direction.
She also likes to wait until a TV show has just come back from commercial to start talking…
My husband does this all the time. Having a PVR has helped this, though. Now he interrupts, I pause, we do our talking and then I rewind and enjoy my show. I recomment it highly.
