I’m a C or a D, depending on context.
My ex-husband is an A.
It was a real problem.
I’ve heard that a tenet in communications is that “message sent” doesn’t always equal “message received.” And oh boy, is that ever true. In fact, it was only in the last year or so of our marriage that I realized that one of the reasons he thought I was irresponsible was that he thought I was neglecting tasks that he had asked me to do, when I hadn’t even realized that he had asked me to do anything!
To use an example of something that is less urgent than a hungry baby–let’s use getting the oil changed in the car. He usually kept track of when it needed to be done, and took it in. Every now and then, he would say something like “I think the car might be due for an oil change soon.” I’d interperet that as him letting me know that sometime in the next few weekends, getting the oil changed would be on his schedule. Little did I know that he thought that he had just asked me to do it!
Fast forward a couple of weeks, and he’d say something like, “I just looked at the odometer of the car…” I’d be like “huh?” He’d say something like “well, it says 56,010.” Of course, I’d have no idea what he was getting at. Then he’d say “the sticker on the windshield says that the oil should have been changed at 55,800.” So I’d be like “200 miles over the 3,000 interval won’t hurt anything,” thinking he needed reassurance that he hadn’t just cut 2 years off of the car’s effective life. So he’d say something like “well, when do you think you might be able to have it done by?” And I’d be all like “well, I’m happy to take it in if you need me to.” “I asked you to do it 2 weeks ago!” “No you didn’t.” “I don’t remember that.” “You just weren’t paying attention.” And that, of course, was just another piece of evidence that I was a careless irresponsible jerk who was incapable of taking care of something as simple as taking the car into the QuickLube. And after a while, I believed those things about myself. Because if he was telling me that he had asked me to do something, and I didn’t even bother to remember it, then I must be careless and useless after all.
Therapy has helped. A lot.
Now imagine an alternate scenario:
Him: “Your car needs its oil changed. Would you mind taking it in?”
Me: “Sure.”
< I take the car in to have it’s oil changed >
Once I figured out what was going on, I did try to work with him to find better ways to communicate. And I spent a lot of time saying things like “are you asking me to take care of this?” and “what exactly are you trying to say?” and “I can’t read your mind, dammit!” Ah…good times, good times. Not.
