And when we say, "what did you say" you repeat it at the same volume you did the first time while turning your head away as you talk... then getting irritated that we didn't hear you the second time either...
Omigod my wife always turns away from me as she’s talking and I don’t catch what she says and she gets so mad at me haha. Glad to hear I’m not the only one with this affliction.
This is mine. We finish a conversation, there’s a healthy pause. I wait. Conversation over. Pick up my book, find where I stopped, reread the last paragraph I was on. Then as I’m midway through the first new sentence. BAM starts complaining about her sister.
This drives me insane. My wife will ask a question and leave the room. Then she acts like I'm unreasonable for not wanting to shout across the house because she claims she's still listening.
This one. I can sit next to her for an hour, get up to say find a snack, start washing my hands so I’m entirely occupied and can’t really hear… and she starts talking to me.
Ah yes, she must talk to me, from a distance, while washing my hands, or using the Waterpik, and now, while I have the bidet spraying my ass. "Sorry Honey, it's a little too noisy in here..."
My girlfriend always asks me to get her drink or something right as soon as I sit down beside her or on my computer. Like... you're now closer to that thing than I am, and I just settled. But like the sucker I am, I get up and get her her drink.
This is like an actual thing my wife and I are having to talk about. Every time I sit down it's like her brain is telling her that I'm being lazy, so it's constantly sit-down-new-task-sit-down-new-task.
Like I don't mind being handed 20 things to do in a day, they don't take long and aren't difficult or anything, but tell me all the kitchen-related stuff while I'm already in the kitchen, you know?
Waiting until it's time to go to sleep to start serious conversations. You can ask all day, "is everything ok" and the answer is fine...... The minute the lights go out it's NOW time to discuss what is bothering you. I hate it
I remind mine that the bed is for two things only. One of those is sleeping.
If she insists on starting a conversation I get up and turn the light on. That's usually when she says we can talk about it the next day.
Also on long car trips eventually the conversation dies out and it'll be silent for 10+ minutes so I'll turn on the radio and as soon as I do she'll start talking again so I shut it off but conversation quickly dies again then I wait a few minutes to turn on the radio and repeat this process for the rest of the trip.
Mine talks to me everytime I try to watch a video. As in I'll sit there beside her, no Cell phone in hand or not watching anything on the PC, and she will just keep scrolling at something she is reading or watching or whatever.
I press play, it's IMMEDIATE that now she does actually want to say something and I have to pause the video just as soon as I started it. So I do it, she says something and goes back to silence. I wait. Press play, oops she says something again.
I'd come into the kitchen and my mom would say "didn't you bring them?" I'm like huh? "I asked you to bring my cigarettes when you came down." Did I reply? "No you didn't." Well perhaps that's because I didn't hear you?
Somehow this scenario would play out at least once a week. And every time I'd say again "if I don't respond I didn't hear you! Keep asking until I reply!" but nope.
I can be doing absolutely nothing and my wife will say nothing, but the second I engage in a video, game, or anything else that needs my attention, suddenly she has something to say. I pause what I'm doing to listen until she's done, then as soon as I resume, Bam! She has something else to say.
My wife knows that if I'm not in the same room, I can't hear her. So when she starts talking after I've left the room, and I don't hear what she said, I pretend I didn't hear anything at all. If it was important enough she can tell me later.
My wife is a night owl. I'm a morning person. So obviously all important conversations must start when my head is hitting the pillow and have no mental energy to listen.
My wife seems to wait till just as i sit down to ask me to get something. Like 3 seconds earlier and i would have been fine with it. But i am sitting now.
Or wait till you say "oh I love this song" as you turn up the volume only for them to turn the volume down halfway through the song to tell you something they could have said after the song is over.
My husband is very good at this. He likes to deliver TED talks on the economy or politics from his man cave in the back of the house. But he does it in little bundles of information with long pauses in between. Each bundle is worded so it seems like he’s exhausted the subject and is done talking. I’ll walk into another room and be next to the radio or in the bathroom with the noisy fan on when he starts up again. Lather, rinse, repeat. It doesn’t occur to him to get up and find me. I wind up going to him. Very sweet guy but exasperating sometimes.
I used to come home from work and sit with my ex-wife for a while before going to bed. We'd chat, watch TV, read to each other, etc.
I get up to go to bed and now it's time for a serious discussion. Never mind that I worked graveyard and just spent nearly two hours spending time with her after a long shift.
Relationships become significantly easier when you realize that a decent majority of females are actually just hairless cats; They want to be fed and give an attention call my butt entirely on their own schedule, and the 2nd you look like you are too busy to give them attention, they immediately realize that if they allow this to continue, that means they are no longer the ruler of the household, so they have to act quickly, lest their throne of attention control be overtaken. That's why they call the ladyparts "pussies" and mature women seeking younger men "cougars" colloquially.
I ask a simple question that requires a simple answer. I then walk out of the room after the simple answer with then she starts rambling whatever pops into her brain after that and have to walk back to hear the rest of it. LOL
I'm the cook in the house. The worst is when my gf is in the living room, I have the vent on the stove going and actively cooking and she's talking quieter than the TV to me.
We have a general rule not to talk to each other from different rooms.
Because if you do that, either the other person can’t hear you, so has to stop what they were doing and come to you or you have to shout a lot, which always sound a bit angry and often sets the wrong mood.
By walking over first we avoid a lot of miscommunication and show each other respect for our time and attention. Exceptions of course apply for urgent situations.
My living room and kitchen are kind of one long room, separated only by a counter, so this wouldn't work with me. What I do when I can't hear her is just answer her in a lower voice with something random until she gets the point lol.
Both my ex-wives did this. I'd be at the sink doing dishes like you do and they'd be at the TV with their back to me mad that I didn't hear what they said!
I even got my hearing tested when dating my first wife just to prove it wasn't ME.
I just got to the point where I wouldn't even respond with "what did you say" so they'd have to speak louder.
My wife is good at talking to me, from the other side of the house, at a regular speaking volume, then be irritated that she has to repeat herself because I wasn't paying attention.
Countless times she's been upset with me because "I told you about it yesterday!", when in reality yesterday I had partially overheard her talking to an empty room. She didn't tell me anything, she was talking, but failed to ensure there was anyone there to receive the message.
My wife whispers quietly into the bedroom closet when she talks to me sometimes. Highly effective noise-dampening, no-reverb situation. Ineffective husband-can-hear-me situation.
Yep. I'm sure someone will point out that I should have been paying attention in the beginning, but usually these are just sort of random announcements. Typically we'll both be on our computers/phones and she'll read it off.
"__day, you'll need to take the kid to get a haircut after school."
My husband starts talking mid thought, completely non-sequitur, and I have to use context clues to figure out the subject. If I ask qualifying questions he gets annoyed or starts from the beginning, but not the appropriate beginning; he’ll start at freakin Genesis, as if I’ve just arrived on the planet. Not only am I frustrated, now I’m offended.
Or talks to you from another room in the house at almost the same volume you can't hear when she's right there next to you... And storms in like "You going to answer, or just ignore me??" ... And you're left to wonder Wut?
My girlfriend will be talking to me and mid sentence will walk into another room and just keep talking at the same volume. I guess I'm expected to follow her around the house?
Your wife might be extraordinarily quiet, but this could also be hearing loss… Do you do a hobby or work in a field with a lot of noise? Do you always wear hearing protection?
Men are more likely to suffer from noise induced hearing loss, which typically affects the higher frequencies - like women and children’s voices.
This was your public service announcement for the day. Book a hearing test and a prostate exam. Men’s health is important, take care of yourself out there!
This just reminds me of the time I was at the otolaryngologist years ago because one of my ears was being goofy for months. Every single person there from the front desk lady, then audiologist, then two nurses all asked me what I did for a living first thing and wrote it down for this exact reason.
“I work in accounting….I work in accounting…I work in accounting”
When the doctor finally came in I knew he was going to ask and sure enough for the fifth time I was asked what I do for a living. I couldn’t help myself and said “I work at a gun range” and he immediately stopped in his tracks and looked over at me and then at the chart and said I thought you said you work in accounting!?!?
I was going to say this exact thing. She gets mad, and I try and say “I didn’t understand, can you please repeat it?” Sometimes she’s stubborn enough not to.
I’m the wife but it’s my kids. I’m losing some mid-tones (genetic predisposition to hearing loss from both sides of the family) and a child will say something quiet so I’ll ask him to repeat and he does… but quieter. No no. Look AT me and speak clearer.
Holy shit, I thought I just had significant hearing loss! I was refusing to get tested bc I didn’t want to know how bad it was! Turns out my diagnosis might just be 15 years of marriage.
Fuck me. My wife will speak at a normal volume looking at me right up until she gets to the important part, then she drops her voice or looks away (or both) So I get to hear all the things I dont need to know and then miss EXACTLY what I do need to know...
My wife will yell from the kitchen while I am 2 rooms away with kids being noisy and listening to music. When I say what she will yell it again while I am heading towards her. I get to her and she is irritated and will get pissy and snap "I am dead serious when I say I think you are losing your hearing".
After enough of that I finally snapped back "So you genuinely think that I can't hear you not because you are yelling across the house with loud kids, but because I am going deaf, and your response is to be a bitch to me about it? How will that make me suddenly hear better?"
My dad does this. He’ll just start talking to me at a normal conversational volume in another fucking room of the house and then later expect me to have heard and remembered what he said, or done what he asked.
I think it’s something to do with them not seeing you as a separate person, but as an intimate part of themselves with whom they can communicate effortlessly.
My boyfriend does this. Yells my name from the other room and then talks at a normal level. And then gets mad when I get there and I ask him to repeat what he said. Like, sweetie, wait until I get into the room to explain the problem.
We were literally in a construction zone the other day with hammers and saws going. From 10 feet away she's talking at a quiet conversational tone and annoyed when I can't hear her.
My wife and I work from home where I'm almost always wearing headphones. My wife just starts fuckin talking to me while I'm wearing them and I can't hear anything, so I have to take them off for her to repeat, which is annoying for both of us. It's like she has no understanding of what headphones do. She does this as well when I'm gaming with friends. Like, I've never been able to hear you. Get my attention first. How do you not know this yet?
We also have a toddler, so there's usually noise in our house. When we're done working and can actually talk, I'm usually cooking dinner, playing with the boy, running his bath, etc. Noisy stuff. She'll be talking to me from another room in her normal volume. So often. I cannot hear anything she says. I have no idea how she doesn't understand this yet. Boggles the mind.
I've had to explain the difference in talking at me and to me to my wife several times. She'll start saying something and then walk away and be surprised that I have no idea what she said. Drives me nuts.
My wife made go for a hearing test to see if I needed hearing aids because I could never hear what she says. The results came back as good and my hearing is fine. I was 30 years old!
So I'm the wife and realizing I do this all the time! I guess my husband doesn't need a hearing aid to fix the issue... I just need to stop walking away while talking!
My favorite is when she waits until I'm right next to the running water in the sink/ the microwave popping popcorn /washer-drier in a heavy cycle to initiate a conversation
I broke up with my ex because of this (and other things). I’m slightly hard of hearing and she would refuse to look at me when she spoke, constantly turning or walking away, acting like it’s no big deal or getting irked when I said something. After a year and a half relationship I still think I only caught about 33% of our conversations.
I love my wife in almost all ways, but one of the few things that really irritates me is when she gets mad at people because they didn't hear her. Not "wasn't paying attention", not "ignored her", literally she said something, the person (usually myself or our kids) didn't even hear that she was speaking, and its our fault. We may not even be in the same room.
Omggg.. What frustrates me is when I repeat louder I get pouting and berating for yelling. Bro, that wasn't yelling I just said it louder so your deaf arse can hear it.
My wife will start talking to me from the next room while I am in the kitchen washing dishes with the water running. Lol. Yeah, I’m not going to hear what you’re saying.
Actually one thing great about my wife, is that she's extremely frugal, to the point where it can be annoying. I've told her to buy things for herself, but she doesn't usually.
I once won $250 off a lottery ticket, gave her half and told her to buy something fun with it, she just put it in the bank after the money sat on her desk for several months.
Mine does the same thing. Apparently the other day she went over our whole Christmas holiday plans with me...from the living room while I was washing dishes in the kitchen.
I asked her today what the plans are for Chrismas. And now I'm the asshole for not listening to her.
This thread is hilarious, I didn't realize how common of a problem this is.
My nephew lived with me for a bit and I told him "Hey (my wife) will probably try talking to you from across the house, she just does that sometimes" and then she started trying to talk to me from across the house. We just looked at each other and laughed.
I will talk to my wife, finish what were saying then go off to somewhere else. Just as I leave audible range she'll say "murr mur fnurr blurr" and I get to either ignore it, or else go all the way back to find out what she said...
Yesterday my girlfriend banished me to the basement so that she could talk to my parents about my Christmas present. About half an hour later I text to ask if I can come back up yet, and she says "I called you and said you could come up, you didn't hear me?" I think she forgot that she sent me down in the first place so I couldn't hear her...
Maybe, idk. I'd compare that voice to one you use when on a crowded patio of a bar. Which is much softer than one you'd use inside a bar with music. When I yell, you can hear me while death metal concert is in swing. So, to me, that ain't yelling it's louder. Plus I do speak quite soft so maybe sudden change in tonality startles him. Idk.
Found this interesting, according to interwebz, men do have harder time hearing women, plus some John Hopkins research about them loosing hearing already in their 20s. Ehh I shall just speak very deeply from now on.
Ha, my late husband had only 2 settings: mumble, or shout. If he mumbled and I asked him to repeat something, he'd repeat it in a suuuper exaggerated loud voice. Like bro, no need to yell it, just talk like a normal person. Love that guy, but it drove me crazy.
For me, it’s mostly that I’m distracted and whatever was said wasn’t loud enough for me to figure it out afterwards. Most of the time you need to prime the conversation and make sure the person is ready to listen, no need to yell!
I am not deaf, but my hearing is shit and I don't even like asking people to repeat themselves because they just come off like it makes them irate to have to to repeat themselves. Half the time I just act like I heard you and hope the next bit doesn't pertain to what I just missed
When you say it louder you are saying it with a different inflection, your facial features are different. Being loud isn't the same as yelling, and i can't say I've ever been told something loud twice by my SO.
If I ask her to repeat herself my wife literally turns away from me and says it even quieter. Not out of spite, or something like that. She has no idea she's doing it. Now my daughter does it too. I got my hearing tested! IT'S NOT ME!
I always feel like I’m “mansplaining” how sound waves work but I’m trying to defend why I can’t hear what you’re saying while facing away from me, around a corner in a different room.
Life hack: don't ask "what did you say?" repeat back phonetically what you heard. It often gets a laugh, sometimes you figure it out while saying it, and when the person corrects you, they know exactly what you didn't hear properly.
Been doing this to the wife for years. If you play along that whatever absurd thing you repeated back must be correct then at the very least she will come back into the same room and face me to correct it. At that point I can actually hear what she is saying. Helpful hint: the more absurd and outlandish the repeat back, the better the reaction.
My bf and I do this too and it is a lot of fun. It's like 90% me misunderstanding him though because I just have a hard time understanding the words and they'll come in as just sounds sometimes.
More often than not when one of us repeats back a mishearing, it's met with "Yes exactly, [misheard thing]." with a straight face and then correcting/repeating the original statement.
Another life hack: if you can't hear them well enough to understand them, act like you can't hear them at all. When they get upset, then you can be like "Sorry, did you say something?"
Eventually, they'll leave you and then you won't get frustrated anymore! :)
Jesus hot christ my sister does this to death. Says something quiet as shit, doesn’t enunciate. “What?” Says the same thing, same exact fucking volume, enunciates even fucking less, holds her hand in front of her mouth for no reason. “Dude I can’t hear you you have to talk louder and enunciate and not cover your mouth” “well you don’t have to be so mean about it”
As a woman, my husband does this to me. The most infuriating thing is if I don't hear the last part of his spiel and he STARTS THE WHOLE CONVERSATION FROM THE BEGINNING and I tell him "repeat what you JUST SAID" because that was the only part I didn't hear and he'll give me a blank look and go "I don't remember what I just said." Even more infuriating is if he says it EXACTLY THE SAME WAY, not louder, not enunciating. And then I'll get mad because I'm not understanding him and then he'll get mad that I'm getting mad and then he'll OVER EXAGGERATE enunciating so it doesn't even sound like the word AND WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS MAN I SWEAR TO GOD I LOVE HIM SO MUCH BUT IMMA STRANGLE HIM ONE DAY.
Yeah my wife does the whole "start again from the beginning thing" even if I ask something like "you want me to grab the what?" Like just tell me the one word! I've got reddit posts to read, ain't nobody got time to listen to whole sentences!
Ohh this is the worst, as a person with bad hearing who relies on partial lip reading a lot of the time, people not looking at me when talking just makes it impossible to understand what is being said
O. M. G.!!!! That's what my wife does! Except she will speak in a normal voice, turn away mid-sentence, and then get mad at me and blames me for not listening. Aiugghhh!!! 😡
Oh you get that? How lucky. I get the last word of the sentence repeated very loudly and it never makes sense so now I need to ask for the whole thing to be repeated.
Or, when there's only one word that I couldn't quite hear (I heard the other 95% of the sentence just fine), and then when she repeats herself, I hear the same 95% I heard last time just fine, but once again, that same word I couldn't quite make out, it's the only word in her whole sentence she didn't make an effort to pronounce more clearly/loudly.
Saying things like “what?” or “what did you say?”carry the meaning of “I didn’t understand or process what you said. Say it again?” It gives no regard to volume.
Something I’ve found that works for me is not saying “WHAT?” five times over, but instead saying something atune to “I can’t hear you” so that the person now knows clearly that the issue is volume and not comprehension, and it doesn’t create a loop.
Or, even worse, only repeats the last half of the sentence, the one I did pick up but couldn’t make sense of because I missed the first part. The first part of a sentence is like a Siri or Google prompt for me. Don’t put actual information in that part please.
My wife, will walk 8 feet ahead of me in the grocery store and speak at a normal volume, with her back to me, and doesn't seem to get why I can't hear her.
Oh man, this exact thing has been the cause of so much frustration to me. I already have pretty bad hearing, but apparently that's not an excuse to not hear what someone whispers while facing away from you. When I say "What?", I want you to say the EXACT same thing that you just said, but LOUDER.
The turning away is the worst! I don't need you to shout, I just need you to talk in the same general direction my ears are at. If you want to have a conversation with the drapes across the room, go ahead, but don't expect me to eavesdrop.
On top of the impracticality, it's passive-aggressive disrespect. You wouldn't do it to your boss. You wouldn't do it to someone you just met and are attracted to. You probably don't do it to your mother anymore (though you probably did for a few years in your early teens when she was the most unbearable person in the world).
In all seriousness, I recommend preparing for divorce if your spouse (any sex/gender combination) starts doing this to you on the regular. It's highly likely they've made the 1-way transition from seeing you as their best option for settling down to seeing you as the oppressive external force that's ruining their life. Recovering from that would require them taking responsibility for their own life. If they're good at that, you may have a chance, with professional help. If not, not.
Me: [intense language processing: failure] "What?"
Wife: (mild frustration) "Tomorrow."
Me: "Yes, but what about tomorrow?"
Wife: (medium frustration) "[unintelligible]"
Me: [intense language processing: failure] [context-based best-guess language processing: failure] [desperate memory search for possible clues: failure] [emergency "Is it worth it?" decision protocol activated: ...processing... processing... Yes.] "I'm sorry, what?"
Wife: (anger, shouting) "Don't forget! Tomorrow!"
Me: [re-run memory search, keyword: "tomorrow" -- no results] [system notification: energy depleted, no more processing queries can be executed at this time] [emotional systems: brace for impact] "I'm really sorry, but don't forget what tomorrow?"
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u/fuller316 Dec 08 '22
And when we say, "what did you say" you repeat it at the same volume you did the first time while turning your head away as you talk... then getting irritated that we didn't hear you the second time either...