Submitted by ThrowRA_fakeyfake t3_11c2zqx in relationship_advice
TLDR: Sometimes my wife of 10+ years says stuff that just doesn't make sense and blames me for not understanding. How do I respond?
Example:
Me: "Man, [our friend] is really hard-working. He made it all the way to being a store manager. Pretty impressive."
Her: "Ya, well his Meyer's Briggs personality is the Protagonist, so..."
Me: "Oh... I'm not sure the connection there? ... like ... how is he the protagonist?"
Her: "[visibly annoyed and confused] You know, the main character... The central person in the story... [more annoyed] you don't understand?"
I've tried explaining the gaps in what she is saying, I've tried suggesting what might fill them; "Oh you mean like..." but it seems to always backfire. Either I don't get it right and she gets more annoyed, or she just gets annoyed I'm trying to "fix" what she's said, saying something like, "I meant what I said."
I honestly don't really care about conversational minutia, but I would be happy she would just say like, "Oh, ya I guess that's not a clear connection" and move on. But she acts like I have some kind of interpersonal deficiency for not following her tenuous connections or [ironically] caring to figure out what she might have meant.
I don't think it's just me; I've seen other people confused by her leaps in logic, and she seems equally unconcerned toward them, as though they're missing the big picture by being confused.
Been trying for years to get her to go to counseling, so no hope there.
...Also open to y'all saying it's just me...
Any tips? Could use anything at this point... just want to be able to converse with her casually and it not get weird.
[EDIT]: I meant she won't go to *couple's* counseling. I have wanted to get a professional's perspective on our communication for years. I've started going to therapy myself for various other reasons, which I've found helpful, but our communication issues haven't improved much. I kind of expected my therapist to say I have a personality disorder, or that I'm on the spectrum, because of the communication difficulties I have in my marriage, but he's insisted neither of those are true.
As far as those going after either of our intelligence or desire to seem intelligent, I really don't think either are a factor. We're both very intelligent (I work in an intellectually demanding area of STEM and she has a graduate degree, not that those are proofs of intelligence, but just to try to paint a picture). I don't feel either of us is in intellectual competition with the other.
I've found a great majority of the comments very helpful, thank you already! It's fascinating to read such different perspectives and assessments, even the ones that are deeply critical of me. I am honestly just trying to figure out what is going wrong because I love my wife and want to have a happy marriage, even if it's just me that needs to change. I have a feeling this is a pretty complicated issue, and there may be a lot of right, if differing, answers here. Even though y'all don't know me and can't hear my tone, I was already pretty taken aback by how people thought what I quoted myself as asking was, well, accusatory or harsh. I'm seriously considering that, and am going to try more deliberately to choose more gentle phrasing. There's a bit of a ring of truth with things she's expressed on feeling too questioned, to that point.
Also, I'm somewhat familiar with Meyer's Briggs, probably not as much as her, and I just didn't know the connection between success and being a protagonist. Still not totally sure the connection there, but I'm interested. In the actual conversation I ended it by saying "Oh, well maybe I just don't know as much about that as you do, or I'm just not so familiar with The Protagonist one. I'd be interested to learn more about that to see what you mean." She was just silent and seemed annoyed and changed the subject.