When we first started dating, I thought he was the most brilliant person I'd ever met. He knew everything. I'd had a pretty dysfunctional upbringing and had missed out on a lot of my education. He filled in so many empty spots for me in regards to knowledge, dates and stuff like that.
Today, it drives me crazy. I don't know when the change happened but his brilliance drives me crazy now. I think it has to do with my yearning for an emotional connection. I want him to talk to me about us and about feelings and about stuff that I think everyone else is talking about except us. What he wants to do is known as 'LISTING'.
Listing is an attribute of aspys. I may say something like this to him. "Honey, did you see that car we just passed?"
He won't just say, "Yeah, it was cool."
No. What will happen is he'll start listing every thing he knows about that car. The type, the background on why it came to be, where it came from, the history of the concept, the history of the car itself and on and on. He'll know the designer's name and where they live and maybe what they like to eat for breakfast. I try not to ask questions anymore.
He's not really talking to me. He's just reciting facts. I used to find this so entertaining. Not so much after ten years. The reason is because it's not balanced. I love that he knows all of this stuff. I'll even ask him, "Where did you learn this?" He'll tell me that he read it. And that will be the end of the conversation. His conversation. I don't get to be a part of it. He never interacts by asking me a question or acknowledging me in any way. He simply lists. There are days where I have patience and days when I don't.
He can spend hours researching. I've seen him stare at his computer for over 8 hours. He can read a book in 2 hours. And he stores all of the information. The problem? Since we've been married, he has jumped from subject to subject. Right now he researching history. He wants to be a writer and share this with others. The problem is that most people don't want to know all of the facts he has learned. It's just too much.
Last year, it was telescopes. Before that it was microscopes, before that, it was motorcycles. He'll learn about something and then move on when he gets bored.
I sound like a complaining and unhappy woman. I'm not really. This stuff does get to me, it's true. But I have hope. My husband's love is the sweetest love I've ever known and for that I'm willing to compromise a lot.
What I've found that works for me to get my needs met is to tell him that I want to be part of the conversation and to explain how that might occur. It's not that he doesn't love me, he just has never had anyone try to be part of his life before. We're both having to learn.
