A wife writes to James Parker, seeking advice on her inability to pay attention when her husband speaks for extended periods. While she cherishes their relationship, she finds herself losing focus during longer conversations, causing her to miss important details like her husband's upcoming work trip. She wonders if she is bored, if her husband is boring, if it's a normal marital issue, or if social media has affected her attention span.
James Parker assures the reader she is not horrible but answers her other questions with 'yes'. He suggests the wife is bored, her husband may be less engaging than usual, this is a common marriage issue, and the internet is likely exacerbating the problem. He questions the husband's speaking style and suggests possible solutions.
He proposes the husband could be encouraged to shorten his conversations, maybe self-edit, and present salient points upfront. He also suggests the wife might be overloaded, leading to her brain filtering out information. They can approach the issue together, even medicalizing it as 'Selective Spousal Oblivion Syndrome'.
The advice offers a humorous yet insightful approach to a common communication problem within marriages, highlighting the impact of boredom, technology, and the importance of mutual understanding and communication adjustment.
Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at dearjames@theatlantic.com.
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Dear James,
I’ve been married to the best guy for almost 14 years. He is an awesome dad to our wild boys, makes exceptional burgers, and is weirdly fun to watch TV with. I still swoon at his perfect nose and strong arms. The only thing is, I can’t seem to make myself pay attention when he talks at length.
Brief exchanges are fine. But if he needs to speak in paragraphs rather than bullet points, I lose focus rapidly. He has never been a succinct person, but my new inability to maintain attention is causing problems. For instance, I know he has a work trip coming up, yet I have no idea where he’s heading. I’m sure he told me, but I spaced out the last time he brought it up.
I don’t have this problem with friends. Am I bored? Is he boring? Is this a normal marriage thing? Has social media wrecked my attention span? Am I horrible?
Dear Reader,
You are not horrible, but my answer to all your other questions is “yes.” You are, from time to time, bored—bored silly, bored to tears, bored (in this case) to unhearingness. Your husband has his less-than-fierily-compelling moments, as we all do. This is indeed a normal condition of married life. And yup, the internet / the world (same thing, these days) is not helping.
Let me ask you this: How often does your husband talk “at length”? Is he a holding-forth type of guy? And has this tendency increased over the years (the years, the years, the geological years of marriage)? Because this might be his problem, not yours. I think a lot about people who talk too much, people who—as we say in England—go on a bit. They fascinate me even as they drain my life force. I’m pretty sure I’m not one of them. I’ve got plenty of dead spots and blisters of boredom in my personality, but from the sin of long-windedness I have been largely preserved: A childhood stammer left me with a kind of blurty, splintery, punch-line-oriented way of talking. No leisurely anecdotes, no drawn-out argumentation. (I could be quite deluded about this, of course; ask the people I live with.)
Anyway, perhaps your husband could be encouraged, persuaded, gently directed, to trim his rambles—to self-edit. Tell him you’ve got Donald Trump–induced brain fog and need the salient points up front.
Which brings me to you. Are you doing too much, or handling too much, right now? Got too much on the go, needle in the red, etc.? That too would account for some of this wifely tuning-out. Quite a lot of what your husband has to say, inevitably, you’ve already heard, so your tired and starved-of-oxygen brain simply draws the line: Enough. It cuts him out. I think you can talk to him about this. Medicalize the problem—call it Selective Spousal Oblivion Syndrome. You can manage the symptoms together.
Pointy-eared in the springtime,
James
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