Q4W: Hinting vs. Telling

concretecannonball · 2023-12-17T15:45:24+00:00

Hi, also neurospicy. ASD and ADHD doesn’t make you blind. If you saw your partner participating in household chores and that didn’t result in a thought to contribute, that’s a deficit in consideration for your partner, not one that comes from a disorder.

I don’t think a grown ass adult should need to be directly told to do things like clean up after themselves. If that communication style and dynamic works for you, cool, but you should be aware that partner is still doing additional work by having to manage you completing your tasks.

For me personally, having to tell someone to do something routine that I’m expected to just have the initiative to do is … exactly what mothers do. So I’d never do that because I’m not into dating children or men who act like one.

EulenWatcher · 2023-12-17T15:55:36+00:00

I think "mothering" happens when your partner can't properly take care of themselves and you feel that you have to step up. It isn't something temporary when they're sick or under a lot of stress, but something constant in your day to day life. You can't trust them to take care of themselves, hence you can't trust them to take care of you or your kids.

The only somewhat adjacent complaint of mine to it is my husband's attitude towards his health - I have to seek doctors, make appointments etc because he won't. I strongly suspect it's the result of his family's attitude towards being sick + towards men being sick, so I just deal with it.

But I'm also not good at dropping hints and prefer to be more direct. If I want him to do something, I just ask. I don't think direct communication is mothering, unless you don't do your share of chores and your partner has to do all the managing of household and remind you of "your" chores all the time.

Sharp_Engineering379 · 2023-12-17T15:33:35+00:00

Do you tend to drop hints rather than ask directly, if so why do you think you gravitate to that approach?

Some men get wildly angry when reminded of their responsibilities as an adult, maybe she'd experienced that and practiced a less confrontational approach. But also... diagnosis or not, it's weird for any adult to just sit and absorb the effort and care someone else offers while giving none back. She was probably as confused as she was hurt by your lack of effort.

Has this dynamic caused you to split with your partner?

I've had three relationships as an adult. I ended all three because of their dependence and lack of accountability.

penndelnj · 2023-12-17T15:36:41+00:00

I hint because that’s how I communicate. All you’re writing just confirms to me that I’m not suited to dating a “neurospicy” person. I suspected it but now I know.

januaryphilosopher · 2023-12-17T18:47:09+00:00

Communication means I'll communicate my expectations to people, so they know full well what they are. If they think they need reminders of some kind to meet these expectations, I can help them set that up, but it's on them to have them. If I need to remind people to meet expectations they agreed to outside of some preestablished agreement, that's mothering. I don't hint, seeing the thing they didn't do not being done is enough of a hint and if that's not working I'm going to tell, explicitly, that they didn't do what was promised (knowing that usually there's a good reason for it). This has not been a problem.

DreaminInChocolate · 2023-12-17T16:40:02+00:00

I’m curious what are your experiences with this dynamic, when does communication become mothering?

It becomes mothering when I need to tell you to perform basic tasks because you won't help on your own or take initiative to do it. I have children. That's how you treat them. I don't hint or tell their father what to do, because he's on it already.

Do you tend to drop hints rather than ask directly, if so why do you think you gravitate to that approach?

I don't need to do either. We both have our responsibilities in the house and with the kids. If one of us has the extra time we naturally pick up and try to help the other.

Has this dynamic caused you to split with your partner?

It would absolutely cause a break up if I had to tell another adult how to be functioning.

Mentathiel · 2023-12-18T21:13:06+00:00

I'm sorry you're getting shamed so hard. It's a real struggle and it's okay to rely on your SO to help you deal with your neurodivergence. It sounds like you're trying hard to find coping mechanisms that suit you and that work for both you and your wife.

It's hard to define what mothering is. Feeding a grown human would be mothering normally, but if someone is disabled and can hardly move it suddenly falls under reasonable accommodation for your loved one. If somebody is disabled and they technically can move but it causes them pain or sometimes causes them problems, it becomes more tricky to delineate when it becomes problematic.

In essence, every human being should feel as mature and self-sufficient as they can in the sense that they're able to perform tasks or acquire help with tasks (aka not depend on a single person in their life but have a wide support network that would step in if the "caretaker" person couldn't) that are necessary. Beyond that, beyond feeling able to contribute, you should also negotiate the contribution with your partner and both of you should benevolently want to spare the other from trouble, but also feel comfortable to kick back and let them allow you some rest. It's more about the attitude of not taking things for granted and wanting to contribute. If the outcome is bad maybe you need to renegotiate or rethink strategies, but as long as you have that attitude I think you're going in the right direction.

ADHD can make you really messy. You're sort of easy to habituate to non-novel stimuli and tend to be stuff-blind and find it hard to notice mess or find things in general. A good solution is to keep everything tidy and react to things while they're still novel stimuli aka as soon as you notice before you habituate. The problem with that solution is that people with ADHD often make messes unconsciously. They just put the keys down wherever they're passing by and don't even register that they did it for example. They think they have trouble with memory because they don't know where they put it, but it's not even memory, they haven't even noticed themselves putting it there because of inattention. Look into ADHD-friendly homes, there are ways of functionally designing your space to make it more intuitive for your brain.

All in all, nobody wants one partner to have all of the mental load of everything all the time and women are understandably angry and trigger-happy about this subject, but also you really sound like you're trying your best. You need to keep trying, but don't be too hard on yourself if you can't figure it out yet. Keep trying new techniques, you'll find something that works. And don't worry about relying on your wife to the degree that she's comfortable with. Just check in and make sure she's not overwhelmed.

apresonly · 2023-12-18T21:49:55+00:00

It sounds like this woman was your rehabilitation center to learn better social skills.

This is not a task most women want.

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thelajestic · 2023-12-17T21:03:04+00:00

I’m curious what are your experiences with this dynamic, when does communication become mothering?

I think when you need to tell people to do obvious stuff it starts to cross into mothering (cleaning up after yourself, sticking a laundry load on when the basket is full etc). I'm pretty lucky that I've only really observed this dynamic from seeing it in other couples - out of the two partners I've lived with, my ex was decent with housework and my husband is brilliant with it; no mothering needed!

Do you tend to drop hints rather than ask directly, if so why do you think you gravitate to that approach?

I just ask directly if there's something out of the ordinary needing done that I'm not able to do.

I actually can't think what a hint would be for housework. Would you be able to to give an example of when your wife hinted at something and what she said, compared to now when she directly asks?

Flightlessbirbz · 2023-12-17T22:41:49+00:00

Neurospicy woman here, with a slightly less but still neurospicy partner. I often miss hints, you’ve gotta tell me things pretty straightforward. But I also can see when my partner is working hard on something even if I didn’t immediately notice it needed to be done, and I want to help in some way even if it’s clumsy or I’m not exactly sure what to do. I need clear instructions, possibly repeated, but don’t need or want to be micromanaged. I might not be super quick depending on what it is, but overall it takes a lot less explanation than what I do at work.

I feel like in most cases where women are voicing their frustration online, they have told their partners outright many times that they need help with certain simple things, and it’s not happening. These men presumably are able to hold jobs outside the home where instructions are a lot more complex. So it’s not unreasonable to conclude that they know, they just don’t care.

As far as what counts as “mothering,” I’d say that is having to ask someone to do something each and every time. Not just telling them it needs to be done instead of hinting. If a woman has only hinted about something, then yes I agree she needs to be more direct. I just think most of the time, she already has many times.

MistyMaisel · 2023-12-18T04:50:10+00:00

I've always been pretty direct in my younger years and in my experience, men don't deal with that well. The honest truth is, most men just don't want to do the shit and directness isn't appreciated because it removes the plausible deniability aspect.

I've also clearly by this metric found hinting to be useless. That just leads to plausible deniability and lots of, "oh babe, I just plain forgot or didn't know" which feels designed to test your patience and ability to see them as a full fledged adult.

No full fledged adult should have to tell another full fledged adult to do these things. At most y'all should be asking for help or dividing up labor to be done asap. This is all mothering. The most I will do is remind someone of something if they ask me to because thats normal adult behavior and so long as it isn't remind me of all the things I'm supposed to do.

It probably indirectly caused me to split with one partner for sure.

I don't do either, I prefer behavior modification tactics. If a man does the thing I like and think is appropriate adult behavior, I affirm and compliment it. If he doesn't, he received negativity in the form of mockery, teasing, and criticisms.

Title	Q4W: Hinting vs. Telling
Author	innovativesolsoh
Upvotes	6
Comments	84
Date	December 17, 2023 3:27 PM UTC (2 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/18kjous/q4w_hinting_vs_telling/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/q4w-hinting-vs-telling.1240983 https://theredarchive.com/post/1240983

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