Carolyn Hax: He harps on her memory lapses, and it’s starting to get old

[cereta]

Dear Carolyn: My husband has lately been telling me often, “That’s the fourth (or so) time you have asked me that.” It’s quite often, and I told him he is not aware of the side effects of the medications I take for chronic pain. Two list memory problems as side effects. I try not to complain about my pain or the limitations it causes me. My medications don’t make me irritable or mean — just forgetful.

He is the same way with his mother and anyone else who might repeat a story. My mother died of Alzheimer’s, and so I am especially sensitive about that.

If I confront him, he will say he’s just teasing. He is wonderful in so many other ways. I just would like some advice on how to stop this behavior.

— Still With-it Wife

Still With-it Wife: You do realize you’re not the only one repeating yourself, yes? He responds to your repetitions with one of his own.

The two of you are coming at this problem from different directions for different reasons, but you’re getting to the same place: a dispiriting rut. And each of you has arrived there with the same expectation that the other one is responsible for fixing it.

I hope you’ll both see that, drop the expectations and show up with sympathy instead. You’re in pain and struggling with memory-related side effects; that’s not easy. He’s being asked or told things over and over and over — not just from a spouse on heavy meds, but from a mom losing ground to time; that’s not easy, either. And when he chooses to say something instead of just sitting through the nth retelling as if it’s new, then he’s the bad guy.

It sounds as if it would help each of you to spend some time imagining what the other’s predicament feels like. Right now, you’re both focused on your own experiences, and that contributes to the kind of empathy-deficit loop you’re in:

Your mind is on your struggle with your pain and meds, and you want him to understand. His mind is on his struggle with your repetitiveness, and he wants you to understand. So both of you are wanting, and neither of you is giving, so neither of you is receiving, so both are stuck on wanting, which makes the wanting (and not listening or giving) worse. That’s the loop.

Sympathy — giving — is what breaks it. You: “I know it’s hard to listen to the same thing for the nth time.” He: “I know it’s hard to have a chronic health condition.”

Sweet relief, no? If you can persuade him to join you in this more forgiving place?

Even better, once you’re both willing to do this for each other, you position yourselves to get out of the rut together. A simple, kind signal, which he agrees to give you when you’re repeating yourself, and you agree to heed graciously, could help you out. Maybe he … pats your forearm, if you’re close by. If not, he taps his ear twice. Or a verbal cue, “You’re seeing your shadow” (“Groundhog Day” reference). Whatever you come up with and agree on together will be better than anything I suggest at defusing this natural, probably inevitable, needlessly cyclical but not insurmountable stress.

Comments

[cereta]

I really want to see what other people have to say about this, because it really hits me where I live (I'm the person whose medical conditions and medications cause memory loss, although he does sometimes have his own issues). But I read through this answer about understanding each other and giving and came to a practical solution that, to me, reads like, "find another way for him to tell her she's repeating herself." And I don't know how I feel about it.

[minoanmiss]

I also got “ he needs to find a different way of telling her she’s repeating herself” out of this, with “ he needs to deal mindfully with her memory loss and not just poke her hurt fully every time it triggers him” behind it

Maybe a different phrasing will help. Or maybe it won’t. I do agree that they both need to see the situation from the other’s side but I don’t think I trust anyone who says “I’m just teasing” to consider any other viewpoint than theirs as the Truth of the Situation

[cereta]

I think the "I'm just teasing" is triggering other issues for me. I also kind of wish that Carolyn had suggested that he could let the occasional repetition slide.

[laurajv]

we don't know (and neither does LW) if he does. Carolyn could've mentioned it in her answer because it would be gracious of him, but....he might already be doing that.

(And fwiw, years of letting commentary on that slide meant my mom was SUPER shocked when one of us brought up to her that it had gotten worse recently, because she felt like she'd always had a GREAT memory -- she had not, but she had no idea because literally everyone around her had been being kind about it to her for her entire adult life.)

[minoanmiss]

I don’t think being kind necessarily necessitates being uninformative. There are liner abd less kind ways to point out to someone that their memory is slipping.

ETA correcting autocorrect

[minoanmiss]

I think the "I'm just teasing" is triggering other issues for me.

tries hard to set your brothers on fire with my mind

[green_grrl]

For real. The only proper “I’m just teasing” is, “Oh, I was just teasing. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. I’ll stop and not do it again.”

[jadelennox]

intellectually I see the answer's point, but as a person with chronic pain who's on a med that causes short term memory issues, I kinda want to punch carolyn, But carolyn tends toward the correct more often than not, so I'm trying to interrogate that.

Here's what I think on interrogation:

1. it is good, and correct, for your nearest and dearest to raise troubling cognitive issues for you, in case you're unaware. When I was on topiramate I absolutely needed help recognizing that my cognitive function was unacceptable, because I was too out-of-it to even process.
2. if you have a family history of Alzheimer's, that goes double. Someone telling you these things early so you can raise it with your doctor is important.
3. that's not what husband is doing.
4. husband does have a right to be traumatized and miserable. However, ring theory rules apply: Dump out, comfort in. And LW, who is having memory issues and is in chronic pain, is in.
5. That being said, Carolyn's advice is practical. There's no indication that this is a Whole Man Disposal situation, it's just a guy responding unhelpfully to a difficult situation at home.

I'd argue that they do need to talk, they do need to have empathy for each other, but one of the things LW has the right to demand is that Husband dump out. And Husband has the right to say "okay but is there a kind way for me to say I don't want to hear this story again?" And if the answer is no, it's terrifying for me to be reminded that my brain is fried then Husband needs to get some coping strategies of his own.

[melannen]

This is a very good answer.

[ashbet]

Agreed.

[ysobel]

it is good, and correct, for your nearest and dearest to raise troubling cognitive issues for you, in case you're unaware

Yes very much this -- and I agree it's not what he's doing. I'm not sure what he expects from her, except for things she can't do (remember stuff in the first place).

He badly needs an outlet that isn't needling his wife. Carolyn's right that both experiences are frustrating but he's making a choice to "tease" her, whereas she isn't choosing to forget.

(OTOH he's not the one writing in!)

[dissectionist]

I’m on both sides of this, as someone who is losing a loved one to dementia and also as someone with memory issues due to chronic illness. One thing I think Carolyn missed is that there may well be fear behind his actions. As someone who lost a (presumably loved) parent to profound memory loss, seeing what looks like the early pattern occurring in his spouse may well be triggering for him in ways he doesn’t even understand. And when we’re triggered, we often unconsciously react by trying to shut down the thing that’s frightening us.

[melannen]

LW, if your husband is not aware of the side effects of your medications, and if you feel like you can't complain about your chronic pain to your husband of all people (!!) then the problem is deeper than you both repeating yourself.

That said, it's possible he *is* aware. If he also watched your mother die of Alzheimer's, seeing his loved ones have memory lapses as they get older is probably painful and scary for him, too, and this may be his way of dealing with that without confronting it. My grandmother died of Alzheimer's (and my great-grandmother of a different dementia) and there is no mention of anyone having memory issues in my family where the shadow of that isn't there in the background for all of us somehow.

You two need to have some serious and vulnerable conversations about your health problems and your medication, the feelings you both have about them, how you want to communicate about them, the way your mother's death still effects you both, healthy ways to handle your memory lapses and other side effects as a couple, how you need his support with both your pain and other side effects, and also how you're going deal with the inevitable other health problems you're both going to have as you age together.

Or you could both keep putting up with your mild irritation whenever you repeat yourself, and push off the hard conversations until they're inevitable (tbh I'd probably pick that one personally.)

[movingfinger]

"He’s being asked or told things over and over and over — not just from a spouse on heavy meds, but from a mom losing ground to time; that’s not easy, either. And when he chooses to say something instead of just sitting through the nth retelling as if it’s new, then he’s the bad guy."

The "I'm just teasing" line is so common in bullying, that my hackles go up seeing it here.

The husband needs to talk to someone, who is not his wife, about his discomfort with her meds side effects, her aging, his mother's aging, her mother's aging and Alzheimer's, and alllll his FEEEEELINGS around those events. Because hitting his wife or mother in a sore spot every time her meds or her brain give her a memory spinout and she repeats herself is not kind or nice.

I wonder what kind of things LW repeats. It's not usually everything. Taking that too into consideration and husband modifying his behavior might help her some.

I'd also wonder: was she having to repeat herself before? Was he tuning her out until the third request to take out the trash?

[minoanmiss]

Yeah, I had some sympathy for the husband until that moment.

[p_cocincinus]

What Carolyn seems to have skipped over is that, in her example, LW isn't telling the same story, she's asking the same question. Which, I'm entirely in agreement that husband is being An Jerk, but being asked the same question over and over drives me straight up the wall. It's probably (totally) because I have A Thing about not being heard, and being asked the same question repeatedly is PROOF that I'm not being heard. Husband needs to be kinder, and also LW's relationship would probably improve if she just got in the habit of writing that shit down.

[mrissa]

Depends on where she is cognitively. If she doesn't remember asking the question, having the answer written down somewhere she will not remember writing it down will just mean that there are four different places that say "Deb is HOME!!!" Someone who has normal memory and just isn't paying attention is in a very different place from someone whose cognitive function is impaired by meds or pain (or, sadly, both).

My example was a real example from my life: when my mother was just back from Spain last year around this time, my beloved great-aunt was in a REALLY bad pain flare and had to be on more meds than usual. Whether Deb was home from Spain was foremost on her mind. It was really, really important to her. She had a habit of taking notes on our conversations. And she still asked me four different times, because that's where the meds had her that week. And I answered patiently and cheerfully each time, and the last three times I got in the car/got off the phone and cried. But: I removed myself before I cried. I didn't get sarcastic with her, it wasn't her fault. I went and had my emotions where it wasn't going to hurt the main person who was suffering.

[melannen]

There are workarounds for this, if it's an ongoing thing - for example, it's possible to train yourself on muscle-memory level that the first thing you think of when you have a question or you're feeling anxious and unmoored is "check your notes", not "ask whoever is nearby".

That's the sort of thing that might be worth working on - possibly with an occupational therapist or other third party - if the memory issues are relatively severe, causing freqrent distress, and going to be long-term, and especially if the patient needs to be able to be independent.

However LW *doesn't* need to be fully independent on this and "reassure me when I'm anxious" is the sort of thing that a husband of many years ought to be happy to be her assistive device for, especially if it's just at the level of "things occasionally slip my mind" not "I'm asking the same question every five minutes". If Husband can't let himself be that for LW for whatever reason, *he's* the one who might need to work with a third party.