I really hurt my husband's feelings

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So basically I came home before taking off again to go to therapy. My husband got this decorative birdhouse with a decorative fake bird because I like birds... a lot. Anyway, I look at it and the first thing out of my mouth was "that species of bird would not build a nest in a birdhouse."

Anyway my husband did not take that well and my therapist said "you had your aspie glasses on"

I came home and tried to explain it to my husband, but he thought I was just coming up with an excuse. This really hurt his feelings.

I don't know exactly how to be careful of doing stuff like this in the future.

Yeah, I can understand both sides of this very well. It may take time for him to not feel the sting of that. Sometimes we need to take time before we speak because we as Aspies may not intend to hurt others by what we say but we do just because of what we said even though there is nothing technically wrong at all with the content of what we said. Even though the factual representation of the bird and the nest may be wrong, do you like the bird house otherwise? Is it pretty? Do you like the fact that your husband thought about you and made a special effort to encourage you? Can you appreciate that he does not know about birds like you do and that he just thought, "This is really pretty and my wife loves birds, I love her so I want to give her this." Maybe you can talk to him about those things and let him know that even if it's not a technically accurate portrayal of that kind of bird, that the important thing is that he loves you and thought to encourage you and I am sure you can enjoy that fact.

Do you have a burning need for honesty, even when someone's feelings are on the line? My Aspie husband does. For many years, he couldn't accept a gift to save his life. He would have said that, and I would have thrown the gift across the street. (This was earlier in our marriage).

My husband finally has learned how to accept gifts. He says just *Thank you for thinking of me*, and STOPS. Works in all occasions and for all gifts. Even with the ones you think *what the hell*.

Because this person took time out of their day and spent money on you. Most people do take care in picking out a gift, though sometimes it's a miss.

What you did was nitpick honesty which served no real purpose. A decoration isn't a diorama. I'm sure it had a finch sitting on a robin's nest. Yeah, dumb, but most house decorations are like that. Cows with wings, frogs fiddling...whatever...

And it made your husband feel stupid. Guys hate feeling stupid with a passion of a super nova.

So you took a sledge hammer to his ego. You didn't mean to, but for NT guys that is what it feels like. Damn (husband) are you stupid.

My husband says, *Thank you for thinking of me.*, then stops before he opens his mouth again. Is the next sentence useful information or just a data point for giving out data? Many times he follows up with *this is interesting.* Works in all occasions. Interesting can be how cool a gift it is to interesting how they mismatched the bird species to the nest.

Have your therapist work on accepting gifts. I'm sure you do this with other people too. My husband had pissed off so many people, they stopped getting him anything, because each encounter was horribly uncomfortable for them. No one wants to feel like they are a fool.

I'm sorry. I know how it feels to mess up like that, even though you don't mean to. I agree with Tawaki.

I understand how both you and your husband feel. If he is still upset, I would recommend saying something like this:

"I'm sorry that I scolded your bird house. I got too wrapped up in factual information. I want to let you know that I REALLY love it anyways. I can't believe you worked so hard on this for me! Thank you for this gift!"

My friend mentioned the term "plebian" to me, and I told him that they were either a people group assimilated with the Greeks, or an artisan in an ancient Roman guild. He still calls people "plebians"

Angnix - you're in good company. I've said some real doozies over the years, some of which I will never post.

I usually try this: "I'm so sorry I upset you, it was not my intention to do so. I really am sorry about that".

When I'm doing it a lot I use my three second rule - I count to three before I speak. Gives my brain a chance to reprocess what I'm about to say into something more acceptable.

I feel for you Anginx. I've done similar things over the years, lost a lot of great friends and been shunned because of it. One mild case was when I was 14. My mom allowed my sister and I to both rent a game for our Nintendo 64. My sister chose Mario Party 2 and I chose Super Mario 64. I got hooked on Super Mario 64 and was nearing 120 stars as the due date crept up and I let my mom know about my progress. Anyway, she takes the games back while I'm at school and I'm somewhat disappointed but meh. When I get home from school, my mom pulls a game out of her purse and excitedly hands it to me, unable to keep a grin off of her face. It was Mario Party 2 and before I could realize what I was saying, I blurted out "You got the wrong game." The look of disappointment and shock on her face stung and went back to re-rent the other one, even though I still appreciated her renting MP2 again (cause it was fun) and apologized. I still feel bad about that one though.

But I digress. I hope you can work things out with your husband.

I think your husband is overreacting. It's ok-he wanted to do something nice for you and you told him that type of bird wouldn't build a nest in a birdhouse-so? It's not like you told him he's worthless or a wimp or that he only makes mistakes. It's not like you threw a trantum, took the birdhouse and smashed it on the floor. IMO, you just pointed out a fact. I tend to go much harder on people (usually unvoluntarily) and they don't react like that, unless they are the type of person that gets offended easily. I usually don't get along well with people who get offended easily because they annoy me to the core and they act like only their feelings can get hurt. Not to mention that they think I have offended them on purpose and I am just making excuses. That may sound harsh, but that's how I am. I have some friends who are sensitive and get offended fairly easily, and even if I try to be softer with them I'll offend them as well every now and then, but they never react like your husband did and they know that I don't offend them on purpose and that I am not making up excuses and they always forgive me. Also, it's not like I never get offended by them and I usually forgive them when I feel offended by them.
If you told me something like that, I would have reacted either by saying "well, it doesn't matter", or "I want to learn more about these birds", or simply "ok" and I would have had a good laugh about my ignorance on the topic.