I Need a Hand...Explain Forcing Verbal

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I cant seem to make my wife understand what forcing me to verbalize does to me when I am shut down.

Personally, I enjoy being nonverbal. It is rare and it's what everyone seems to always want from me and yet when I do go nonverbal everyone (including my wife) seems to take it as a personal affront and feel it their mission in life to force me to talk.

For instance this happened twice in a row with her the other night and actually precipitated my telling her I had had enough and wanted a divorce. I had had an argument with one of my only close childhood friends and told him I was sick of being the one putting all the energy into him and getting nothing back (he routinely entertains females for years at a time who are nothing but leeches and when I confront him he tells them and they don't like me, so he just ignores me. Happened with two girls, 3 years with each girl. Both left him once they got what they wanted.). So I'm upset and tired and don't want to talk.

She has a masters in psychology. We've been together 10 years. I expect her to know when I'm upset and in a bad mood. I've posted about it on Facebook.

What does she do first thing she sees me when she gets home? Follow me across the house repeatedly forcing me to talk, until I snap and tell her to stop making me talk it's pissing me off. Not twenty minutes later, I'm in the middle of something and she asks me to do something and I literally can't reply because I'm mid conversation. So she asks me again. And again. With increasing irritation in her voice both times. Finally I reply yea I'll do it and I get angry because I obviously couldn't reply and she could see that.

I don't get it. How can she not understand this? Forcing me to verbalize at this point is going to bring nothing good. I know this. She knows this. And yet she will purposely and aggressively force me to speak until I get mad, and not once but repeatedly even after I tell her what's going to happen if she doesn't stop.


Why? I don't understand it. My only conclusion is that she gets off on the fighting. She swears she doesn't but it's the only thing that makes sense. SHE KNOWS how I am going to react, I can even explain to her exactly what's gonna happen and she STILL PUSHES IT.

Last night she played the damn "No Game" with our daughter while feeding her. We just talked about this like 5 days ago. If you tell her to do something and she says no...you don't laugh and make a damn game out of it. And yet here we are not a week later and she's doing it again. BUT HERES THE KICKER. After she did it once or twice, she's laughing and looks over at me, sees in not laughing...stops laughing...checks herself, kind of has an inner thought moment, glances at me again, then proceeds to play the no game 2-3 more times.

WHAT THE HELL?!?!? As far as my body language reading went...she realized what she did, checked to see if I responded, saw I didn't...and kept doing it to try to get me to respond.

I mean I don't understand how it's anything but intentional. She has a masters in psychology with a 4.0 GPA. She's not an idiot...I mean she can't be right????? I'm so confused....

I can't figure out if she's an idiot and the American college system is a complete joke, or if she has some sort of sadomasochistic streak and just can't help but constantly initiate conflict....

I've tried to explain to her that forcing me to talk makes me feel like beating myself upside the head. I actually had a few fits of hitting myself throughout our arguments the last few days. I'm trying to talk things through but I can't explain anything about me to her without it being an attack on her.
I'm hoping maybe some of you can describe what the inner feeling/self hitting feeling is like when someone keeps forcing you to talk when you don't want to.

To me, being forced to verbalize when in shutdown is like trying to break out of sleep paralysis. It is physically difficult because the brain signals for movement are being interrupted. It takes a LOT of effort to break through that, and because it's the exact opposite of what the body wants to do it leads to intense frustration.. I'm not sure if that's what it's like for you, but you could use that explanation if you find it helpful.
Though, if a psychology major is that insensitive, maybe she's just mean.

Yea that's a pretty good one, just hoping different perspectives will help her so it's not just me "attacking" her.

I don't think I've ever been nonverbal but when I was a kid and I went into meltdown, people would always say "We can't live you alone, we must stay with you until you calm down".

Being around other people was the thing that was makingme upset. If they left me alone I would have calmed down in a minute but these stupid extroverts just assumed that being around them would make me calm down.

I imagine that's a health and safety/safeguarding issue rather than the assumption that their presence would help you. Especially if your meltdowns had risk of harm to yourself or others.

In any case, I'd have another conversation with your wife and introduce a sign you use when you don't want to talk. Don't expect that your wife is checking facebook when you've a daughter to care for.

My wife does push me to talk about feelings - and it's generally good for me as I'm prone to bottling. But she also leaves me alone (we also use sign language at times) when I need it. But sometimes, she needs emotional support from me when I need to retreat and this causes problems.

I am a wife who accidently does this. We are the opposite but both neurotic. He shuts down and I compulsively verbalize when under the same kind of stress. The signal idea works great for us because we understand we do not intend to be as*holes. We make sure to hug a lot throughout the day always asking for permission first. We have made it through ten years, happy and relaxed with each other knowing that our buttons tend to push each other so we back off just in time now!

I have issues like this but not with verbalization. My girlfriend forces me to make eye contact with her when she explains things to me which she has done during a meltdown. I tend to internalize my meltdowns in front of others so I tend to become still and I stop breathing. These states are very physically painful. She has picked up on the stiff unmoving posture I get and tells me to look at her. Sometimes I force myself so I don't have to deal with the fall out from not looking. But sometimes it is physically impossible to move, look at anyone because everything is so overwhelming that I need sensory deprivation to calm down. Once I couldn't move and she decided to try and grab me to hug me (somewhat aggressively and in irritation). I didn't react well and started flailing and hit her. Which made me feel like the worst girlfriend ever because she was in a physically abusive relationship in her 20s.

I've tried to explain to her what I go through but she just looks at me like I'm acting like a child. She just doesn't understand because she can't put herself in my shoes and understand that I need space and certain considerations. My point is that I don't think your wife is sadistic and loves fighting with you. In fact I bet she feels just as baffled by this as you are. I assume she is NT (don't remember if you said)? If this is the case then you are battling the issues that most of us Aspies navigate when we fall in love with NT partners. My best advice to you is try to take into consideration that she just processes things differently than you and won't have the same reactions to things. Tell her that you can't/aren't willing to talk now but you will when you get your time alone to process things. Then you need to compromise. Take your time but make a point of coming to her and verbalize whatever issue it is you are having or how you felt about a situation. If writing helps, write it down. The biggest compromise in making a relationship work is that clear communication is the most important thing from both people. It doesn't matter what method is used as long as it is done with respect for your partners own perspective. What I find works is I treat NT people like THEY are the one with the processing disorder. They don't, but the simple fact that they are wired differently than we are means that the methods sometimes work if nothing more than to be sensitive to the fact that you aren't going through this with blinders on alone, your partner likely feels like this is an uphill battle alone too. For different reasons you are likely feeling the same exact confusion over this situation as your partner is.

You can click on my signature and download my masters thesis in sociology, which includes data showing that 97% of the people in my study (37/38) required a buffer period after work before resuming any other activities. 90% were experiencing autism-related anxiety at work and 92% were experiencing autism-related exhaustion.

You could explain to your wife that when autistic people experience anxiety and/or exhaustion they require a buffer period to get over it. I did not ask if people became non-verbal during this period, but it's common knowledge that that can happen.

I'm NT, but I have a neurological condition and sometimes I am barely verbal. My husband is autistic. When I'm messed up, it's difficult for me to describe things to him in a way he will understand. I might be able to say something like "get thing" but that doesn't help him too much. So he'll ask me descriptive, simple questions and I can nod or shake my head. He doesn't hassle me about it and lets me rest as much as he can. It's not rocket science.

Yeah, this really annoys me.
I want to just say "uh huh" (yes) or just a nod (even with positive eye brow movements.)
For all their 'body language" they actually want/need verbal confirmation.

And sometimes I can't even get yes/no answers out of some people, even when I ask a Yes/No question!
(this is more of an issue with women - in my experience [I had to legally put this annotation in, or women will sue me ])

Oh but in your case; women love to talk, so when you arrive home it's what she wants to do to unwind. Women just like to discuss things, without trying to solve them (venting).
Also she is a human, so that can trump her psychology degree.
As for the damn game, she may have just been trying to get you to losen up a bit and play along - the reason for her repetition.

She's probably trying to use CBT on you in the hopes that you will one day embrace verbalization. Her behaviour with you and your child suggests that she is unwilling to comply with your requests. She will likely continue in this vein until the marriage ends and then she will blame you.
Btw, psychologists don't learn how to understand, they learn how to manipulate. To them acceptable behaviour is far more important than the individual expressing their experience.

Lol, really, this is so true. I have some psychologists in my family. I have had these thoughts myself.

4.0 Masters Degree in Psychology is unfortunately not supernatural telepathy, especially since some people 'shut off' their job skills when they get home. What methods of communication do you use to indicate you are non-verbal? Hand signals? What is the No Game, and how does it require you to be verbal?