How do I explain what a rhetorical question is to my partner

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My boyfriend seems to answer rhetorical questions, and gets all grouchy because he thinks that when I'm saying a rhetorical question it means I want a precise answer.

I use rhetorical questions as a way of discussing something or trying to figure something out with someone. But I know it's not me who's making the error because other people I talk to a lot usually know when a question requires an answer or not.

For example yesterday my boyfriend's mate was supposed to come to the apartment to collect something that we needed taken away, and yesterday was the only convenient day he could come, so when it got to late at night and the mate hadn't shown up at all, my boyfriend said "I don't think he's coming", and I said "so when will he come then?" - which was supposed to be a rhetorical question, but he answered in an irritable way, "how do I know? I will only know if he rang and told me, won't I?" But when I said the rhetorical question, I non-verbally meant "today is the only day he could come, so that means it won't be picked up this week".

How do I explain to him that he needs to understand that when I'm kind of empathising with his emotions I will ask questions what I don't want a particular answer to? He's the only NT I have met who doesn't seem to recognise a rhetorical question?

That is a very subtle way of communicating, I have difficulty getting the meaning that you meant from what you said,even after you explain it!

I suspect that when a rhetorical question is "normally" asked, there are non-verbal clues.

Maybe the best thing to do is to learn not to ask such questions?

If I might be so bold as to reply... I don't think even a lot of NT people recognize rhetorical questions even when they're smacked in the face with them. I've never understood them since I can remember, and when my wife uses them, I fall into the same rut that your boyfriend does. They're extremely subtle. It might be easier to try and word your questions differently, or even omit them completely from your conversations. That's probably hard to do... but I think some people just simply don't work well with rhetoric.

Maybe it's a male thing then , because as I say when using rhetorical questions with other women, they tend to know what I'm talking about and don't try to reply logically.

For an Aspie I'm pretty good with understanding non-verbal cues and reading between the lines. Rhetorical questions don't work so much in text, but when speaking them, I can pick up the subtle differences between a real question and a rhetorical question. My mum uses rhetorical questions all the time, so maybe it's a thing I picked up from her.

Chandler from friends uses it for comic effect
E.G."Can you BE any dumber?"
But he pulls faces and says it in an exaggerated humorous way to make it obvious it's rhetorical.


When you ask rhetorical questions are you being humorous?

If you want to effectively communicate, change.

You're being passive-aggressive in this anecdote, not rhetorical.

If what you mean to say is, "There is no other day he can come."
Say, "There is no other day he can come."

Rather than saying, "So when will he come?"
Which is really not a rhetorical question - there is an answer, either no other day, or on a day that is less convenient for you. It is a question framed to elicit a quantitative response. MAYBE "So when can he come?" would have been a rhetorical question, as given the established parameters there were no other times he COULD come [that were convenient for you] but likely many other times he WOULD come.

Passive aggressive communication is usually learned from your nuclear family. And it self-selects for compatible folks to talk to.
So yeah, I believe everyone else you socialize with would "get it" but that doesn't mean you're right.
Just habituated, with a social environment that you selected to fit you.

Clearly, you are experiencing negative emotions around this event.
Rather than criticize your boyfriend's perfectly reasonable response in this instance, try expressing those emotions.
"I am angry that your friend did not follow through on coming to get this at a time that was convenient for me."

We were both angry that the mate didn't turn up, neither of us needed to say in words. And I thought rhetorical questions were how you say it, not how you word it. I thought a rhetorical question was an illogical way of expressing emotion connected to the relavent situation.

I wasn't expecting my bf to say, "well, according to my telepathic energy, my mate will be coming at precisely 2.31 next Wednesday afternoon". I was expecting him to respond in agreement, like "I don't know, he COULD have called and let us know." (It's so hard to explain tone of voice in text).

I have to say I probably would have responded the same way as your boyfriend.

Just say that a "rhetorical question" is a question that doesn't require an answer.

You're just questioning something, you're just speculating about something.

Just like the question "Why is the sky blue?" doesn't require an instant answer. If you would ask your boyfriend that, would he expect to come up with an answer?

I have run into this w/ my spouse. I found that my style of rhetorical question and hyperbole and sarcasm and...well, you get the idea, did *not* match that of my spouse. And no matter how many times I tried to explain, it was no good. I was brought up in an acerbic, cynical, sarcastic household (of people likely on the spectrum, or at least with many symptoms) so I had no idea that wasn't how some people communicate. I ended up dropping the sarcasm for the most part, keeping the hyperbole and rhetorical questions but making them so extreme they were easily identified. Also, I ended up using a different tone of voice that signaled, "I actually don't mean this". It was a very sing-song tone change.

So, yeah. I don't think explaining works in this case, but you may be able to modify your delivery?

I think that particular rhetorical questions is easy to misunderstand, because after this particular week is up there are still opportunities for him to come.

I think it would have been easier for him to understand it was rhetorical if you had said something that referenced this week -- like, "When else is there this week?"



Joe90 may be coming across that way if her partner is assuming she is asking when he is coming as an indirect way of expressing an expectation of said partner (or as indirect way of expressive feelings of upset with her partner).... but since her intent, as I understand it, was never to ask a question nor to make an indirect statement of expectation/feeling upset with her partner, then she was not being passive aggressive.

She sounds upset. She specified his negative emotions (which likely affected her emotions).
She also said she was "kind of empathising with his emotions" [specifically "irritable"] and since her verbage wasn't empathetic, I believe that only leaves her feelings and her non-verbal cues as potentially "empathetic".

I don't know where the "expectation of partner" or "feelings of upset with partner" come in...?
As I read, the expectation and upset were of and with the mate who did not show.

The only thing [from this post] she's expecting partner to do is read hidden meaning into what she says.

Here's an article from The Albert Ellis Institute Website on The Paradox of Passive-Aggression, specifically in communication, which explains better than I can:
"When we are passive-aggressive, we not only fail to communicate our feelings and needs in a direct, effective manner (the con of being passive) but we also tend to introduce a new barrier to communication by leading the other person to become defensive (the con of being aggressive). "
http://albertellis.org/the-paradox-of-p ... ggression/

Successful communication requires that the sender and receiver both come to the same understanding.
That means, especially in indirect speech acts with implied meanings, that both parties must have the same context in which they interpret the indirect act.
The maxims of conversation are: information, truth, relevance, and clarity.
Therefore, he made the reasonable assumption that her question - on the exact topic of his utterance which immediately preceded it - was conversational.

Same topic: relevance.
Began with interrogative word[5 W's + 1 H]: information.
Reductive["not coming"..."When"?]: clarity.

It only falters in "truth" - now, it's not an imperative statement, so it's not a direct falsehood.
It's an exclamative interrogative sentence - and in this case, an informal fallacy.

The real point being, it wasn't effective communication.

If she wants to communicate with her husband successfully, she should work on saying what she means.
She should also challenge her presumption that she is in the right when communication goes badly (we should all do that, that's how we learn and grow as people).

You've lost me.

It doesn't matter.

He snapped at you because he was aggravated at the situation, not because he doesn't know the definition of "rhetorical".

Snapping at me in agreement is ok. But how he worded his answer, sounded like he thought I was asking for an actual statement from him.
I just happen to be a "it's not what you say but how you say it" type of person.

But it doesn't matter now. I love him too much to let small things like that come between us.