Something I find myself struggling with in relationships of all kinds, but especially professional and romantic, is making sure people are listening to me. I actually touch on the professional side of this in my post about trasnitioning on the job. Though I guess that got “solved” when I became too disabled to work. Romantically though, sigh

First thing’s first, I know that I can be incredibly talkative and that I can prattle and ramble way too long about topics that are near and dear to me. But that only happens if I’m incredibly close to you and feel safe, so my wife and a recent ex. If you’re not them, I’m so hard to get to talk. This is largely due to some real bad relationships which punished me one way or another for being open and expressive. Which is why it hurts even more when I try and people still don’t pay attention to me.

I’m not sure if there’s a difference between being ignored and not being listened to. Maybe on some technical level but it hurts the same way to me.

Sometimes my wife does this: I’ll be talking about something that’s actually important and she won’t pick any of it up, because she’s used to tuning out my inconsequential ramblings. We’ve talked about this. I am trying to be more understanding of struggles with attention given that I also have ADHD and I created and ran an ADHD support group for ten years.

But what really hurts is when my girlfriend does it to me because I already really struggle to open up to her. So the few times I do try to talk to her and I can literally see the interest draining from her face.. holy wow that guts me. No wonder I don’t open up more when I just get ignored like that. Or she takes The First pause to completely change the topic. Why bother. We have not talked about this. Because how am I supposed to bring it up when she already doesn’t pay attention to me. Or when she sort of brushes off the other stuff I’ve been struggling with in this relationship.

It just really hurts and makes me feel small, unwanted, and unimportant no matter who does it.

And I’m having some really tough thoughts and realizations about this relationship with my girlfriend. I’ve been waiting for four months for her to finally have time for me. She’s allowed to be busy! But I’m also allowed to be done waiting and done hoping.