I hate being interrupted.

Let me repeat myself. I hate being interrupted.

Sometimes, when I’m telling my dear husband a story, he interrupts me. He’s done this for five years now. Now, I glare at him and express my distaste. Sometimes he stops, apologizes, and allows me to continue.

But, it’s so hard for him, he cries! He has a thought, and he just must get it out lest, I don’t know, maybe he’ll die like the lady who swallowed a fly. I can usually remember my thoughts, so it’s often easier to let him blurt his thing out and then I continue.

I’m not perfectly innocent though.

I don’t have a lot of patience. How is it that I have a kid when I don’t have a lot of patience? I don’t know.

When I’m conversing with people, I often jump from track to track. I ask my clarifying questions, move on, and my brain wants to know about something else, often related to the topic. Sometimes, though, I find my patience wearing quite thin when my brain has moved on from a conversation and others haven’t.

My husband, who’s also relearning this patience lesson reminded me that sometimes I need to just bight my tongue.

Another interesting thing I was reminded of is this difference between office relationships and more intimate relationships like that with siblings or spouses. With my sister or my husband, I feel more open to letting them know when they need to get to the point in a conversation or stop interrupting me.

Back to my no patience quandry. So, my brain jumps from track to track, moving on and finishing conversations while others are still digesting and making sense of things. So, they pauske, to find a word in a conversation.

That pause is excruciating for me. Excruciating. Get to the point screams my brain! Clearly, this person needs help jogging their train of thought to get the word they are looking for. So, I try to help. 90% of the time, I pick the right word. Yes! Conversation can move on and we can figure out the thing.

Well, apparently, other people don’t view this as help. They view it as an unwelcome interruption.

Related articles

• Three Reasons Why People Talk More and Listen Less (brainpathways.net)
• “The difference isn’t between stuff that interrupts and stuff that doesn’t. The real difference is…” (pascoe.tumblr.com)
• Too Much To Say (askmissbehave.wordpress.com)