Well, maybe CAC will pop in here with his thoughts.
I don't think he has any "learning disabilities." (Although I definitely have problems learning by hearing so he draws me diagrams sometimes.) He has always amazed me with his capacity to learn and retain concepts and information whether reading a book, listening to someone or watching them.
I think what was happening with us was that I was overly critical and he was trying to avoid that. I think he believed that if I explained things to the nth detail that he would have a chance of "getting it right." I have only recently begun to understand this dynamic between us.
It's also possible that he was employing a bit of selective hearing because I sounded like a nag.
I picked up a bad habit from my mother -- assuming that people could read my mind. When I was a teen my bedroom was a disaster (probably my P/A way of "getting back" at my type 1 mother). She said to me recently, "I never understood why you didn't clean your room." I said, "why didn't you ask me to?" She said, "I didn't think I should have to." I said, "well I figured that if you really wanted it done, you'd have said something." I see now that I was doing the same thing to H.
Another thing H has asked is that I specify my desired timing for a task. (I realize I'm talking about ad-hoc stuff, not regular tasks like HD does.) Anyway, he said he needed to know if I wanted something done "right away," or by the end of the day, or the end of the weekend, or whatever. I bristled at this too at first, maybe because I'm still working on feeling comfortable asking for things. But, I tried it out, he got the job done when I needed it done, and we were both happy. We both asked for what we needed and we were both able to get it.
