i realize i did a really unhelpful NT thing there ("that guy hurt you therefore he's a jerk" reductive thinking) and i apologize. the work you did in putting this comment together is very kind & thoughtful - to me and to Tucker and i hope to yourself. i have certainly observed over the years that people have varying ability & interest in analyzing their own thinking patterns, relational patterns/styles, and so on. i feel like i come at it from a gestalt awareness more than analysis usually, but at the same time, i put a lot of time into thinking & talking about relationships, which very much informs the gestalt. (i just am more of a "closed loop with sudden flashes of insight" thinker than a methodical thinker; i often blame this on being a Taurus with mercury in Taurus.) ;)
i very much also am the kind of person who wants to speak about and know what i/they did wrong, so that we can understand and do better. if i hurt you and i don't understand why, i have no solid ground with you anymore and it erodes trust. if you tell me why i hurt you, i can work to change whatever in my thinking & behavior led to that, and we retain trust and can grow. and vice versa. so i have a lot of empathy for you around how hard it is that Tucker isn't able to participate in that process. that's rough.
even when your partner isn't the center of your being, we don't have a supportive framework around "stopped being able to notice time; missed our phone date" and the absence of that framework is one reason that would feel hard for a partner. it sounds like that is a framework that would need to be built with each new person, which also sounds tiring. i can also see phone alarms being really helpful if they work for you. (my housemate Jenny, who has adhd, sets three or so phone reminders for anything important, so that she can't just keep ignoring it; this comes from knowing her own brain & behavior patterns and not wanting to not come through on something she said she'd do. a while ago she was hunting for a reminder app that would take over the screen so you couldn't do anything else on your phone until marking it complete; she might have found that).
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i very much also am the kind of person who wants to speak about and know what i/they did wrong, so that we can understand and do better. if i hurt you and i don't understand why, i have no solid ground with you anymore and it erodes trust. if you tell me why i hurt you, i can work to change whatever in my thinking & behavior led to that, and we retain trust and can grow. and vice versa. so i have a lot of empathy for you around how hard it is that Tucker isn't able to participate in that process. that's rough.
even when your partner isn't the center of your being, we don't have a supportive framework around "stopped being able to notice time; missed our phone date" and the absence of that framework is one reason that would feel hard for a partner. it sounds like that is a framework that would need to be built with each new person, which also sounds tiring. i can also see phone alarms being really helpful if they work for you. (my housemate Jenny, who has adhd, sets three or so phone reminders for anything important, so that she can't just keep ignoring it; this comes from knowing her own brain & behavior patterns and not wanting to not come through on something she said she'd do. a while ago she was hunting for a reminder app that would take over the screen so you couldn't do anything else on your phone until marking it complete; she might have found that).