Hello, just joined this forum. To get straight to the point, I have a behaviour that makes me tune out a lot when I listen to others that makes me misunderstand them or miss their point completely.
The most common type of feedback I get is from with my spouse, (even though I do it a lot of time with people I know well) is that she's pointed out in our conversations that a lot of the time I've formed my own stories in my head whilst she's still speaking and hence gone off tangent with what she's saying. I also tend to "jump" quickly to a response without taking a pause to really understand and grasp the situation.
For the sake of understanding I'll give you a very clear simple example. My spouse (or somebody else) would talk about a dream where she is on a canoe in the middle of a lake, crossing the river to get to a shoreline. Halfway across the journey across the lake before reaching the shore she comes across some ducks swimming the opposite direction along the water. At this point in the story, I would begin to think about the ducks and finish the rest of the story in my head. I might think about the ducks a bit longer, or start painting other parts of the picture, all while my spouse is still explaining the rest of the story (e.e. reaching the shoreline, or seeing something else along the way). By this point I've lost her and she frustratingly (understandably) has to repeat the details of the story I've missed because I've "tuned out" to the rest of it.
Another example is that I might look at a simple set of data on the computer and form a quick conclusion about it based on what I think is right rather than take the extra bit of time to understand it and form a quick & easy analysis to understand the data and be correct. I just "jump" to whatever immediately makes sense.
I've been perfectly capable of listening to strangers talk and share and be very sharp at responding to them (say for example in a group meetup where you haven't met most of the people). I could be wrong. My (now recently divorced) parents also had a dysfunctional relationship whilst I was growing up. They both didn't really face their childhood demons, had poor communication, and couldn't agree much on parenting styles. My mum is a chatty people person and my dad, an engineer type, is mostly interested in "things". From most of what I can remember, he would pretty much stonewall her/tune out when she came back home from work and tried talking to him. They both suffered from Anxiety/depression probably due to ongoing marriage conflict/not facing their childhood demons.
For extra infos sake, I moved around 3 different countries, attended 7 different schools + university from preschool to graduation for the sake of the family moving to different countries for work/closer to family purposes. I'm an athlete with a healthy/active lifestyle, a decent diet, self-employed with productive hobbies. I'm almost 30 years old.
This might be the type of thing that warrants more questions, for example "Do I care much about my spouse/friends?" - Yes I care about her more than anything in the world, and care about my friends. My brain also runs pretty quickly i.e. I have "fast thoughts". If there's something missing from the puzzle that needs to be solved please feel free to probe.