Frustration abounds

I'm having some communication frustrations with DH, that seem to bet getting worse, lately. He's always had a problem where he thinks he told me something, but he did not. I think his brain is always going a mile a minute and he's thinking it, but not saying it out loud and thinks he has.  Now, on occasion I might forget that he told me something, but as soon as I'm reminded about it, of course I recall him telling me. But there are times he just flat out thinks he told me something that he did not.

Here's one example. He was out in the garage the other day working on the sofa table and asked me to come out and take a look. As we are chatting about it he is texting and then says "J is texting me". Then we are talking about the sofa table for a few more seconds and he gets another text and asks me "how much did we spend on our fence per foot?" I'm like I really don't remember, but I can go look up the invoice from the guy, so I go get it and bring it out to him. He looks at it, gets all confused and mad and says "NOT this fence - the one we did at our old house!". Now why would I assume he was talking about the fence we had put in some 5 years ago (and that we don't even live at anymore), rather than the fence installed a few months ago? He was texting with his local friend, so I assumed he was the one who wanted to know what we spent on our recent fence a few months ago.  "NO, I told you it was V that was asking about it!". NO, you did not say that. You said you were texting with J and the next thing out of your mouth was asking about "the fence cost".  If he had said V was asking I would have understood that he might be talking about our old fence.

But, more often lately it's him just saying the wrong word or name in something he tells or asks me. It's getting quite frustrating. Often times I know what he meant to say, so I can say "you mean X?" and he'll say "oh ya, did I say "Y"?".  But just as often I have no idea what he meant to say, so I'm assuming he told or asked me correctly (ie what he meant to say) and then when my answer doesn't seem to match up with what he was expecting, he blows up. I then say "you said "X"" and he of course is adamant that is not what he said.

The other issue is that I will tell him stuff and he just plain isn't listening and has no recollection of me even telling him. I can usually see the signs that something I just said did not even register (because he's looking at his computer or phone) and can make sure I repeat it to make sure he got it. (how much do you want to bet he won't remember that I told him I made dog a vet appointment for next Monday?)

So, this latest one is a combination of the last 2 issues. He was looking on his computer for someone's email address (a professional person) and he couldn't find it and I'm sitting next to him working, on my computer, and I say I think I still have it. I look it up and say it's "MGoodma@domain.com" and I then repeated it, saying it doesn't have the last letter of her last name in it.  A few seconds goes by and he says is there a . (dot) after Goodman (fake last name LOL) and I say no it's just MGoodma...and he gets all frustrated and having a hissy fit. He says he asked if there was a .(dot) after the M. He did not say this and when I tell him he said her last name, he is all mad at me that I'm not listening to him! I said "I repeated her email address to you 2 times, after I looked it up. You were obviously not listening to begin with."

Or he'll say something like "do you have the papers for that well system?" I give them to him and he's convinced he said "septic system" and mad that I didn't listen and gave him the wrong papers. Stuff like that happens all the time.

I'm about to the point where I think I should be recording our conversations with my phone! It's the only way I can think of to convince him what he just actually said or didn't say!