Voice and words don't match

His thought is that since he wasn't angry at whoever he was speaking to, he didn't speak to them that way. OR if he did, they should hopefully be able to over look it and understand that he isn't angry at them. He has asked that I try to hear what he is saying and not react to his tone of voice when he gets that way, but I can only do that so much before I get frustrated myself. This jumped out at me. Does he get that this is unfair to you? I mean, it looks like you're telling him, "This is hard for me to deal with," and he's replying with, "Yeah, but it's hard for me to fix, so can't you just deal with it?" There are clear social norms about tone of voice and nonverbal communication that put the burden squarely on him here. Does he get that? I mean, in addition to wanting to change to make you happier. I believe you when you say that he's not abusive and otherwise makes you feel safe. Otherwise nice and emotionally available people can have little hangups like this that don't directly translate into bad behavior on other fronts the way we'd expect or sometimes fear. But are you sure you know where that hostility you're hearing is coming from, and where it ultimately disappears to?

I'm late to this thread, but boy do I feel you. My husband and I just had an argument about this LITERALLY last night. My husband is a fabulous man in many other ways, but I do want to tell you: regardless of how fabulous he is, my husband's tone thing can really wear me down. I don't say that as a way to warn you off your fiance, more just to encourage you to have realistic expectations. Before we were married, I asked myself: if this one thing never changes, will I be able to live with it? The answer is: usually, yes, until I just want to kill him :) So don't expect fast or easy change -- I'm sure you know this. Other posters above have noted that if you are really sensitive to tone (me!) and a people-pleaser that feels a little too responsible for others' happiness (also me!) those are things you can work on for yourself that are (a) probably good to address anyway and (b) will help you not take the tone stuff personally. (Obviously I'm projecting all of my angst onto you here, so feel free to disregard.) Finally, one thing my husband does that helps is take my request to change his tone seriously, but lightly. I don't know if I can articulate this. I had a real struggle getting my husband to not only think I was being overly sensitive, but to also see that he has a problem. I think that's because he feels so terrible if he thinks he's hurt me, that taking my request seriously means acknowledging OMG I'VE HURT HER AND AM POSSIBLY RUDE TO FRIENDS THAT I ALSO LOVE DOES NOT COMPUTE. Instead, I want him to view my request as something more along the lines of "hey, not a huge deal but knock it off" rather than "you have hurt my feelings terribly and now we will be unhappy forever". I feel like the key getting him to see that I don't think he's an asshole, I just want him to modulate his tone sometimes. Because over time it can REALLY build up and become A Thing, so all kudos to your fiance for being willing to work on it now. If I can be super-directive, I think the right compromise is: you have to not let it become A Thing, he has to seriously seriously work on it. Good luck!

Also, the talking to himself is something else I've seen in people with high-functioning autism (but they try to mask it or hide it). Frequently talking to himself when other people are in the room is odd enough that it makes me wonder.

I only know about this in context of relatively mild autism spectrum disorders. To be clear, I have no idea if that's what's going on at all. Many people with autism spectrum disorders are shockingly good at faking at being normal, but it falls apart a bit when they're stressed, really tired, etc. The very fact that he is unable to "read" his vocal tone and the mild thing about sarcasm make me wonder. Of course we all sort of have the tendency to be a bit assish when we're stressed, so, who knows really. Anyway, if it is an autism spectrum thing, it's usually enough to simply convince them that they are doing this annoying thing that is literally invisible to them. It would be like me trying to convince you that there is a green mist in the room that you can't see. It would take quite a while and possibly a lot of backup from third parties (enormously frustrating!) However, once you convince them that this thing (angry vocal tone) exists, you can usually just say "you're doing that thing with the angry voice" and if they trust you and are not too overwhelmed and stressed, then they'll try to change and figure out how to do a different thing. You might not like the new thing, so you should try to provide an obvious and acceptable substitute so he doesn't start doing something else annoying. So if a mild autism spectrum disorder were the cause of this behavior you have already done most of the hard work just by convincing him that there is, in fact, a problem. But again, I have no idea if an autism spectrum disorder is even possible or relevant. Beats me. Hopefully this is helpful anyway.

Another theory: does he have ADD? My spouse and I both have ADD, and we also both have problems with tone sometimes. I think it's related to impulse control. We have found it very, very hard to fix.

When I call him out on it he always says "But I'm not angry with you" or something along those lines. This is a little out of left field, but I'm wondering if he grew up in a family where expressing anger was considered shameful or taboo. For people from that sort of background, "RANT RANT SHOUT SHOUT no of course I'm not angry!" sometimes really means "Well duh I'm angry, but it's not polite to admit it out loud."

My take, going off my own experiences with similar issues, would be that he has a bit of an anger issue and the 'tone of voice' thing is kind of a red herring. If he wants to fix it he can work on calming down, and the tone will follow naturally. I don't even know that speech therapy of some stripe is a great idea; does he want to mask his anger, or learn to modulate it?

Just because his hearing is fine, doesn't mean that he's actually hearing fine. I do what they do at times, and I've had people ask me to lower my voice as a result, even though I didn't think I w being overly loud or harsh. Turns out that, after a thorough hearing evaluation, I have a bit of Central Auditory Processing Disorder, and it's (in my case) related to my ADHD. so he may have something like that going on, and it's something that regular hearing tests won't pick up on.

I agree with voice coaching and hearing tests and speech therapy. If you have a smart phone, randomly record conversations so that he can hear both "good" and "bad" examples. It'll be interesting to see if he can hear the difference. Record yourself too--play a "good" example and a "bad" example for him and see if he hears the difference.