On the flip side, I often feel like my spouse is being dismissive, uncaring or at least unhelpful by suggesting "Why don't you just do X?" when I can instantly call up a dozen reasons why X is a terrible idea. I feel like he's deliberately oversimplifying things, while he thinks I'm making things too complicated. In reality, this is probably just a matter of how our very different minds work.
Maybe. But I have worked very hard to remove the phrase "why don't you just..." from my vocabulary, because every time I start a sentence that way, I come off like a dismissive jerk. It's really hard to stop and rephrase in a positive way, but it really helps to substitute phrases like "have you thought of..." and "could you try..." (I have said the phrase, stopped myself before the end of the sentence, and rephrased with an apology more than once, and it does cool things down when I do.) Maybe you could talk to him about how you feel belittled when he uses that phrase, and ask if he would be willing to substitute one of the others.
