My husband does not listen to me either. He looks like he's paying attention but he misses half of what I say. Couple thought I have is. Awhile ago we were watching a TV special it said that people listen and remember what you say when you talk with your hands (the study was done on school children). Well I don't talk with my hands. Never have and don't know how and when it do it just looks odd. I told him maybe I should start talking with my hands because then he would remember what I tell him.
I'm not sure if this is a normal thing for guys or not. We've been married 26 years and he hardly ever listens to me. I have to repeat things 2 and 3 times. Once we were getting ready to do 3 errands. As we were driving I asked where he was going and he said to this place and I said no, we have to hit these other 2 places first and he claims I never told him. I said I told him twice and then he became irate as though I was pointing out a mistake (he does not take kindly to me pointing out that he made a mistake even if I say it nicely, but he has no qualms in telling me whenever I made a mistake). Anyway...I don't know when my husband stopped listening to me either. Maybe about 10 or so years ago. He'll listen, but I think a lot of it is if I don't say what he want's to hear he just tunes me out. Our things are not major life threatening issues, but a lot have to do with "what he's going to do when he grows up". He's been out of work for about 5 years now and he doesn't know what he wants to do with his life (he's 50 years old). We will talk and talk and talk and then the next day it's back to square one like I never said anything.
Sometimes what I will do that helps is I take scratch pieces of paper and I write notes on them and them leave them all over the place. Like I keep a running list of errands we have to do and keep it on the corner of the table and a couple times through the week I will say we need to to this or we need to do that, and then I ask him when he would like to go do them (usually it's just the grocery store, or the place to pay our bills), but at least that gives him the option of feeling like he's in control of when its going to be done, when actually I am the one in control because the bill will need to be paid in the week. He too can be disrespectful of me and look at me funny if I'm telling him something, so what I've done is if I get the look from him I immediately stop talking. Then I will say the same exact thing he does to me "your not interested in what I'm saying?"
Maybe the note thing will help, it does with me. I wish you luck.