Hello all,
If you've read any of my past post, you can tell my husband and I have pretty much seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. My husband had pretty significant ADHD as a child, now at 27 he has been in the military going on 8 years, is good at his good. The problem is, "communication". We have had a lot of issues arise due to lack of communication or simply communication being broken down. I myself after the birth of our daughter and a tremendous amount of stress, developed a mood disorder and depression. Thus I have anger issues and at times, especially in the past have lost my cool with him, and done things I am not proud of. Anyways, he struggles telling me things now, because he is afraid I will over react or get angry. I know it will take time to trust again, and rebuild but i get so frustrated. Sometimes when i'm upset and i try to talk with him, if i say anything slightly critical he just shuts down, that's it. He says he only likes to discuss things once and that's all you get. He has told me, he hates disappointing me etc.
it's funny
Submitted by mariel on
it's funny reading your post that I recognise some of my actions in how you describe your husband. But I'm supposedly the one without adhd and my husband has it.
I can't handle him being upset or angry or even sad and my reaction has been to try to shut down communication when he wants to talk to me about those things or sort of 'reason' him out of his sadness or anger. It never works, particularly if he's angry about something, my instinctive reaction is to minimise the issue or try to set in in context ( so if he's angry at someone doing something mean or thoughtless I would point out all the good things they have done) but I'm realising that to him it sounds like I am never on his side. I am going to try much harder to do two things - one is that I need to try and separate my feelings and his so that I can stand by him in his feelings rather than feeling it's my responsibility to sort out his feelings. The other is to try to listen but not discuss / argue. It's hard and I am not sure if anything I have written could be of any help to you. Maybe it's got nothing to do with his ADHD but is just that he feels like it's his job to take care of you and so when you are upset or angry he's failing as he feels like he shoudl be able to make you happy? I think that's what I feel about my husband.?
m x