I may be married longer than anyone on this forum - 45 yrs. I stuck it out the first half because my husband, Mike, convinced me I was "damaged" and just couldn't handle life. So, for yrs. I sought help. It didn't occur to me that my condition was due to abuse. I'm sure that was because my dad was abusive, as well.
Early on, we had a son. He's 44 now and we haven't heard from him in yrs. Our grandchildren don't know us. My son had a crying and depressed mother and a rejecting and abusive father.
When our son was grown, we bought a business and and it wasn't until then that I began to notice Mike's irrational behavior, poor judgement, and immaturity. Later, I was sure he must have a brain disorder and insisted on his being evaluated. He was diagnosed with ADD and severe anxiety.
From the beginning, the business was my responsibility as he resented working. So, with mortgages, cars, and rental property, I felt there was too much at stake to walk out and lose it. Finally, with his lying, womanizing, stealing, and verbal abuse together with overwork and burnout, I was put in the hospital with depression. That was a good thing, as it opened my eyes. Funny, how much it took for me to "catch on".
Two things caused me to detach from him emotionally, his betraying me to our employees and his turn to homosexuality. I filed for divorce but dropped it when I saw how little I would walk away with at 60 yrs. old. One of his attorney friends met with mine so I'm sure there was a pay off. So, for financial reasons, I'm still with Mike - which is how he wants it.
He's had a male friend for about 18 yrs. now and our relationship became platonic then. We are retired now, share the house and have no financial worries. I have several friends, take trips (not with him), have many interests, am in good health and am active in my church.
If I had to describe my life with Mike, I would have to say it's been a nightmare. There have been no happy memories. I thought surely in retirement things would get better.
But now, he plays mindgames. He will hide items of mine; wallet, glasses, dog comb, etc. and even help me look for them. Then, after days, wks. or months, they show up - right where I had looked many times before.
He also messes with my headlights. Especially, if he knows I'm going off at night, he will turn the automatic setting to off. Cars often blink at me to indicate my lights are off. Then, I'll find my contact lens in a sack stuffed in a bookshelf or Xmas cards to me hidden unopened.
I could go on and on but here is my question: I feel emotionally spent and dazed. My mind doesn't seem to be clear. I feel overwhelmed. What do you do when your poor mind just needs to rest and will I ever stop feeling shell shocked? Annie
counselor
Submitted by brendab on
Annie,
My first thought is for you to contact Melissa Orlov on this website for counseling. Just go to the homepage and I am sure you will find her insight invaluable. If you will follow her advice you will have new hope. My second thought is that you need a support system in place for people who understand ADD and what you are going through. I would go to CHADD on the internet and find out if there are support groups in your area. I've dealt with a longterm adulterer and I discovered that it is just evil and it affects you terribly. You need help to find a way to separate yourself from this war that has gone on in your life for way too long.
I'm so incredibly sorry for everything you have been through, especially the loss of a relationship with your son and grandchildren.
Brenda
Good lord.....
Submitted by Flower Lady on
Anne....to put it bluntly, your husband is a whack-job. He is definitely playing cruel mind games with you...trying to confuse you and make you doubt yourself. He's also compromising your safety by fooling with your headlight settings. That's downright dangerous. Have you confronted him about these things, and what does he say? Can you possibly leave and stay with a relative or friend until you're able to de-compress and relax a bit? I agree that you should see a counselor for help on how to deal with this man. His behavior is irrational and you need concrete advice. In the meantime, get a stout lock for your bedroom door and keep all of your personal items/papers secured. Have your mail delivered to a post office box if necessary.
Prayers for you are on their way...
Maybe not mindgames?
Submitted by arwen on
Annie, having been married for almost 35 years to my ADD-spouse (who was diagnosed only 15 years ago), I can really sympathize with your reaching the end of your rope. I reached the end of my rope a few years ago and separated from my husband. (Fortunately for our marriage, it was a wake-up call for my husb and, and we were able to reconcile our problems and save our marriage.) At the time of the separation, I needed desperately to just be away from my spouse. So, I also suggest you see if you can find some way to take some time away.
But -- I must say, it may be possible your husband is not playing mindgames, or at least not as much as you believe. My husband has sometimes moved stuff of mine (sometimes for what I thought were pretty bizarre reasons, but they made sense to him at the time he moved them), then forgotten he'd moved them, so when I was looking for them, he wouldn't realize that *he* was the reason they were missing -- but the search process would make enough of an impression so that later on, if he re-encountered whatever I'd been looking for, he would pick it up and put it where he'd heard me say I'd left them. As far as the car goes, my husband was also constantly changing my settings on things and forgetting to put them back. Then he'd forget that he'd even changed them. When I'd complain about it, he'd say somebody else must have done it, or that I must have done it and forgotten. (This seemed plausible to him because it's what he always was doing. Never mind that I have always demonstrated a great memory and the changes would have been stupid for me to make!) We finally got to the point where I decreed that he was not allowed to change anything but the mirrors on the car I regularly drove, and I put "do not touch" signs all over the controls while he was learning to leave everything alone.
My husband had a really hard time understanding the concept of private property. From his perspective, he was free to handle anything that was in his home, even if "his" home was more accurately "our" home. He didn't care if I handled his things and he didn't see why I would care if he handled my stuff. I finally came to realize that he never remembered where he put his own stuff, so of course he didn't care if I moved it, and of course he couldn't understand that I did remember where I put my stuff and why I might want it to stay there. It took a long time to get him to respect my need for a certain level of private property. (I don't know if he understands it at all to this day, but at least he understands that it is important to me that he respects it, and so is willing to make the effort, and that's good enough for me.)
My husband obviously also therefore had problems with misplacing all kinds of household items (e.g. scotch tape, kitchen scissors, mosquito repellent) so that nobody could find them -- I actually got in the habit of hiding the things he most frequently misplaced so that I knew where they were but he didn't, and he would have to come to me for them. I'd bring it to where he needed it, wait while he used it, and when he was done I'd go hide it again. I mention this because it's a strategy you may want to consider in dealing with what your husband is doing.
I find that the more I can keep my stuff separate from my husband's, or in special, "reserved", places, the less of an issue I have with my husband moving my stuff. In the living room, one of the end tables is "mine", and he is absolutely not to touch anything on it, unless maybe it's on fire. I've made it very clear to him that if he touches anything on it, he'd better leave the country and not look back. Same with the bedroom -- I have two low dressers, he has a tall one and the nightstand, and they are kept in separate areas of the room. It's a lot easier for him to leave my stuff alone if there are clear boundaries.
Finally, I've noticed that my husband's ADD has gotten worse as he has gotten older. He takes medication for it, which has made a big difference, but we have had to tweak it over time. You don't say whether your husband takes any ADD meds, but it doesn't sound like he does. If he is not taking meds, or if his dosage hasn't been changed over time, it may be that he is exhibiting increasingly troubling behavior because his physiological condition is deterioriating with age.
I understand that it might be hard to see that your spouse's behavior may not necessarily be malevolent -- there have been lots of times I have been convinced my husband was deliberately doing all kinds of bad things intentionally -- but I did finally come to see that some of it he wasn't even aware of, let alone intending, and much of his intentional bad behavior was motivated by fear or guilt. (That's not to say that he never tried to "put one over on me", but there was actually a lot less of it than I had believed.)
All this said -- your spouse may be more of a no-good-nik than mine, so I sadly must concur with the suggestion that you get a good lock for your door, and keep anything you really don't want to disappear locked up in it. And if I were in your shoes, I'd talk to another lawyer again. The laws in your state may have become more advantageous to you than the last time you pursued divorce -- it's worth a look, anyway.
Meanwhile, I urge you to read as much as you can on this forum, and also Melissa's blogs. It's essential to be as well-informed as you can be in dealing with ADD. Take care of yourself, hang in there!!!
Hiding things
Submitted by vcalkins on
I laughed when you said you hid the important things. I could never find my scissors so I hid a second pair. When he found those, he would use them but put them back (most of the time) because he didn't want me to know he had found my hidden scissors. Well, I hid a third pair and he NEVER found those. So I always had scissors to use. I read of a woman that hid her scissors in the freezer in a package marked "liver". Currently I have him convinced that my kitchen shears would never work in the garage and he's never "borrowed" them.