So I have a question. Can the non-ADHD partners among us tell when our ADHD person is fully present vs. when they are checked out? Here's what I mean: there are stretches of time where DH is in a normal mood, not prickly or sullen, acting normally, retaining things I say and then for no reason I can point to there will be periods of time where he is just out to lunch. Right now he is out to lunch and has been for a few weeks. The inconsistency of his moods is for me one of the hardest parts of living with an unmedicated ADHD adult. I can tell when he asks me things I already told him or that he asked me recently and didn't remember that I told him before. I can tell when I ask his opinion on something and I get either silence or "I don't know". I can tell he is checked out when I get one word answers to texts or no answer at all. I can tell when I text him three questions in one text and he only answers one so I have to retext the other two separately and even then may not get an answer. I can tell when I ask him to clarify something he says that is close to undecipherable and the second answer is worse than the first and I have no idea what he is talking about AND he doesn't notice that I don't get it. I can tell when he is especially surly or belligerent about things I ask of him. When he is checked out he will either not do them at all or do them with maximum huffing and puffing and sarcasm or backhanded comments. He is currently living in Houston for business, comes home every other weekend, so I put his mail on his desk. While it's true that most of it is junk and I could probably throw it out, he often does not go through it. If he is fully present (not out to lunch) he will. Ditto with messages on his work phone (which is in our house). The message light can be blinking for weeks and he does not check the messages. Now, granted, he may have heard from the people who left messages some other way, but wouldn't you want to make the phone stop blinking?? Instead he puts a towel over it.
I am not explaining this very well, just that as soon as I see that he is not really HERE I have to kind of shut down my expectations because they just aren't going to be met. I suspect the checked out-ness happens when there are too many demands on his time and too much being asked of him (in his opinion, not in reality). Last time he was home over Thanksgiving, he didn't come to bed before midnight once in the 6 days he was here and was still up around 5am every single day. I am a sleeper-inner so by the time I got up he had been on his iPad for several hours already, playing solitaire, online poker, watching you tube--not stuff I would think a man of 49 would be interested in. I know enough about the ADHD brain to know that 4 hours on a screen is probably NOT the best start to a day and is probably contributing to the checked-outness but there is nothing I can do about that. What's funny to me is I wonder what all is in his head that makes it so hard for him to pay attention to his actual life. It's not our finances because I handle those. It's not discipline because he is not here most of the time and I handle that even when he is. It's not the fact that we have to move by June because I am already making those arrangements. It's not how the 16 year old is doing in high school because he doesn't know or check. The things I just listed-those are the things that swirl around in my head and literally wake me at 4:30am. For two weeks at a time, he literally only has to worry about himself, living in a one bedroom apartment paid for by his company in another state. I know his job is stressful; all grown ups have job stress so that is a wash. Take that off the table and I really cannot figure out what else he has to worry about.
I don't think I was very clear in this post. It is on my mind a lot with him. Being fully present is something that is important and I work on it a lot. I teach 6th grade and 8th grade and I am the Assistant Principal of my school and BE HERE NOW is one of the norms we use in every staff meeting and we have introduced it to the junior high students as well, the idea that you will retain more and be more efficient and effective if you are fully present. That does not apply to ADHD people I know, but it's on my mind.
anyway...sorry if this doesn't make a lot of sense...
It does make sense.
Submitted by CaliforniaGirl on
I'm not sure I can add too much because ADD was never confirmed in my situation. I'll think on it. I did want to respond though and say yes, what you are describing does make sense.
advance, being checked out
Submitted by dedelight4 on
Wow. You described very well what its like to live with a "checked out" person. My DH does much the same. For all these years, he has only thought about his own life, and his work. That's it. There's a few other things concerning household items but not many, and its sporadic. The daily grind stuff of just about everything else has always fallen on me. Its as if he couldn't handle working a job AND have a marriage/family. Work always came first, and took up every hour, weekend, holiday etc., and I do know all those years he said he was "working", he was spending a good part of the time playing games on the computer, and watching TV (that was beside the computer) It was like an addiction, because he wouldn't stop. He'd wolf down dinner in about 3 minutes and leave the table to go back to his office, and then not come to bed until 2 or 3 am. We had no family time, and no husband/wife time. Whenever I would suggest we do something to " get out" or take a break, it was met with anger this, "I have to work!.....SOMEBODY'S GOT TO WORK AROUND HERE". I let him get away with that excuse for far too long, and would back down from his anger. He didn't SEE or want to see that I was doing a HUGE amount of work myself, and picking up all the slack everywhere else, as WELL as working a job also. I was exhausted.
He too ,never knew how our kids were doing in school, never went to the events with me, never took them TO their events. I raised the kids alone. The ADHD was undiagnosed and untreated and the hyperactivity was off the charts. He looked like a pin ball in a machine., pinging back and forth around and around. He didn't walk through the house, he ran, then would wolf down food while running. People would actually heave a sigh of relief when he would leave the room. (Including me) its hard being around a kinetic person who is totally in their own world, not acknowledging you or anyone else, who also can have hair trigger anger/frustration and impatience.
Your post makes a LOT of sense. You also feel neglected and unloved when the person you love doesn't acknowledge your very existence. And regardless whether they have an illness, they STILL choose to engage you and draw you into their "space". But, then want love, attention and having appreciation and respect from us. Its a hard thing, yes.
No one could reach him during this time. He was " checked out" from life and into his own head, and stayed there. He too was enamored with his "genious IQ", and would tell everyone about that, but his IQ didn't help him get to the real problems we were facing. There was any and every excuse to stay " working", just like an addict using a drug. He was "checked out" of the marriage, and out of life. Or
Checked Out Response
Submitted by MelissaOrlov on
I've seen what I would call 'not interested in others' which may be the same as your 'checked out.'
My suggestion to you is that you ask him at some point when he is actually checked in. Something such as "I notice that you seem to go in phases in your behaviors and I can't tell if it's related to me at all, or if they just feel different to me. I experience those times as you being somewhere else or checked out and I'm not sure how to respond as I find them disconcerting. Last week, for example, was one of those times. Do you feel different? Overwhelmed? Unhappy? I'm really curious about it.'
Try to remain neutral in how you talk about this to him so that you maximize the chance that he'll think reflectively and share with you, rather than feel defensive. Really, you DO just want to know what is going on, for with knowledge may come wisdom of how to proceed. As an example, if he's feeling overwhelmed. what contributes to that, and can it be improved?
There is another version of this that I observe in my own relationship - too stressed out to deal with anything else. In my own case this is quite specific - we travel together quite a bit when one or both of us is working elsewhere (always my husband, and also frequently me). He works and travels at lightening speed. I get anxious if I move too fast while traveling, even though I love to travel. (As in I HATE running through airports. A fast walk is plenty for me.) I have learned that at these times my husband is unwilling to accommodate my tempo very graciously, so it is better to sometimes do things separately - meet at the airport gate, for example, rather than walk together.
That's not tuned out...that's tuned into a different wavelength. I tell you that story here for your consideration about your own situation.
present vs checked out
Submitted by Jon on
Well present vs checked out to me is pretty much always related to stress. Most times when I am checked out, I am a million miles away stuck in some negative thought loop of doom. I’ve literally spent years and years of my life on the same thought track, just going over and over and over and getting nowhere. Mostly mine relate to just how dysfunctional I am when it comes to human relationships and shifts somewhere between the blackest pit of despair and boiling rage over it all. Depending on where I am on that spectrum any attempt to communicate can be met with either a vacant ghost of a response that doesn't’t even involve thinking or just an irritable short sharp burst. Anger is an analgesic. It numbs the pain and blots out the endless ache. I spend maybe 65% of my life so stressed my stomach hurts. Lately I have spent most of my lost time pondering how every human relationship since I was old enough to leave school has been a misery causing catastrophe.
This disability as much as anything is a social disorder. I and likely many of we ADHD people simply do not get the way you people think, act or operate. It’s baffling and intensely frustrating.
Mood swings are to me a consequence of a number of things, but again stress is the primary culprit. When stressed I don’t eat properly, often missing meals altogether for long periods. Lack of food is directly related to mood for me. IF I don’t eat breakfast or lunch then by the end of the day I am virtually guaranteed to be bleak in my outlook and down on everything. To make matters worse my sleep goes out the window and I’ll frequently not get to bed till 2 am for extended periods only to be up again at 6am. The other thing I do is to blot out everything by heavily self-medicating. Either I will drink, or more likely smoke weed until my lungs ache and I physically cant anymore. Sometimes both. Still it won’t go away. I actually don’t even get stoned from any amount any more, but it contributes to me be ‘absent’ from the present. I’ve spend countless hours contemplating suicide since I was 8 years old. I’ve planned, organized, stood on the brink and then found I couldn't’t because I have small children. I’ve cursed the fact that I have children so that I have to be here. I have resented them for it. I delay going to the doctors when something is wrong because I secretly hope I will have some terminal disease that the decision is not in my hands. Death by self neglect.
I feel old before my time, and a world weary shell of person simply stuck here going through the motions. All the while you lot will bash me for not being like you. All the while I grow more numb and less engaged.
We ADHD people are not present a lot of the time because our entire orbit is completely different to that of yours. We don’t hold the same things as being of primary importance, we don’t and can’t see things as absolute. There is nothing static in our thoughts, nor typically in our lives. Success and achievement to me are but fleeting feelings of indifference, and leave me empty. I resent the entire anticlimactic hollow feeling when everyone tells me that this is what ambition stems from. Not for me it doesn’t. I am not in the least driven by success. Nor am I driven by expectations, no matter how much carrot or stick is used. I don’t care about life’s incremental achievements. I no longer care about the approval or scorn of others. All I care about is the right here, right now and the small patch of ground on which I’ll take the next step. All I care about is what few pleasures I can extract from this life while I can to give it some semblance of meaning. I have twice restarted my life from scratch. From having it all to walking away from it all. Because it meant nothing to me. Less than nothing, it was a symbol of the prison you all seem to want to keep us in. The prison of expectations and the inevitable failure as the goal posts shift to be constantly just out of reach.
Though pure pig headed stubbornness somehow I managed to keep a steady well paid job, working at a high level in a tech engineering capacity, but in reality I see that as simply me engaging in an interesting activity to keep myself mildly amused. It wasn’t through planning, ambitions or focus that I landed here. Only though my obsessive attention to something that I found mentally stimulating.
I am, and most likely most of us are a slave to stimulus. A hedonist defined by our genetic f&&kups. The daily humdrum is torturous and never ending and all the little irrelevances by which we are judged are sources of loathing.
So you see, most of the time there is a lot going on in the head of a distracted ADHD person. Our minds are tied up chasing things we don’t understand down a series of endless rabbit warrens. All the while our frustration grows. The only way I know to break out of it is via something stimulating, in the early days of a relationship that may have meant a partner but love and relationships turns gray and end up with jagged edges that cut and slash so are best avoided by retreating into my head.
Perhaps there is life and energy enough for you to be that something stimulating to your partner, perhaps you see them as worth the effort. I'm sorry for the of track rant and I wish I had something less bleak to say but either way I wish you good luck.
Jon
Jon, thank you SO much
Submitted by dedelight4 on
Jon, thank you for this well articulated post into your life. Its something we (those of us without ADHD), don't get enough of, but would like to. And, having you share this, helps us understand our own ADHD partners better. I hope you keep writing, because its needed here.
Many of us didn't find out our spouses were ADHD until much later in life, after 1, 2 or 3 decades of marriage, and years of we couples not knowing what it was we were facing. And then, with that, there are the spouses that won't acknowledge the symptoms of their condition, and the back and forth responses going on between them and us/or others. (denial) Also, denial from both parties, in working through difficulties in life.
I apologize if our posts caused you hurt or added frustration to you in any way. We are here mainly because in our real lives, there's either very few (or no one) people to share our daily interactions with. This forum gives us a safe place to do that, without fear of being judged, and sometimes because we're feeling overwhelmed.
What is truly amazing about your post, is how incredibly well you articulated EXACTLY what was happening in your brain/mind, and the corresponding feelings. (Including anger) This is so helpful for us, and I'm sorry that this is something that has caused you a lifetime of pain and struggle. I see the same in my husband, but he can not articulate what's happening with him, even though he is well educated. (PhD) He did very well in school, always, which is unusual for those with ADHD, but he struggles emensely with relationships, as well as social interactions. He takes Concerta, which helps him focus much better, but he hasn't learned much about ADHD itself. He was diagnosed when he was around 52 years old, and we had been married over 25 years at that time. The diagnosis helped answer many questions, but he still doesn't see how it impacts our life as a married couple. I think if he knew more ABOUT it, it would help him tremendously, and might give us both more insight in how to live and interact with one another. (Which would be so beneficial) So far, I've been the only one to search it out and ask questions, trying to find answers and better solutions in living with this, because I truly want the best for him, and us. But, in doing so, not tell him what he HAS to do. I don't want to be his mother or a drill sergeant, ..........just his wife and friend.
Yes, this is a difficult subject to talk through, but necessary. And, this forum gives us a great place to do that. Again, I am very thankful you shared what you did, and I do pray life gets better for you, and you discover more peaceful days ahead. And, that you keep sharing with us.
Thanks,
Dede
Well you are welcome. If any
Submitted by Jon on
Well you are welcome. If any of my semi coherent ‘train of thought’ ramblings can be of any use to anyone then you are most welcome to pick them over for anything of value. I have been a longtime observer and occasional ‘contributor’ to this forum for many years now. Though must confess to feeling much of the time I am stepping into a bitching fest and volunteering to be a target, as understandable as that may be, sometimes the trouble maker in me likes a fitght ;) .
I feel that for me, and perhaps for many the diagnosis of ADHD has been a double edged sword. On the one hand, it was a moment of relief, some actual definable reason for something that has always just been me stewing in my own irredeemable flaws. On the other hand, I feel that the condition and the label and stigma that it carries have come to define me, and has washed away my identity and all that I am. I’m not sure that it helps that today, seemingly any child that spends too much time on a screen, gets insufficient sleep, has a poor diet or a difficult/busy chaotic home life is branded and medicated with amphetamines like human foie-gras, so now that ADHD is now synonymous with ‘difficult’, ‘dysfunctional’ or ‘abnormal’. Worse is the fact that unlike those on the autistic spectrum, our condition is an expert chameleon, honed, trained and developed to hide itself in plain sight. How do you begin to fight an enemy you can’t even define or identify?
Also I feel that the condition is very much oversimplified, almost to the point of being clichéd and fails to account for the complex lifelong interaction between the condition itself and the individual’s circumstance and the coping and ‘self-management’ strategies and mechanisms that we all develop.
Also despite similarities we are not all the same. I’m not hyperactive in a physical sense as described in this post, however I do have a huge excess of latent energy, it’s just that it manifests in different way, I jiggle and bounce, I grind my teeth, I am overtly expressive and prone to over the top dramatization but most of all my brain never ever stops. There is never a moment’s peace and quiet, just a remorseless, endless drive to the next fragment of frequently unrelated or disconnected thought. And if it’s not channeled or if my life is not going well, it cruel and it’s brutal and it’s destructive. Because one of the ways I have adapted over the years is to animate myself through sheer self-loathing alone, in a futile attempt to make myself better, to drive myself forward at the end of a sharp stick.
This of course brings into play the other problem with our condition, the other mental health issues that fall out of living a life of such chaos: Anxiety and its constant companion depression.
It ought to come as no surprise that we ADHD folk virtually all succumb to anxiety. I would go so far as to say that it’s an inseparable component, but that is just my reflection on my own life. When what you are, and what all external expectation say you should be don’t match up, that constant gnawing sense of acute self-awareness means the only result is anxiety. For ADHD people to even function in this strange and foreign world we try to spend every waking second being acutely self-aware, checking as best we can that we are acting ‘normally’, assessing if we might be giving the game away about our freakishness, second and third guessing every situation for clues and cues we may have missed.
Basically we are having to re-imagining reality so that we can rationalize ourselves within it. Our lives are a constant source of cognitive dissonance where we spend all our energies reassessing every context, every circumstance, searching for any weakness we may inadvertently expose that will bring us unstuck. Every social circumstance is played out multiple times, with all outcomes explored for potential disasters. This requires an enormous amount of unseen and exhausting mental effort. There IS no safe ground on which to rest and recuperate. And its effort we HAVE to manually stage manage because that part of your brain that automates it… what you take for granted, to us is mostly completely absent.
And in doing so, we *are* self-absorbed, a subtle and often indistinguishable characteristic most often interpreted and labeled as “selfish”. That derogatory term most used as a blunt instrument born of frustration used by many of our closet companions. One, I admit I do resent but also have come to understand. I am selfish. I wish I could help it. I really do, but I cannot. What you see as selfish to me I have come to recognize as an impenetrable and permanent sense of isolation. We are separate from you all. I struggle to accept that I will always be separate from you all. That is the core to me of this condition. My acute awareness that I don’t fit. An awareness I have carried since my very earliest memories. And the struggle for acceptance.
And so anyway, a life of anxiety also nearly inevitably leads to that other disabling state of mind: depression. My best friend and my worst enemy.
It seems to me after trying pretty well every medication under the sun, there are two ways to become depressed, and I cannot work out which is worse. One is to think too much. To care too much. To be too emotionally connected to the daily exhausting roller coaster. Too be overly invested and defined by what makes us ‘different’. To bend with every emotional breeze that blows, to endlessly straddle states of excitement and enthusiasm to bottomless despair often many times in any given day.
The other is to care too little, to become apathetic and disconnected. To have no feelings and to just be numb to it all. It is in this state I have spent much of the last few years. For a person driven by stimulus this is a living hell.
The medication I settled on, Cymbalta, does nothing to treat my ADHD. But it kills my anxiety stone dead. If fact, I feel almost nothing. No ups, no downs. No care for what anyone thinks or says. No color, no emotions. And no point. No more social anxiety to the point of wanting to vomit. What you end up doing is occupying space and going through the motions like some played out game without end. A passenger in an empty, meaningless shell of a life.
Why would I do this you might ask? Because my moods are vastly more stable. Because the only other alternative is impossible. It’s all a compromise this life. It’s just that I resent the fact that my life has to be like this so that I fit in with what you all consider normal. To be frank, I am almost at the point of considering it not worth it. I’ve seen the worst of the world you non ADHD people all have made, and it’s not all that much to celebrate or emulate. Maybe if you all got your own sh*t sorted then we can talk.
SO here is the thing. The endless mental churn, the very thing that MOSTS contributes to my distractibility, is also the very thing that MOST defines who I am. It is an inseparable, core element of me. I don’t treat it. Then I can’t function. But when I do treat it, I become someone other than me and all the parts of life that give it meaning and purpose fade to gray.
What must it be like coming to a diagnosis at 50? Nearly impossible to reconcile I should imagine. It’s accepting a life time of ‘fault’. It’s asking someone to adopt an entire new understanding of everything they may have known up to that point. So any resistance is therefore not at all surprising.
I have used the ‘positive’ aspects of this condition to my own ends, but then so have others used it. It’s hard sometime to escape the feeling that all the people in my life are all fair weather friends who pick the good bits out and endlessly criticize the rest, though I also know life for those around me must be difficult. In the end I am tired of feeling guilt and shame for who I am and exhausted from the effort.
I too am a high functioning ‘head case’ in some aspects of my life. I work at the very bleeding edge of technology, and spend my time problem solving/engineering some very abstract and difficult problems. Somehow, I think by sheer relentless stubbornness it mostly works. Although I am chaotic even here, there are aspects of my ‘condition’ that are very advantageous. This juxtaposition ironically is a source of much frustration to my partners who like to point at this aspect and say why can’t it all be like that?
How to tackle this? I’m not sure I have any particular insights. If I did, I would surely communicate them and put them into practice in my own life. It and we are complex and difficult. All I can do is say how it effects my own life.
Would I go back and retract the diagnosis? I honestly don’t know. I wish to be defined by more than a condition I have though. And I think the great majority of us would feel the same, so beware on making the diagnosis of condition the be all and end all.
Anyway.. That’s probably more than enough of me rambling for the moment.
Jon, incredible insight and fascination
Submitted by dedelight4 on
Jon, you write incredibly well, and this is another example of well articulated insight into what it's like to live with ADHD every day. I can't imagine the mental struggle in having a mind that "never stops" and never let's you rest. (My husband has mentioned this also)
You write so well that it made me wonder if you've done any professional writing, or maybe short stories, poetry, etc? My husband and I are musicians, and he's a college professor of music, but he wishes he had gone into the field of math and engineering/technology where he is incredibly gifted. He is an excellent musician, but its not natural or "in his heart", so to speak. Music was an impulsive decision at the time. . (ADHD moment, lol)
You also say you are high functioning, so is he, but he's also very hyperactive. The Concerts helps stabilize the running from room to room.
Thank you for writing about the fear and inner turmoil inside your inner self. It helps me understand this condition better. It is sad that it has taken you to depths of such self loathing. I DO know about the self loathing, because I've been there also. It's a rough place to dwell, and takes some serious work to get out of.
Anyway, I've read your latest post twice now, since there's so much information there, and need to read it again.It DOES give me more information into the workings of my husbands mind as well. Love your writing.
Dede
Dee,thank your for the kind
Submitted by Jon on
Dee,thank your for the kind words.
I have done a lot of technical writing and have spend periods writing and teaching curriculum, though nothing much more creative than that.
Oddly enough, music is one of the things that keeps me semi sane and gives my life meaning. I cannot imagine life without, it to me would be unbearable. For me it seems to cancel out the background noise. It's the closet thing I can imagine to mediation. Which I have tried so so many times.....empty your mind of all thoughts hey say.. yeah right. Not going to happen. No for me it's siting and playing an instrument of some kind.
It's also a rare ADHD person that has an affinity to math in my experience, with many of us seeming to struggle to the point of dyscalculia. I can get math easily when it's complex and abstract but I couldn't run off all of my times tables. It's odd. I have never struggled with language, either written or spoken like may of us seem to. As i say, it's complex and variable this condition.
As far as meds go,. I have tried all of the stimulants available, unfortunately however Concerta is not available in our country and I find the ups and downs of short acting stimulants to be too much. AND they make my anxiety so much worse it's intolerable.
I do not have ADHD but much
Submitted by PoisonIvy on
I do not have ADHD but much of my existence (the anxiety and depression) mirrors what you describe here. I'm sure there are many other people, with ADHD and not, who would say the same.
Yeah I do understand that. I
Submitted by Jon on
Yeah I do understand that. I would never claim exclusivity on anxiety or depression, merely pointing out that it seems to follow ADHD like night follows day and makes things that are already challenging inordinately more complicated. Everyone has some cross to bear in life it seems.
Jon, I'd like to join Dede in
Submitted by Chevron on
Jon, I'd like to join Dede in thanking you for your razor sharp description of your mental inscape.
As you say, people with ADHD differ from each other. The motto elsewhere online is, if you've met one person with ADHD, you've met one person with ADHD.
To hear him describe himself, and he can and does, my ADHD husband, doesnt have some of the emotional issues and judgments of how he fits in the world outside his head that you do. He's at a different point in his life and has come to different conclusions
Yet as you say, ADHD neurological challenges are a wearing constant. In your description of those, there is a high fit between the challenges you name that you have, and the ones he names, or I observe.
Not his response to these things, which is his own decision to cope and his own discipline in coping that he has worked out with himself, over many decades; but the challenges themselves produced by the ADHD wiring: yes, I see a constant self focus; yes he's said he needs to keep a powerful hand on his attention or his work scatters into a million pieces, yes, yes, I'm rather an expert on stress having lived with it a lot, and am living under an unusual amount of my own, living with him: yes, to what you said, I see from the outside that he's under constantly high, sometimes titanic levels of stress, and he names this, too.. I see him wear out, daily. I've benefited so much from your articulate description of your stress. To me, your description of stress and anxiety is an important, additional confirmation.
You didnt mention this, perhaps you and he are not the same, but one daily disheartening stressor to my husband is how he deals with a physical world, in which there may be no intimate or necessary contact with other humans at all, but daily things fall from his hands and break, clutter his attention, get lost, and require emergency hunts that wreck his work and attention, doors get left unlocked and wide open to thieves, sideview mirrors get knocked off through a miscalculation because something was on his mind or he was fast flash upset. I dont criticize any of this by the way; it's never ill intended on his part, ever, and he very obviously has neurologically based acuity problems that make his physical world such a daily bucking bronco to him. Yes, yes, yes he's under stress. His emotional volatility stresses him, his physical world stresses him, his titanic struggle with deadlines, which he wins, stresses him, his feeling awash stresses him, his seeing me not act according to his judgments of me stresses him, his boredom with the world that doesnt change as fast as he does stresses him
Our major project has been to create a life together that helps ease all of these different stresses, but doesnt imprison me into a tiny, mute corner, because his needs are authentic and so high.
YES, most of the adaptations I've made in my own needed ways of cohabitation have had to do with his flooding mind, high stress, which I hate to see anyone suffer, and agon of losing, dropping and breaking things. We MUST live together in terms of his neurologically driven behavior and needs, which yes require so much effort on his part that he's most of the time focused on himself, by his own report, and either doesnt have the energy left over or for another reason, doesnt have it in him to lend me nearly as much of a hand with my own needs as I lend h with his. That's a daily fact, not a moral judgement.
So every time you got to describing stress and anxiety, I said yes yes.
I'd like to end with what to me is a smile, a happy thing. My husband, when we were beginning to date, after his lifetime of knowing himself different, knowing that he could be no other than he is, and knowing that his ways had been often peculiar to people around him, kept saying, you know there's another side to me, I'm odd, I'm not like other people. I kept waiting for this other side to show up...and I didnt find him to be odd at all. he cautiously showed me more of himself.. Yes he's an original all right. He's my Original Man. But no, not as weird as I've met. The world is a big place. There are many more weird coots in it than the entire population of people with ADHD.But do you know what really happened on this topic? He slowly, it took him awhile, figured out and told me that he decided that I'm more offbeat than he is. I'm kind of a sleeper on that one, going about my own life in th way that I do, a quiet marginal. Anyway, it has given me great joy to watch him learn that he can be his unconventional self that he has to be anyway, and watch him learn that I love him as he is. We're not breaking laws or doing immoral things, and he's kind so may offbeatness reign in our house.
Yes, to the difference you drew between being self focused and selfish. One can be both at the same time, you know. They're not mutually exclusive. One is neurologically required, the other is learned. But to confirm the distinction you drew, having had the misfortune of extended contact with a bona fide, grasping, manipulative narcissist in my past, I could tell from the get go that my future husband was self focused, not selfish. My husband is a generous man who loves a lot of people, and was that way long before me, he's no grabby narcissist into sucking the life out of people. His self focus that was not selfish narcissism was the first puzzle of ADHD in our relationship that I set myself to study.
Im glad you described your inner drives and needs due to your ADHD, Jon. Its an early Christmas gift given to this discussion board. All best.
perhaps a misunderstanding
Submitted by overwhelmed wif... on
Jon, thank you for your explanation of what it feels like to be struggling with ADHD and the anxiety that accompanies it. I see so much of what my husband suffers from in what you write.
I do want to ask you to reconsider your interpretation of what your partner (and perhaps others) wants from you in terms of treating your ADHD and anxiety. Here's the paragraph where I think the misunderstanding begins:
Why would I do this you might ask? Because my moods are vastly more stable. Because the only other alternative is impossible. It’s all a compromise this life. It’s just that I resent the fact that my life has to be like this so that I fit in with what you all consider normal. To be frank, I am almost at the point of considering it not worth it. I’ve seen the worst of the world you non ADHD people all have made, and it’s not all that much to celebrate or emulate. Maybe if you all got your own sh*t sorted then we can talk.
You say that you are medicating to fit in "with what you all consider normal." That's not why non-ADHD partners want their ADHD partners to medicate. In fact, it's probably the "not normal" part of our partners that we are attracted to. We need our ADHD partners to medicate so that they don't hurt us and themselves. So that we don't have to live a life of chaos, loneliness, and misery in order to stay with our ADHD partners. If we want our ADHD partners to be normal, it's not in terms of who they are in a deep way, it's in terms of the expectations the adult world holds for us. We need our partners to be able to keep promises, show up where and when they say they will, pay the bills they are responsible for, do their share of housework and yardwork, help take care of the children, etc.
I hope this makes sense and brings some clarity to your life and relationships.
This was a great description
Submitted by vabeachgal on
This was a great description of what is probably going on in my husband's mind. However, I was struggling with how to say exactly what you said. It's not that I wish my husband fit into some preconceived mold. It's a big world out there and there is room for everyone. It's that I wish his swirling mind would sometimes include thoughts of me and the family and that his actions would sometimes reflect those thoughts. And, yes, handle basic adult responsibilities or at least, don't hurt me by being irresponsible.
I'm not sure I understand the world that all of us non ADHD people have made. The world has been made by all of us collectively. I don't get it.
I'm not sure I understand either
Submitted by overwhelmed wif... on
vabeachgal, I'm not sure I understand the world that all of us non ADHD people have made, either. But I don't think there was anything real behind that sentence. It reminds me of the way my husband lashes out and tries to shift the blame. It's kind of a threat, like saying "you're accusing me of all these things, but I have a lot to accuse you of, too."