New insights after divorce from ADHD partner. Now it's become clear my life has for the past decade become so little about my inner self that mostly what remains is initiative and execution.
I've had little or no help with this. I've done it for the entire family and I keep on doing it. Every moment I spend working on something and wondering whether I should be prioritizing something else instead.
I've lost my sense of self-worth. Planning summer vacation is impossible, because I don't know how to rest or to be happy. I can only create plans and execute them. I have no inner life, only problems to solve. I can't enjoy spiritual things, fleetingly nature, art sometimes, not music. I don't rely on anything good happening to me, I believe I have to create it myself. I try to avoid burdening other people with my presence.
This is the lasting impression ADHD has made on me.
I feel this
Submitted by shevrae on
For several years my therapist kept telling me I needed to do something just for me and I would respond in confusion, "But I come here, this is what I do for me!" Even though my stated goal of therapy was to "fix myself to be a better wife because MY issues were ruining my marriage" which is just amazing to think about 10 years later. EVERYTHING else in my life was about meeting my husband's and kids' needs and making their lives work.
I really believed I was a burden simply for existing. But also my purpose in life was to take care of these people who can't take care of themselves. Living with such cognitive dissonance for so long really did a number on me.
Eventually, I decided to put myself high up on my priority list because life had shown me that no one else was going to. I took my problem solving skills and applied them to myself. It was 2 steps forward and one step back at first - old habits, even terrible ones we know are bad for us, are hard to break. I would say I am closer to 10 steps forward and one step back now.
It's such a lonely journey at times. I hope this group and any other one you are part of give you the understanding and encouragement you need to keep going. I have yet to meet a spouse of someone with ADHD who isn't an amazing person who is incredibly generous and giving. We're are just understandably burnt out by the burden we have borne trying to carrying both halves of a marriage. Be kind to yourself.
Thank you
Submitted by Swedish coast on
This forum is indeed a great help. Putting it all into words and pondering on other's experiences is healing for me. Thank you for your kindness and likewise.
empathy for you
Submitted by honestly on
Hello there. I recognise this in myself, but to some degree I stopped doing stuff because of the overwhelm of shoving everything along by myself. So I struggle now to execute anything or to want anything because it was all about other people and all so much trouble, so much inertia to push against. Since you were talking about vacations, maybe (if other commitments allow) consider signing up for something mellow but activities based - something you used to love before you got battered by ADHD, or something fresh and new - go on a yoga retreat or a residential watercolours course or learn to sail or anything really- someone else will take over the organising of the day to day; you just turn up, be there, do the stuff, eat the meals, have mind/body engaged in the activity and essentially freewheel...
I've escaped on a coupla yoga retreats and it's absolutely bliss - the someone else dealing with organisational matters is as good for me as any of the yoga. You need looking after and this is one way -temporarily - to achieve that.
I hope you find yourself again; it will take time and peace and rest.
Thank you
Submitted by Swedish coast on
That sounds like a great idea! I've made a reservation for a watercolor course this summer but am a bit hesitant to use vacation days without the children. Still I guess it's what we all need - to focus our interest on creative and inspiring things.
Thank you for your support. It sounds like you've come further in taking care of yourself and that too is inspiring.
Self-sacrifice
Submitted by Haveaniceday on
I read your comment yesterday and have been mulling something over. My therapist did a bit of schema-therapy alongside CBT with me. What we discovered (I guess she knew it quickly but I had to go through the process of to discover it), was that my strongest schema was in the "Other-directedness" domain, with "Self-sacrifice" being the schema with the highest score. This obviously comes from my childhood, where I was encouraged and praised for being so selfless (also now realize my sibling had serious undiagnosed ADHD), always giving more than taking, not being a burden, being the easy one, and so basically putting my needs last became my normal way of going through life. This is not to say I'm a pushover or spineless, I'm a really strong character, but I have always placed my value on this selflessness and sacrifice. I always thought that it was a strength, a virtue.
But now looking back, I see it has really taken me so far away from myself, and the concept of "just do something for yourself" was really hard for me to get my head around. I'm getting better at it, and feel less guilty about putting myself maybe not first-first, but in tie-first place, sometimes. By doing this more often, I've had some pushback from H as he seems to think I'm suddenly coming from a self-centred / selfish place and (I get an automatic guilty feeling but I fight it), because I guess he is so used to me doing what's best for everyone, and me just fitting in as I've always thought that as long as everyone was happy, I'd be happy. Well, the years of resentment building up, have proven that's not necessarily true...
My question is, do you recognise this in yourself? I wonder if this kind of thing naturally sets us up to last longer with ADHD'ers, because in the beginning we're just acting in a very comfortable albeit maladaptive schema to ourselves, and honestly believing it's out of love, but also not deeply understanding what love for ourselves means. I'm also re-learning the biblical verse of love your neighbour as your self, in a new way. I never saw it from the perspective of you should love your neighbour just as WELL as you love yourself.
In some of my worse moments, I know I've said things to H along the lines of "I wonder how many other women would've lasted this long with (name the ADHD behaviour issue)..." because I think partners with a stronger sense of boundaries and self-love would have honoured themselves much, much earlier. Somehow though, I have this strong inner drive to not turn back in this journey I'm on towards loving myself as well as I love others, even though I have no idea how it will really turn out!
Very interesting
Submitted by Swedish coast on
This resonates with me very much. It's slowly dawned on me I've grown up in a not very neurotypical family where I was perhaps the most flexible one. I've had good use of interpersonal skills, in my career and otherwise, and adjust to other people in a thousand little ways to be friendly or welcoming. There are several extended family members who in a thousand little ways demonstrate that everything they participate in must be on their terms only. These loved ones are now so painful for me to interact with that I avoid them completely. They make me feel depreciated.
Like you, I was praised for selflessness, which is odd considering the family ideal was instead independence and thinking for yourself. Nobody but me initiates family gatherings et cetera, even though it's been at least five years of me refusing that role due to exhaustion. Instead, now the family is falling apart. I've used every tool in the communication box but there is no way to persuade some relatives to do things in any way differently to meet my needs. The entire concept of meeting others' needs is alien to the family.
Im certain it's because they are simply unable, just like my ex husband. I don't blame them really. I'm just exhausted at everybody's neurodivergence.
Gladly, I have many good friends. They are instead mostly incredibly generous and willing to compromise.
I think for me, who had the blessing of growing up in the richness of a big and loving extended family with a lot of both trust and excitement, it's always been my goal to re-create that childhood paradise. Instead, adult life has turned out very differently, mostly because of accumulating neurodiversity while some key people are no longer alive. I wore myself out because I believed in love and knew I could create something beautiful. Only it couldn't be done by me alone, as it turned out.
Wow. Thank you. Brilliant thinking on your part, you just opened a whole new perspective.
I absolutely agree
Submitted by honestly on
...with everything you say. I'm only now beginning to come to terms with the effects of narcissistic parenting, which left me without a coherent sense of self, let alone the ability to priortise it, no understanding that I could have boundaries and assert them, and a pervasive sense of being in the wrong. Since his diagnosis and my greater understanding of my own state, I have had almost exactly the same thoughts as you; that some of us are 'primed' as fodder for ADHD partners. Perhaps we stick with harmful situations because, well, it's familiar- and because of our maladaptive responses to previous harmful situations.
Wow!
Submitted by Tired girl on
Wow, your comment really resonated with me! I am that person who puts everyone else ahead of my needs....... and come from a family that didn't do that. I've been married to my husband over 35 yrs, though he wasn't diagnosed until about 16 yrs ago. I often ask myself (esp. in the last couple years) why I continue to stay??? I'm exhausted from picking up all the pieces of so much for so many years. Lately I've been asking myself some hard questions about staying or leaving and putting myself first for a change.
Seeking something out
Submitted by Swedish coast on
Another thought: Can it be that an upbringing with not too much consideration for a person's feelings makes for them seeking out an ADHD partner?
My ex-husband's empathy and focus on my emotions was bliss, after me having felt troublesome for being emotional growing up.
Everything that happened later in our downward spiral of symptoms and reactions still had that at it's core. I felt understood by him. Less and less with time, and with rising pain and confusion. But still it's hard to process that in seeking that unique understanding, I stepped into a well of distrust and disappointment.
Just read about a researcher who said that too big a difference in spouses (according to the big five theory) can make for emotional insecurity, since partners cannot understand the other. These liaisons generally have no future.
The chill of some of my relationships with close relatives, the meltdown of that with my husband, incredibly it seems all to be that same neurodivergence.
So who am I, the non? I honestly have no idea at this point. Maybe I'm just as neurodivergent as the rest. But I know for certain I don't qualify as ADHD.