I recently came across this website and am currently reading ADHD effect on Marriage. I am grateful for these resources and this is my first post on here. I am the non-ADHD spouse and I have suffered immensely as a result of my wife's ADHD symptoms. She has also recently been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and I believe she take meds to address both conditions. She seems to be stabilized at the moment but the kicker is we have been separated for 4 years and now she is afraid to rock the boat and come back to the chaos of family life (she left me and 2 adolescent girls at home 4 years ago). Before I understood the effects of ADHD on marriage I thought we were simply "incompatible" but now that I'm aware I would really like to reconcile and make the marriage work. She has recently agree to couples counseling but nearly every interaction with her still leaves me feeling neglected, lonely and weak. When I bring up the prospects of her moving back she gets angry and defensive and feels like I'm pressuring her. I tell her how anxious it makes me and she does little/nothing to try to console me, despite my being very supportive of her mental health issues. It's the total lack of empathy that I can't handle. I'm falling apart emotionally but when I express that to her she gets stressed and places me at even greater arms length. She has shamed and insulted me about my anxiety despite her own MH issues, it is the height of irony and hypocrisy and it feels like we are living in alternate universes. I'm hoping couples therapy will help but even this gives me anxiety as she is apt to get angry and push me further away if I confront her on these (ADHD) issues. She is much more comfortable focusing on MY anxiety, controlling and (alleged) emotional abuse as it take the focus off her. I admit to acting poorly to her ADHD behavior because I was uneducated on this topic, together with my own anxiety, which caused me to lash out at her many times throughout our 21 year marriage. Does anyone have any advice to help soothe her and gentle reel her back in? If anyone can relate I would love to connect with you and maybe even talk offline if that's within the rules... sort of like one-to-one peer support as I feel this would be beneficial to both parties... thanks for listening and hope to get some feedback on this as I feel like I'm losing my mind!