Well mine seems to spend more time making me feel like an idiot who can't do a simple task! If I don't understand what he's asking me to do within 5 seconds he gets in a huff and gets angry at me. I couldn't understand what item he wanted me to unplug and then plug in another thing. Got all uppity with me. He wanted me to hold a board for him while he used an electric saw to cut through it. He complained that I was holding it at an angle rather than straight and then told me to move to the left and when I did he screamed "the LEFT" I said I did and he goes "No MY left". Gee I'm such an idiot.
I went out to use the weedwhacker while he was home. I never do that when he's home because he gives me grief about using it every single time, but seeing as how he hasn't worked in 2 1/2 months and never leaves the house and had told me on Monday how he was going to do it and it was now Thursday, I had to do it while he was home. Oh my god, he came running out telling me I had it on the wrong setting and how I was holding it wrong. Then I had to extend out more cord and I can never tap it on the ground to get it to come out like he tells me to do. Well he sees me manualing getting some line out and grabs it from me and says "I've told you before how to get line out by tapping it on the ground" and proceeds to do it and wouldn't you know it, no line comes out. He does it a few more times and nothing and then he says "Well it must be out of line". Nope, there's like 2 feet in there! Guess it doesn't work for you either and I'm sure it's my fault it isn't working and I probably broke it. Gee, when I do this when you're not here you come home and tell me how good the yard looks yet when you're home you tell me how wrong I'm doing everything. Then he goes into a spiel about how I'm just ruining the weedwhacker and I should have just let him do it. Well you said 3 days ago you were going to do it and you haven't left the house yet you haven't done it. But tomorrow you were definitely going to do it, right??
I took down shelves in a bedroom I painted last weekend. He comes by and goes "Wow you got those all down by yourself". My god, I'm not a moron! If you would allow me to do things without running over 5 seconds into it because you think I'm doing it wrong or can't handle it, I could do a lot more! Then I put them back up while he was outside. It took me about 20 minutes to get them up whereas he could have got them up in 5 minutes but I still did it. I even had one of the shelves fall down but got it back up and he had no clue because he didn't hear it fall. If he had heard any kind of commotion he would have been in there in 5 seconds and go "Geez you're going to hurt yourself. Just let me do it."
If I'm in the kitchen using a knife he needs, he'll say "Hey I need to use that for a minute" and take it from me. My god, if I did that he would have a royal fit that I couldn't wait a minute to use it. If I'm washing off some stuff in the sink he'll push me out of the way because he needs to wash his hands. If I did that you can be sure I'd get an earful.
I don't know if he realizes the correlation of me doing a ton of housework whenever he's gone and not doing anything when he's around. I HATE feeling like a moron doing anything when he's there. He has totally taken away any self-esteem I had before I met him and now I second guess everything I do around or for him. I'm a happy person by nature, but I am a lot sadder and depressed with him. I left work this morning and saw he left both front windows in his car rolled all the way down overnight. This from a guy who forgot to lock his car on New Years Eve and had it broken into. I was going to just leave for work but decided I should probably grab his keys and roll up the windows or else I'll probably hear when I got home "Didn't you see that my windows were wide open when you left for work? Why didn't you have the courtesy to shut them??" Of course now I'll probably come home and hear "I had them open for a reason! Why did you shut them?" No matter what I do, it's going to be wrong.
You're dealing with more than ADHD, I hope you realize that....
Submitted by overwhelmedwife on
When people write things like you've written them, they're describing people who don't just have ADHD. They may have ADHD, but that is a side issue.....like a broken arm when there is a head injury. The broken arm is an issue, but it's a side issue. the real issue is the brain injury.
Only a licensed professional can Dx exactly what is wrong with your H, and that person may not ever tell your H, out of fear of his reaction, but as you know, what you're seeing and what you're hearing is far from normal.
When I first started talking to my sibling, who is clinical therapist, about my H, she said something I'll never forget. She said, "Mentally-healthy lay people often don't know what is wrong with someone, but they know that something is wrong. They know that what they're seeing is outside of the range of normal. The range of normal can be wide, accounting for the various healthy personalities and likes and dislikes,. But when someone is outside of the range of normal, mentally healthy people will just know that something is wrong.
And that is so true. I "knew" that there was something wrong with my H, more than just ADHD, but I didn't know what. My sister told me that she was nearly certain that H had an Axis II Personality Disorder (based on the many, many times she had been around him, plus the times she had stayed at our home for weeks at a time.). Sure enough, when H was in rehab, the psychiatrist (who I never met) Dx'd him with an Axis II PD, ADHD, Anxiety, Depression, Major Mood Disorder, alcoholism, and so forth. The doctor's Dx was in conjunction with the psychologist who also worked in his office. They collaborated on the Dx.
The quick-temper responses that your H gives you is a red flag, but you already know that. :) The need to put you down, rather than treasure you as his beloved wife. The taking the knife that you're using, and expecting you to just suck it up, but he'd have a fit if you did that. This isn't ADHD. This is a personality disorder. .