One of the posts on this forum opened up so much for me. I now understand why my wife (the ADHDer) does the things she does. I thought she wasn't interested in me, but I now know that's not the case. She matches ALL these symptoms described by many on this forum. Thank you so much.
I have a couple of questions to try and understand her better, hopefully someone has had a good experience with their ADHD spouse:
1. My wife leaves things unfinished, so many of them, except for when her mom or immediate family members ask. Then she gets in this frenzy and dedication to finish it. Any reason why I dont have this effect on her?
2. What is it that causes her to not want to be close to me? is it that she has too many thoughts going on in her head? is it that she's just not able to focus on me? what can make her non-ADHD spouse less attractive to her than all the errands she runs around to accomplish? I guess what I'm also asking in the question is: what are the types of tasks that keep an ADHD person's attention and interest?
3. What exactly in ADHD causes you to get EASILY frustrated with tasks that so many others can easily accomplish?
Any suggestions?
thanks so much!
ExitSpeed (no I'm not exiting anything speedily :) )
Mostly, it's about the adrenaline
Submitted by Nettie on
You asked for an ADHD spouse with understanding, and I am one, but I'm going to answer from my perspective as a wife with ADHD.
1) For this one, I'm also answering as a child of parents with high standards. My husband provides a relaxed haven for me (for which I'm grateful) while my parents often put me on edge. For example, when my kids were little and I was a divorced parent, my dad would look at a box of cereal and ask, "You don't cook hot breakfasts for my grandchildren?" or JUST LOOK at the box, he was so powerful.
2) Anything that causes an adrenaline rush, which many of us crave. Relax that "close to me" euphemism and tell us what you mean for more information.
3) We process information differently. I can't tell you exactly what frustrates your wife. For me, a huge frustration is that my mind is zooming on at 1000 mph while my mouth is still at the gas station browsing the magazine rack. Also, I am extremely impatient, and waiting for people to catch up with me causes frustration, or a task is boring - we hate boring! Some of us have great intuition (which my husband says is just really fast processing), and we see things quickly and act quickly (sometimes to our detriment, but often with great results, also).
Hope that info helps!
thanks
Submitted by ExitSpeed on
hi Nettie,
thanks so much for shedding light on this. These are so true.
Another quesiton: how do I show my wife that these may be the reasons she lacks intimacy with me?
or that she gets frustrated with tasks?
there are main issues I have around this: 1, my wife is an INTP on Meyer's Briggs so she gets very defensive
anytime she is given feedback. Second, ... umm, we havent established that she may have ADHD. I can tell
that she does from everything I've read ... and brought it up to her but for the first reason, she wont look
into this.
stuck between a rock and a hard place! ;)
thanks for any advice you can give me on this.