I've just about given up after thirty years of marriage. His adhd therapist (adhd himself) told him that it's a matter of good communication to solve the problems in our marriage. He says he has no problems with communications at work and other people only with me. My husband believes that our problems stem from the differences in the male and female brain. I agree that with a normal male and female relationship that is true. Men and women approached communicating with different patterns only he doesn't have the "normal" male brain. He doesn't understand that communicating with him takes so much more effort than with any normal male. I not only have to filter through the maleness but also the adhd. He jokes about his male "nothing box" and that men need to close one box before opening another and that males need to be asked to do something three times before their brain figures it out. That may be funny in a general but not when your dealing with an adhd brain. What he doesn't understand is that his brain is 2x-3x the male brain. So instead of asking him three times to do something, I have to ask him is six or nine times. If males have to close one box to open another, in his brain that one box is forty or fifty (and he usually gets focused on one before he can close it, so he never gets them all closed) in order to open another one. When I try to get information out of him so I have some understanding of where his brain is taking him or to explain how he got to that conclusion, I get the "nothing box" excuse. "I'm not thinking of anything."

I agree I sometimes go on and on about a subject but I'm trying to give him as much information that I can so that he has an idea of what I am asking him to do. I try to paint verbal pictures so in his mind he can see what I mean. Because I know he is going to come back to me with zillions of questions of how I want it done.

And we will end up fighting over who said what and how it was said and what word meant what and who interpret it wrong and etc..... It is so exhausting and nothing gets accomplished. And then I get lectures from him. If I would only learn to communicate and negotiate.

I have researched websites and articles, bought books, gone to psychiatrist, psychologist, counselors, life coaches. I have advocated for our seventeen yr. old son since kindergarten. Yet, I fail to communicate with my husband.