Hello everyone,
First i'd like to say this site is great and very helpful. My story is a long one and my situation very complicated. I'll shorten it as much as possible.
I am 25 and my OCD/ADD wife is 29. We met on the internet in 2006. I left the US in 2008 for South America to marry her. We have been married for two and a half years. I have only known for about a year and a half that she has ADD. She refrained from telling me out of fear that I would treat her differently.
In the beginning of the relationship I thought her apparent laziness and lack of marital effort were results of her laid-back upbringing, and tolerated it all.
Fast forward to the present day and we are on the verge of divorce. I truly, deeply love my wife. I am sure that if just a few things were different, we would be together forever and have kids, the whole nine yards.
I should say that I pretty much lost all of my patience for her and have treated her very badly over the past months. I have cursed a lot, called her names, etc, and I hate myself for it.
We have talked about divorce often, and seriously considered it twice in the last year.
After talking about some major conflicts, she has improved in ways. She cooks and cleans as much as I do, other small things. I see she is trying her best to meet me halfway there.
However, as her mother is a doctor, she is in a position to play with her meds as often as she wants. For at least six months now she's been taking Ritalin, Venoflaxine(Spelling?), and Ambien. She's really good about the Ritalin but she has repeatedly increased and decreased the dosage of the other two, randomly stopped taking them, etc. She has stopped taking the Venoflaxine completely, lowering the dosage from 75 mg in 15 mg increments or so. She did that the right way.
This yo-yo medicating of hers put a huge strain on our relationship. She has been extra needy, has had huge mood swings, sex stopped being hit and miss a long time ago, and I am always the bad guy.
I should say that my wife is attractive and has the youthful allure of a forest nymph. Even so, whenever I want to have sex, she doesn't, and vice-versa. I'm tired, we argued, many other reasons.
As i'm a foreigner teaching English to high society sexually active females every day, I am routinely surrounded by opportunity. I believe in the sanctity of marriage and family, and the benefits that come from them.
However, it has been a herculean test of character and morality for me to go to work, resist abundant temptation, to come home to my crying ADD wife, have her jump me for attention, ask for a little time for myself, watch her get offended and cry, and repeat the cycle the next day.
Now that I have read about ADD and its effects I am more understanding of my wife and continue to berate myself for past behavior. I am torn between single, care-free life in the US, and a life of daily struggle for happiness here in South America.
I have made a list of things that she would have to change in order for me to stay, and encouraged her to do the same, as I am no cup of tea either. She never even made a list, and objected to three of my demands.
Chief among them is my control of our finances. She has controlled every cent I have earned for the last two and a half years. It's gotten to the point where I am afraid to spend money. She is absolutely obsessed. She will randomly spend money on something unnecessary, which I not only do not mind, but encourage. Then if I spend any, i'm wasting our money. I have wanted a spaghetti strainer for the duration of our relationship.
Secondly, she refuses to stop letting the cat drink water from the bathroom faucet, another one of her obsessions.
Thirdly, she refuses to talk with me about her ADD every day and start taking measures to take the more severe edges off of it.
I have decided that I can deal with her forgetting everything all the time, emotional outbursts, varying sex drive, and the cat too.
My question to all of the good people here is, would I be shallow if I left her to be able to spend money again? Would I be wrong to leave her in her current condition? Has any one here ever suffered similiar situations with their ADD spouse? I don't want to be the moron who left his beautiful ADD wife because of a cat, some money, and her extreme needs/lack of desire to fight her ADD.
Any help or comments would be greatly appreciated, thank you for reading. My prayers are with all the ADD couples out there.
Yowza.
Submitted by phoenixgirl78 on
I think that you can't make decisions about what is right for you based on her condition. Whether or not she's in a "good place" is not something you can afford to think about right now. At least, not if your own sanity is on the line. You have to do what is right for you.
As for whether or not it's shallow to leave so you can spend money again... First of all, I don't think that money is why you're leaving. I think it's a small component of why you're leaving. But hardly the real reason. Second, given that you want to spend on things like a collander, I don't think you need to worry about being shallow about money. If you were leaving because you wanted to rack up debt for a sports car and a huge TV, then I'd worry.
I find it really terrifying that her mother has no qualms about medicating her daughter. It's a huge ethical no-no. Also, as someone on Venlafaxine, I can tell you that stuff is NOT easy to get off. As far as anti-depressants go, it's actually one of the worst. They titrate you down REALLY slowly. And even so, it's a battle. So you may want to consider how long she's been off it as to whether her behavior is remaining erratic. It can take 2-3 months (or, in a few cases, more) to truly be done with the effects, I'm told.
I know what you mean about feeling awful for how you reacted in the past. I've been reading and am horrified by some of the things I said to my husband.But I think what matters is figuring out a balance with her now -- one that takes her ADD into account, but doesn't let her use it as an excuse to keep acting however she wants without regard for your feelings.
It sounds to me like she's unwilling to do any real work on reining in her ADD. (Correct me if I have the wrong impression.) If she really won't, you may have to leave. You can still work on the marriage. But it may be easier to do if you're apart. And it signals how serious you are in demanding some changes.
Making Changes
Submitted by MelissaOrlov on