I feel so overwhelmingly pressed on to write this that I am doing it while at work. I am here to tell my story, in short, on how this book saved my 11 year relationship to my partner. I am a 32 yo female, we have 5 kids, your's mine and ours situation and he is 39. An 11 year relationship would seem crazy to anyone but to someone like me, I find it normal. I have planned 3 weddings to this man, we have separated 3 times, and after reading this book, have now been in a committed relationship still living apart, for 3 weeks. Kind of funny how all those three's keep popping up huh? (ADHD moment, I have OCD about finding likeliness to everything.) Now this relationship has had it's fairy tale moments, isn't that why we are so gosh darn lovable as most ADHDers are? And following those moments can be some of the most horrifying, mind blowing, knock down drag out arguments, fights, or splits you have ever seen, although the break ups were always mutual and never ugly, we just couldn't put our finger on why we couldn't make things work in our relationship. Early on, our relationship was fine, mostly normal arguments and nothing we couldn't work through. But as time went on, that all changed. In 2012, we had our first break up. That was nearly 6 years into our relationship. The next one, 2015 and the next 2017. Each one lasting longer and longer. The 2012 only lasted a month, 2015 about 6 months and 2017 I have now been moved out since March 1 of this year. Since 2012, I have worked so hard to figure out what was wrong with me. Why I couldn't marry this man, commit to this man and not to mention our 5 kids. Ups and downs, long distance at times due to his job, and just a lot of built up aggression on both parts. We didn't know how to communicate, argue, love or take care of one another. At some point in my journey to figure out what was wrong with me I was misdiagnosed with Bipolar, given medication and almost committed suicide over it due to the misdiagnosis. That whole ordeal lead me to cancel our wedding, for the 3rd time and move out in 2015. That's when the real digging had to begin. A little background on who I am... I come from many broken homes, have relationship issues that stem from childhood abandonment by my mother and eventually by my father as well. Pretty much my whole family at some point has left me and all I was left with were my children. I was with their dad for 6 years and then my partner now for 11. Being in a relationship has been all I ever known, but to be honest, I haven't felt love until now, after this book. It has been a rollercoaster of events in my life that has mostly been bad due to growing up in a home of abuse and neglect emotionally and physically from my mother. I always knew I was different but never knew why. I can remember being 12 yo and sitting in my closet contemplating suicide b/c I was hurting so bad on the inside I just felt worthless. Having children now, I cannot fathom what I would feel like if one of them felt this way due to me. I just can't. There has been an ugly curse on my family for generations. I am the one to break it. I broke it. I refused to let my children grow up the way I did and the way my brothers eventually did as they got older due to lack of emotional support, love and a general sense of safety in the world. No child should ever have to endure that kind of pain and end up fighting it off until the rest of their life, b/c essentially, you can manage it, but it will always live inside of you. For me, I turned to God at a very young age to help me through this. It was not until 2017 that I can honestly say, I have worked thought those issues, made peace in my heart about my dad and mother and the rest of my family, God says if people aren't good for you then they need not be in your life. There is a reason for all of this, and I am at peace with Gods plan.
So now that we are working through abandoment issues, I no longer think Borderline Personality Disorder is an issues, we can move on to ADHD. I was diagnosed about a year ago due to lack of focus at work and other stuggles work related.
Suizy
Submitted by Chevron on
Thank you for posting and welcome to the site. Wow so you've learned in your thirties that you have ADHD. Wishing you very much well. What a wrong path the diagnosing went down, if you were misdiagnosed bipolar! Medication for that, therapy for that and learning new ways of handling oneself for bipolar are so very different from what ADHD people report helps them and what they report they need to change in their habits! Goodness.
If you and your partner have kids your life is very full, no matter whether you and your partner are living together at the moment or not.
Since you've only had the ADHD diagnosis a year, you're in a first learning period about how to do things to live better with it. I hope right now that you're not only relying on yourself (on this earth; I'll end by talking about God; I mean on this earth) and on your reading learning about ADHD. I hope you are working with a knowledgeable of ADHD life coach or some kind of knowledgeable therapist....
I'm the spouse of someone who has ADHD and have been on this board for a couple years, sometimes read only, sometimes posting.
People on this board report what happens in their long term relation if an ADHD diagnosis is accepted, but then the person with it doesn't take steps to change anything in the way that they do things....the ADHD person instead continues doing things the old way they ve done them in their past life. Well, doing things the same old way never improves any relationship! Your partner and/or your kids as well as you (the principal person to be benefited by your changing doing things) will need to do things differently with you, if they are going to thrive more in the relationship. And they, the partner and kids, aren't the only ones to try to do things differently! They can't do your part of the change; they can only work on theirs.
But you know, Suizy, you write like a champ to me, willing to do the hard work of searching in you and in your past what, in combo with your ADHD, has made things hard for you and for your partner. I really, really respect that you're doing that kind of work hunting what in you was affected by things done to you in the past and the way you grew up from it. Not every adult (ADHD or non) has the courage and persistence to do that work, to go all the way to the sources of pain and grapple with them It's great news that you've found your way to peace about your family of origin.
Writing as a damaged child, one who doesn't have ADHD, but with my own being beat up coming out of childhood, I can tell you that I know what that peace in your heart means. It means that you have forgiven your family what they did to you.
That peace of heart only comes with seeing what was done to you, and then releasing, forgiving. People can't forgive what the haven't really seen yet. On the other hand, seeing isn't forgiving...it's only seeing. Thinking that understanding or being able to describe a problem accurately equals fixing it is kind of like a prisoner waking up from having been knocked out cold, saying "hey, I can see I'm in a dark prison room with a tiny slit of a window high up, I'm in chains and there's no food and water in here!" and believing that being able to name the details of one's imprisonment is some kind of magic abracadabra that will make the prison door pop open and the chains magically to fall off and easy peasy, the prisoner is going to walk out that door free. That's like using your observational, analytic mind as if it were some kind of fairy wand that poof blows problems away. Prisoners have to do something, paradoxical as that sounds if you're chained up in a dark room by things in your past, that directly has to do with what jails you, to walk out of that prison door. And you have. That you have peace in your heart about what these people did tells me that you did, you got beyond seeing to doing...
And now to God, because God was with me and is with me too in my long, experimental, one step forward, one step back, often hard journey toward more freedom. I think with the kind of treatment that was done to you in your childhood, or that was done to me, Suizy, what's needed is like what the Bible says Jesus said to so many of the people who came to him for healing. He said do something yourself, to co-create your healing with me. I've got the power, he said. But you have to do something too, or no healing is going to happen. To the paralytic, he said "Stand up. Take up your bed. And walk" And the paralytic stood up, picked up the pallet he had been laying on, and walked right on out the door, glorifying.
You forgave-released-accepted them, and as a result you are freer and have more power in you for other things. What a great story to read this morning before I start the day. : ) Another one let go of shackles, and with God's help, you put your hand of faith and forgivenness on the handle of the door of that dark room, and opened the door.
LOL, now there's life on the outside of that prison to learn to do.
Bless you on your path, Suizy. I hope this site helps you. Many of us posting actively on it are at work on living better lives, not having ADHD but living with someone who does, but there are active members on the site who have ADHD, who have much to tell you about what it takes to move from the first year of diagnosis on into better.
Glad you're here.
Chevron