I’m sorry this is so long.
I finally managed to have a real conversation with my wife yesterday—only after I expressed frustration that no one in the family wants to listen to me. We got our 9-year-old daughter to play in the back yard—with some interruptions. Our 15-year-old son was out of the house.
Context—our daughter is diagnosed with ADHD and has strong OCD symptoms. Our son exhibits lots of signs. I used to think my wife probably had high-functioning Borderline Personality Disorder, but now I think it is likely that she has ADHD. I see this as positive and hopeful because ADHD can be treated much more effectively than BPD. She has been diagnosed as Bipolar II, and takes HALF of the medication prescribed—though she has had a gap in medication recently that she blames for her poor mood. (Seeing her psychiatrist had slipped her mind.)
I started by explaining how my father had not listened to me. He would ask the same questions, over and over, and act like it was the first time. I would tell him things over and over and he would not remember them. I also mentioned that he invalidated it when I told him that I was being beaten up by bullies at school. My wife jumped in that she was still mad at him for that—completely missing that I was comparing not being heard as a child to how she and our two kids don’t listen to me.
I brought up something that happened the night before. We went to a food and wine fundraiser for the schools. She was standing at the only table with the whiskey and I joined her. The woman behind the table remembered me and asked if I had tried one of them. I said that I had and she poured a sample of the other one. So my wife knew I was there—though she tried to claim otherwise during the conversation yesterday. My wife has a pattern of being very interested in strangers and not paying attention to me. This is what happened on Saturday. At one point, my wife told the woman that we prefer beer to wine. I tried to jump into the conversation with an analogy—whiskey is to beer as brandy is to wine. But I could not get a word. I told my wife the analogy after we left that table, but by then it was no longer really relevant.
I brought up the subject of sex. I explained how much it hurts me when she says she wants to have sex and then does not follow through. I also expressed how frustrating and ego-shredding it is when we are having sex and she stops to start talking about something completely unrelated. It makes me feel like I am the most boring sexual partner in the world. She said she understood why the talking was a problem. She said she was doing better about keeping her promises about having sex. I told her that I had thought that she would have taken me up more often on my offer of oral sex, given that she has been talking about it for years. She told me that the oral sex feels good but that she is “not used to it.” She also said that she enjoys sex when we are doing it BUT does not think about it at other times. (My wife does, however, make comments right in front of me about how hot Robert Downey, Jr. is--in front of our kids and other people. I don't mind her telling her girlfriend that a celbrity is hot. I mind her telling the girlfriend and her husband that Robert Downey, jr. is hot right in front of me, demonstrating to her friends that she doesn't have to think of my feelings.)
She said that her lack of interest in sex was probably do to aging and menopause. I suggested she ask her gynecologist or therapist about this. She became defensive and started telling me that maybe it was a biological problem. I pointed out that, yes, that is why I suggested you speak to a medical professional about it. Eventually she conceded that it was a good idea. Keep in mind that I am on hormone replace therapy and I use Cialis. (She had been very set against me using Cialis to address a medical problem and said that she thought taking the pill meant that I was no longer attracted to her.)
I told her that I felt taken for granted. It feels like she thinks that I am so unattractive/uninteresting that I wouldn’t be able to find anyone else so she doesn’t have to take my feelings into consideration to get me to stay.
I also pointed out that the lack of sex started long before menopause—years ago, for example, she would promise sex and then stay up chatting with a friend on the phone while I waited in bed naked--and waited and waited. I eventually put on my pajamas and went to sleep feeling like an idiot for believing her.
(I did not say this, but it occurs to me that sometimes it makes me feel like she wanted the sex in order to have kids. Now that we have kids, why would she need to have sex with me?)
She has also been bringing up Disney again—she wants to go in August. One of our daughter’s symptoms is that she is terrified of animatronics and some statues. She will scream and run away without considerations for her own safety. I pointed out that even if we have the money for a trip to Disney, it would not be a good idea with our daughter. She first responded that we are trying to get help for our daughter. I pointed out that it was unrealistic to expect her to improve that much by August and that my wife has a pattern of thinking things will progress more quickly and smoother than they do and then gets frustrated and angry. She then changed her argument to invalidating our daughter—she is faking the panic attacks to get attention. I pointed out that that line of reason is incredibly counterproductive. She then changed it to our daughter “exaggerates” her fear in order to get attention.
Later that night, she got into a big fight with our son. (She had been expressing to me how positive she felt about his grades. I warned her not to get too excited. Sure enough, he was failing science and she became very angry.) They were both yelling very loudly. Sometimes she would address me and say that she did not think she was yelling. She also yelled to our son while she was right next to me. I told her this is traumatic for me. She was invalidating at first—how could a little yelling be “traumatic.”
He was cursing at her, which is one of her triggers. She demands that no one curse around her because an abusive ex-boyfriend used to cursed at her. I asked how long she went out with him. She said one year. I pointed out that I had had to deal with my father, grandmother and sister yelling like that until my grandmother died when I was 18. I had to put up with my father and sister screaming until I moved out at 22. So, yes, that kind of yelling is traumatic for me. (I did not point out last night that some of this yelling from my father and grandmother was connected to physical abuse, but I have previously told her that my grandmother beat me with a belt or a hairbrush and that one time my father even hit me with a tv rabbit ear antenna I had broken.)
A few weeks ago, I suggested that my wife look into the possibility that she may have ADHD and that addressing it could help not only communication between us but also better communicating (and better parenting) with our kids. She immediately complained that she has no time to see another specialist. I suggested she talk to her therapist or her psychiatrist. She accused me of “dictating” what she should discuss with her therapist. I responded out that I was only trying to be helpful by suggesting someone she is already seeing who may be able to help. She seems a bit more accepting of the possibility that ADHD may be a problem, but not enough to actually do anything about it so far.
Wow, a long intimate conversation
Submitted by Chevron on
Kudos to you both for doing such a long conversation about feelings and your relationship. And over three different topics, all in one sitting. That would have been an intimate conversation ultramarathon for me and my husband. He would have been very hard put to keep going that long, in a talk that went from topic to topic, about feelings. No kidding, congratulations. You both kept at it.
That said, Bowl, I could hear that it was so frustrating to you to be trying to get really important information across to your wife about your needs to be heard, not yelled at and treated like you were desired and loved, while your wife kept turning the subject back to her: her being mad at your Dad, her denial of (which may be the way she remembers) a past incident when she talked over you, her wish to go to Disneyland, her feeling like you were pressuring her about what to say to her therapist. As I read you, you were trying hard through the conversation to communicate your needs and feelings to her, and every topic that was brought up, her only remarks were about her: her feelings, not yours, her wishes. That's what I got from what you wrote.
If she had written up what she remembered of the conversation, describing what she was trying to do in it, I suspect she'd describe some frustration on her part, too. If she was self aware, she'd describe that she was in defensive, self justifying mode in at least part of it. All the more reason to admire you both for sticking to the conversation.
Every couple has their own ways and history, every person with ADHD is different in important ways from every other, and every non ADHD partner is different. Your ADHD wife is not identical to my ADHD husband. You're not identical to me. Although we have some similarities in what was done to us as kids. So take any of this that might be of use to you, throw the rest away:
My ADHD husband and I do best at conversations about relationship if they are short and very explicit. It helps him not go into defensive, non listening mode if I tell him up front whether I want to talk about me, or about him, or about how we're interacting. He always presumes that he screwed up and that I'm criticizing or am mad at him, if it's a feelings topic or a relationship topic. I need to tell him (EXTREMELY explicitly) "I'm having a problem that I need to solve regarding our relationship and I want you to help me think about and give advice about it" Or whatever the one topic is for that conversation. Short and extremely explicit.
I even tell him how long I want to talk with him. I think it was excellent that you asked explicitly for time to talk, which gave her a chance to say yes to the conversation, and the two of you arranged to be alone for it. That's great. I also tell my husband, if I know I need to talk with him about something relational, "Can yountalk for 10 minutes.". So he knows he's not going to be trapped in an infinite emotional marathon. Again, he and I do best at the feelings talk if the conversations are short and I'm extremely explicit.
Expect to repeat what your important needs are, over and over, with as much patience, kindness, but persistence as you have in you. Me having described my needs from him once is not enough. True in any marriage, likely esoecially true with either an ADHD partner OR a non ADHD partner. I need to have patience and say it again. And again. Comes with the territory
At the beginning of the marriage, he didnt differentiate his feelings from mine. I thought he was being a jerk, when Interrupt me telling him my feelings or thoughts, to tell ME what I was feeling or thinking. In the rest of th world, that behavior is aggressive and condescending. I knew he is a very tenderhearted, wellmeaning man, so I couldnt square that with his persistent interruption of what I was in the process of telling him about me, to tell me what I was feeling and thinking...and then getting defensive and stubborn about it when I'd say, no I'm feeling and thinking something else. So if he wasnt being a jerk, what was he doing, when he'd shift the topic to himself, like you describe your wife doing to you, or interrupt me describing my thinking or feeling, to insist that I was feeling or thinking something else, and then going ODD on me when I disagreed, and said, no, I'm different from what you say. It took a long time to figure out that to his perception I was much more merged with him than he was with me. He didnt differentiate his feelings from mine. Or his thoughts from mine. I've had to tell him over and over again, I want to tell you my feelings, you are not making me have my feelings, I am responsible for my feelings, you arent, I have a problem, there can be problems that I have, that you arent responsible for and you didnt create. On and on: OK those are your thoughts on it, but I have my own thoughts on it, and I'm going to complete saying them and want you to hear me out.
Over and over again, with as much quiet, kindness and persistence as I can muster. it has taken him a very long time to first trust that I'm telling the truth and then start to believe that if I have a problem or feeling, it can be different from his problems and feelings, and the world is going to be OK if I'm different. Years of repeating these things to him. He had me more merged with himself than I ever have been with him or anyone,
We cant do conversations in which he's expected to deduce something from a story I tell, or a detail I mention. I can do the kind of storytelling about your past or the incident at the drinks table that youmtold, to other people, and they can see the point of the story or allusion. My husband cant. Especially not in conversations about feelings or our relationship. He's a thoughtful man. He does not do conversations well, if I m dropping only hints or storytelling and expecting him to get it, Short and extremely explicit is about all he and I can do, on feelings topics.
Your wife's lack of knowledge about men's desire and Cialis and other erectile drugs needs to be straightened out. There are plenty of online articles to provide help about that. I have sympathy for the situation of her not fulfilling whatnshe said she'd do, regarding sex, and how that left you feeling. I've had my own struggle with feeling less and less feminine, or not appreciated as feminine, in my marriage, more like The Worker in the marriage. This is an intricate, complicated matter Bowl. I had to decide that I WAS feminine and desirable...even at my age...and again, patiently speak up for what I wanted, over and over, with fewer hurt feelings than what I was having. Much appreciation for the situation. Making dates has helped somewhat. Oh dem ADHD executive function blues. Sympathy.
Short and extremely explicit
Submitted by bowlofpetunias on
"I can do the kind of storytelling about your past or the incident at the drinks table that youmtold, to other people, and they can see the point of the story or allusion. My husband cant. Especially not in conversations about feelings or our relationship. He's a thoughtful man. He does not do conversations well, if I m dropping only hints or storytelling and expecting him to get it, Short and extremely explicit is about all he and I can do, on feelings topics."
Yes, I brought up the incident and explained that it made me feel invisible, like I am so boring and everyone else in the world--complete strangers--are so much more interested and more important than I am. After first trying to deny responsibility by saying that I must have been behind her so there was no way she would have known I was there, she said that she understood and can see why I felt hurt. (I had pointed out that the woman behind the table asked me about which whiskey I had already sampled while I was standing right there next to my wife, so it was clear that I was in fact there. She just became fixated on someone else and THEREFORE did not notice that I was there.)
re: he didnt differentiate his feelings from mine.
Submitted by bowlofpetunias on
"At the beginning of the marriage, he didnt differentiate his feelings from mine. I thought he was being a jerk, when Interrupt me telling him my feelings or thoughts, to tell ME what I was feeling or thinking."
At the beginning of our relationship, my wife was conviced I really liked seafood--I just was mistaken in thinking I hated it. She was also conviced that I liked rollercoasters and just needed encouragement ("It's not that tall. It's not that steep.) My "not knowing" what I really liked led to a lot of heated arguments, especially when her "encouragement" to go on a rollercoaster made me feel like I was being called a chicken. I remember one time when we were in line for a rapids ride and she wanted me to go on a nearby flume. She started telling me that it was not that steep. There were two women nearby who overheard this. One of them chimed, "Hell yeah, that things is steep!"
I still hate seafood--it always tastes like it has already gone bad.
Once she finally laid off pressuring me to ride rollercoasters, however, I actually developed an interest in them--on MY terms. I started designing simulated coasters on my computer. I began riding REALLY tame ones with our son and then worked my way up.
During the summer, we climbed a tall lighthouse. I went out on the observation area--a few steps from the door, not all the way around. Another couple came up. The guy was giving the woman a really tough time, pressuring her to go out when she was terrified of doing so. My wife chimed in about how I was afraid of heights and even I was able to go out. In other words, "My husband is afraid and he still did it, so you must really be a coward!" She told me that she was "just trying to encourage" the woman. I told her that the woman clearly did not want to be encouraged.
Yes indeed, Bowl
Submitted by Chevron on
There can be so many of these incidents of presuming to know what's going on inside someone else. ...and then pressing the other person to accept and believe what someone else has determined is going on inside of them. For me, it's been a real campaign. I've been through sadness at discovering that my husband, to judge from his words, didn't know my inner being at ALL, because, to judge from his words, he was presuming things about me that were what was inside HIS mind. I've been deeply frustrated by the kinds of things you describe. I've been saddened by his kneejerk loud ODD (I dislike yelling enormously just as you do) response when I would stick to my guns that no I wasn't thinking that, no I didn't want that, no I didn't feel that.
How odd, and dysfunctional, in most of my relations elsewhere in my life, for someone to be telling me what I was thinking and feeling! Doing that, to say the least about it, is a therapeutic no-no. Furthermore, the way I was raised, it's boorish and tacky to do that to someone else. Whether it's a public or a private conversation. It's boorish. No, you dont insist on forcing your judgement of their insides on other people, you ASK them what they're thinking and feeling and take what they say seriously; you don't shove your prejudgments about their inner life on them. So in 99.99% of my life interactions, the behavior you describe is generally understood by people around me to be cloddish, and that's the way I learned to interpret it too.
Goes both ways, though. Neither is it cool for your wife to prejudge what's going on in you, it's not cool for you to prejudge what's going on in her. It took me awhile not to read my husband's interruptions as motivated by being crude and bullying, which is the very frequent conclusion of people around me when these things are being done to them...but they're not my husband. It took me awhile to shift from believing that the man, given his age and his contact with many people in his worklife, ought to have picked up courtesies elsewhere in his life like listening until someone finished their sentence, asking not presuming and so on. I applied to him the judgements that I use with people who don't have an attention, memory and executive deficit. I never have thought he was a jerk...I've known from the getgo that he isn't one, but I sure thought that he was lapsing into something like bullying me, because he couldn't stand me as I was, when he did these interruptions or telling me what I was thinking...and I wasn't. To this day, he rarely to never ASKS me what I'm thinking....let alone feeling. He doesn't ask. So he doesn't know a lot that he could get, quickly and reliably from me.
My point is, just as your wife is really doing relational fails in those incidents you told, of presuming that you liked seafood and stubbbornly insisting that you did (with apparently no clue about what she was doing in persisting to your face against what you were saying for yourself), or the thing about steepness, or the cloddish remark to that woman that because you had mastered getting up to the top of the lighthouse, that she was a coward for having trouble with it...those are fails, all right.....because she was failing to know really what was inside you and what was inside that woman with trouble with heights....so also we, that is you and I who don't have ADHD, can jump to our conclusions about why people with ADHD end up doing or saying these social howlers.
Bowl, of course people with ADHD can do these really tacky things because they themselves are jerks and clods, or meanhearted. The selfish, the crude and the mean show up in every category and class of human beings on this earth. I can tell you that my husband is not a jerk. But they may be doing these jumpings to conclusions and then forcing it on other people (like the thing about you eating seafood) because of something that you and I don't have to deal with or are not put together to have to deal with. I've brought up my husband's overidentification with me, to the point that he presumes I'm thinking his thoughts or feeling feelings that he would have. There can be other ADHD related possibilities...that forcing a "you" on you may be (I'm picking something out of the air, or out of the range of ADHD possibilties) may be something like trying to regulate things so that the world outside the ADHD person's head matches t he inside of their head. If the outside matches the inside of the ADHD mind, there's less tension, less mystery and less anxiety. My husband indeed is heavily mind driven, in a world that for him, more than it does for me, has surprises, crashes, fails, interpersonal reactions that are mysterious or difficult for him.
It has taken light years...really about 3 normal years, before my husband is able most of the time, to tell me what he is feeling and thinking, on the spot. He was very very defended iand insecure about this. He also has some alexythmia. He has a lot of history of having been manipulated and not treated well, in his past before me. He was used to having his social encounters blow up on him, before me. Certainly he and I have had some rough times over the interrupting, his yelling (which sometimes he really doesn't hear....and, weird as it is, he hears me yelling at him when I haven't raised my voice or criticized him. We've had rough times. It's a marriage, and we both want it to go the duration, so we'll have more rough times off and on. I HAD to start learning better what was going on...truly...in his own interior landscape when he was doing things like interrupt me, or yell at me. It wasn't WORKing to presume that he was doing those things with the motives that I would have had, if I had done them.... what were HIS interior motives?
This wasn't just me accommodating and caring for him. There was a very important piece for me in it. Part of my process of feeling more solid in myself and not so beat around the head by his interrruptions, yellings (which are less now, much less, thank God), and presumptions of me was to begin to learn what WAS going on inside of him.
Now doing that is quite a project with someone who has high defenses, due to past his life difficulties, and who furthermore has some alexythymia... but it's been worth it. Do you KNOW what's going on in your wife's head or are you presuming what's in it, because someone who doesn't have ADHD doing that kind of thing would be motivated by X? Do you discard her self descriptions? My husband does NOT either think or react like I do on some things. Nor does he have to, in my opinion.
Part 2 for me...this may not be a necessity for you, but it sure was for me...was to have a reality check with myself, and as many reality checks with myself as I need....I just took a drive and did one yesterday as a matter of fact...to deal with my OWN old problems and present ones that yes, like your extreme upset at getting yelled at (which I have too, because of awful times in the childhood home, too) do get set off by your wife's behavior with you...yes they do....but Bowl, they are MY problems. Not my husband's.
I had, and am having to, have a much firmer grip on what I know myself to be, from having lived with myself my entire life, in this relation with my ADHD husband, in which I intend to stay, than I've EVER had to have on myself in any other intimate relation I've had in life, whether it's a friendship or a dating relation or a more serious relation with another man. I have to keep a firm hand on my trust that I know who I am, I know what I need, and NOT presume that my ADHD husband is persecuting me, bullying me, badgering me, and "making" me sad. Pushing me down. Abusing me. Yes indeed there are people with ADHD who are abusers, users, liars, cheats, thieves, and mean. There are some really sad stories of what ADHD people have done to their mates on t his sites. To have ADHD does not induct someone into the choir of angels or to induct someone into Mensa. There can be rude, crude, mean people with ADHD. Relatively few are, just like relatively few non ADHD people are mean or criminal.
The beginning point with me getting happier with what was going on in my marriage was NOT to presume a poor me, victim, I'm being mistreated role or identity for myself. Now all the interrupting, pushiness, and lack of attention that can come with these relations is, I agree a temptation to that POV. But it would do ME no good, if I really wanted to feel better, in insisting that the basic situation was that I was living with a heartless bully. (If you knew my husband, iin any way, you'd pick up quickly that he's far from a heartless bully. But you see, I had my old beat up identity as a kid ticking way in the background....)
I had to do this, more vigorously and persistently than I've had to do through my middle age: I now know who I am, I now know what I need. I know I CAN trust myself. Now is certainly the time to do it.
I have a great deal of sympathy on hearing that your wife was pressing, pressing pressing you to accept her decision about you and seafood. Among adults, that (pardon my French) is being a pain in the ass to someone. Let alone the thing over the rollercoasters (which I for one, will never get back on because the one and only one I took made me throw up). Great sympathy. Who likes to be around someone who just cant give up, but persists and persists and persists. It's a pain in the ass. Whatever is going on in her head when she does it...and only she can tell you anything about that.
I've had to work on this one, but now the bottom line for me is that if I don't want to eat something I don't, short of someone having a gun to my head. Ditto the rollercoaster. I have been abused in the past, worked very hard over a lot of years to grow up, heal from some things and find myself, and I will NOT turn loose of what I know about myself. My ways are just fine.
Nowadays, I tell my husband straight out if he's insisting and insisting and insisting that's his decision about what I should be thinking and doing, and I have no inclination to go the way he is insisting, to just stop the repetitions, the topic is over. With as little heat in my voice as I can, but then if he keeps on repeating, I do NOT participate in any more conversation with him about the topic. Period. I give him no more fuel.
I hope you can learn to shed more of the effect of some of your wife's remarks that are pushing to you something that you're not, or you're not thinking. It's hard to do this, or it has been hard for me. I, like you, want things to be comfortable, good and peaceable.
Believe in you. You don't have to be pushed around by her off base guesses about you, to keep the peace. Just (quietly, if you can pull t hat off) don't participate in what is not you. This is hard. But do-able.
About your wife saying that cloddish thing at the lighthouse about if you cant do it you must be a coward to that woman..... I sometimes am pretty sure that my husband cannot see himself from the outside, when he's socially engaged with people outside the home, so he can't assess on the spot whether he's being kind, or selfish or upsetting....I think he's got social blind spots at times. He's older than your wife is, maybe by a lot, so has learned not to use words like "coward" around people who are having a tough time of something, but he's done some things socially, outside the home, that suggest to me, wow, he's not putting what he's saying and doing in the context of what other people around him are saying and doing. Just reporting in on that. I've never tried to "fix" a conversation in which he has dropped a bomb like that...he's pretty much on his own socially when we're in groups. But it can be startling.
On feeling like being appreciated as a man or as a woman....one more round on that. I really did have to go find my femininity again....the work, and the (at first) lack of attention to me, the increase in my workload in the marriage, the talk always being about him really was draining away from me my sense that I was a woman at all, let alone an attractive one to him (ahem, for my age). Well 'scuse me, but in a healthy way, I hope, I thought that one over and I now say for myself "screw that, I know that I'm a sexually alive, feminine human being and why should I lend my soul to feeling like I'm not being treated like one. I'm not completely there yet....women past menopause can be generally treated like they're not feminine in a way that matters to me, so I've got that going on outside the marriage...but I'm on a road back from having my femininity beaten out of me by my husband's needs, and his lack of "attend time" as Melissa Orlov calls it. Darned if I 'm going to give away my sense of myself, though. I've had to be quite explicit about what I want from my husband in that department, too.
Good luck to you. I think I'm writing long because there's such a high match in what you describe going on in your childhood that yes did create some needs and ways in you, and what happend in mine. For me...only for me...there's a strange upside to ending up with someone with ADHD (who I love dearly), who doesn't see me easily, who needs guidance to know how to treat me and so on: now I MUST speak up for myself, trust myself, take full responsibility for my feelings, understand that my problems are my problems not someone else mistreating me, know the difference between my problems and mistreatment! I must. It's like (in my life) God, finally said, "OK Chevron, you've grown and healed, grown and healed, and now it's time to take your training wheels off. Stand on your integrity. Do as well as you can. and TRUST and CARE for yourself. " My beloved ADHD husband, is my perfect test for now of whether or not I do trust myself and care for myself. I either stand up for myself, rejoice, grow, speak up for myself, TRUST and CARE for myself or...I regress from past healing. I wouldn't wish this test on anyone, but that's what's happening to me.
I strongly believe that even for those who I love dearly, with all my hearts, who I give myself to, I do not give over my soul and mind to them.....If I cease to be me, think my thoughts, stand up for who I am, grow in my way, eventually I'll be hollow, and there will be nothing, after awhile, from which to draw to give them gifts. So for me, this is IT. It's time to stand up and do.
You write like you're a great guy, Bowlofpetunias. Sensitive. Aware. Thoughtful. Wanting harmony in the relation.
You have to do it your best way.
OK, off I go....two long ones to you is a wall 'o words. Wishing you well.
Chevron
To Chevron
Submitted by SweetandSour on
You sound like a wise woman who has figured out some key communication tactics and taught yourself to put them into practice. I applaud you. I would like to do as well communicating with my spouse. I try very hard, but am still struggling and struggling. You give me some hope - thankyou!
Thanks, SweetandSour
Submitted by Chevron on
It's day by day. I entered marriage quite late. : ) I had better work on this, time being what it is. Best to you.