I will start by saying I have ADHD, and I a married to a.man who also has ADHD. I am the one who takes on the role of the non-adhd spouse. We have 1 child together. He was diagnosed in childhood but didn't want to stay on meds. He has been on meds.for about a year now. I was diagnosed in adolescence, stayed on meds for the last 16 years and don't feel as though I have any major struggles with functioning in my day to day life. I am not perfect. I hate cleaning, and often don't acknowledge or notice messes as they accumulate. This is a frequent point of criticism from my spouse, but as I take on every other area of our lives I feel like I overcompensate for this flaw. I manage the finances, i cook every meal we eat, I am the primary caregiver for our child, I work full time and am the primary breadwinner, I manage all schedule and am responsible for all the planning of everything we do as a family. I am a planner that is how I manage my life. I am prone to distraction, I love to read and frequently get lost in a book - a trait I've only returned to in the last couple years. I am married to someone that I regularly feel hates me. He doesn't have ADHD the same way I do. I fully acknowledge that and realize his strengths lie entirely in different areas than me. But the past year and a half has been awful. According to him I'm a nag, always harping on him for one thing or another. I'm going to fast forward this post a bit to explain the real issue I'm having, otherwise I feel I will go on forever. I'm not doing this situation justice but for expedience sake I'll get to it. A little over 1 year ago, my husband left me. We started marriage counseling in September 2020 after our problems seemed insurmountable, and December 6th, 2020 while I was making breakfast he just left. The story is long, found out our entire marriage was nothing but lies, he was actively pursuing avenues to cheat on me during the beginning of marriage counseling. He was addicted to pornography for our entire 8 years of being together and that's why he never bothered to have sex with me more than twice a year (despite lies to the contrary). He was actively searching for hookups/dating prospects on dating sites during our first weeks of marriage counseling - while telling me he wants to work on it. He badmouthed me to his friends - of same and opposite sex, he'd frequently go to confide in his opposite sex friends to tell boldface lies about me. We had 1 moment of true honesty in October when he came clean to me about his pornography use, constant lying, etc. He had a traumatic childhood - I won't go there. Ultimately that was his coming mechanism. When. He left in December he said he felt he was being attacked in therapy, refused to go anymore. Felt I was a vindictive wife who was unwilling to help him when he was miserable - he racked up 8k in debt on a secret credit card and I expected him to pay it - even though it meant he couldn't afford cigarettes etc. He felt I just didn't care if he suffered. I wanted my marriage to work and accepted his perceptions. That I wasn't doing all I could as a wife, I was a bad nag of a wife with unreasonable unattainable expectations. I expected of him what I expected of myself but that was wrong. Anyway despite the words that loved me, missed me, wanted it to work out for us - even when he came home he continued to meet up with/talk to a woman he lied to me about and of course I found out - after all I'm a psychotic control freak that only cares about controlling him. I spoke to her, she was never interested in him like that, but it was his attempts to engage her in that type of relationship that hurt so much. I don't know if I've just ignored it up until this point, believing that my inadequacies drove him to it, etc. But I have tried everything in the past year to make it work outside of a legimate counselor because th counselor made him feel attacked. I have read any book I could find. Attempted with great effort to apply the principles in my marriage. I feel like I have tried to change everything about my very self - all to no avail. I;ve tried EFT, not allowing myself to show my anger, being receptive to his criticism, allowing myself and feelings to be ignored after any and every attempt to convey how I am feeling. After his most recent emotional abuse/abandonment episode this past weekend where he screamed in my face that he would fuck me up if I ever spoke bad to our kid about him again ( which I did not do, apparently she told him he was a liar and mommy didn't like liars after I reprimanded her for lying to me about something she did that afternoon) and he proceeded to tell he was done with me, storm off and leave without talking any further than screaming that at me, and blocked my number and decided he was divorced now on Facebook. (I say abuse because it is. I know he has ADHD but that does not excuse his frequent disregard for my pleas to stop his emotional outbursts toward me. He just tells me I'm too sensitive when I say I can't be spoken to with so much disdain every time we attempt to talk about any issue. I just can't handle what I deserve according to him.)
He then decided he wanted to talk to me the day after. In which he found out I never said what I accused of because our daughter told him. I'm not to be believed but a 4 year old apparently is. Now he is sorry. He overreacted. And I am suddenly stuck on 1 year ago. On my attempt to come to terms with getting a divorce after my lastest shunning after all attempts I have ever made to be heard I revisited my feelings from last year. My feelings that I guess I just threw under the bridge in an attempt to save my marriage. Of him actively pursuing a specific woman. Telling me he wanted to work out our issues while telling her she's beautiful etc. One set of their messages sticks out to me. Telling me he is so in love with me -days after coming home telling me he's committed to me etc and telling her just an hour or so later 'good morning gorgeous'. It's probably my ADHD that is so hyper focused on that now but - it's there. I can't get it to go.away now. It's there and i am not dealing with it well. I don't understand how -if he loved me as he says he does - could he do that.
I think what really bothers me is that in my heart I know that if she would have been receptive to his advances and not friend zoned him from the get go, he wouldn't have 'chosen' me. He would have picked any woman that would give him any sort of attention over me. And I am afraid he still will. He's just waiting for a better option to come along.
You are not alone...
Submitted by Free on
Oh my god, I'm so sorry you are going through this. I read your post and saw that you have had no responses yet, and I just couldn't leave your post uncommented. Sadly I only have a moment right now, so I can't go much into details, but I wanted to let you know you are not alone, and I have been through something similar. Well, of course there are lots of differences, but I can read from your post that the patterns are quite similar. And I feel the same pain reading your post as I have done going through my own experience with an undiagnosed husband. All I can tell you, is that after 20 years and the first shock of him discarding me as if he never cared, never loved me, owed me nothing, etc, I went through hell and back. We tried for a year. It was a horrible year. Then he wanted us to move apart, and the hellish roller coaster kept on for 3 years, when he realized his newly interest was nothing but really bad news, and he ended up not wanting anything with her, and really hurting for ruining our marriage, but also being completely unable to apologize, work on things, do his part, change anything etc. He just kept me hanging, not wanting to even get separated, but also never committing. All of this time, and all it has done to me is ruin me, hurt me deeply, leave me with deep trauma wounds. I felt gaslit by everyone, not only by him, but by two therapists, by friends and family and even by society. No one could understand the hell I was going through (and our kid too). It lasted so long because I was utterly confused and exhausted. I finally started seeing more clearly after really understanding about ADHD, but also about narcissistic relationships. I am not saying ADHD equals narcissism, but it's scary to see how many similarities there can be. I think some adults with ADHD can have narcissistic tendencies, or even be full on narcissists. My husband finally got diagnosed, and all I am hoping for is that he gets treatment and medicated and that it can make some difference for our kid, and hopefully for me as even co-parenting feels hellish the way things are now. I know medication (at least some kinds of medication), can somewhat increase empathy and ability to see and understand feelings of both others and self. But apart from that I now know there was never any real hope for things to change, and I wish I had known, so I didn't expose myself to this much abuse for so many years until I saw this. Now I am healing, and I feel terrified of even thinking of other relationships, which is sad, but I hope it might change as I heal some of these wounds. I am not the same person that I was. I am broken, and cannot recognize myself. Please take care of yourself and protect yourself. Whatever it is, is this love to you? Is it the kind of love you would want? Sending you strength and hugs. Take care!
Free
Submitted by Loopdaloop on
What a great well said message. I was only with my ex for 2.5 years , he undiagnosed and in denial, he'll only go as far as to say he is chaotic, and refused to read the other nhs symptoms and at the time immediately batted it back to me and said I had morbid jealousy. I definitely see that their behaviours can be narcissistic, l also experienced gas lighting, which is an awful thing to go through when a partner is actually making you think you're crazy. I hope you all stay strong and busy, I've been single for 2 weeks now and sleeping well and enjoying focusing on myself. I still miss him and the companionship but he literally would have sent me round the twist if we stayed together. Take care and always post on here if you're struggling, the support is great .