A neurologist recently told my wife that our 9-year-old daughter may be on the autism spectrum.  He wants to get an MRI done.

This weekend, I went with her on an annual father/daughter camping trip we have done for the last three years.  On Saturday night, she refused to put her shoes on despite the fact that it was raining and muddy.  The shoes she wore earlier had gotten wet on a raft trip--as if walking barefoot in cold mud has so much better.  She also had dry, almost new shoes that we bought on vacation a few weeks ago. No, they had sand in them and were not cleaned enough.

Sunday morning, she would not leave the tent.  She said she did not have any pants or skirt.  I went to the camp shop, and could not find anything in her size.  (They did not have shoes/sandals in her size, either.)  I tried getting an XL shirt for her to wear as a makeshift dress.  Not good enough.  I bought women's medium size shorts and the sales clerk was nice enough to track down some safety pins to hold them up.

On the way home, we stopped to get her a skirt and shoes.  The skirt part went mostly OK--I had to leave her in the fitting room, pay for the skirt, and bring it back for her to put it on before she would come back out.  She started throwing fits about the shoes, though.  She insisted on buying a pair of Sketchers instead of something cheaper do make do for the time being.  Eventually, I called my wife and she asked to speak with her.  There was an agreement that she would do chores to work off the price of the Sketchers.  But then they had a fight about what chores she would do.  I said she either had to use her allowance or go home without shoes.  She would not budge.  Then we eventually got an agreement on chores she would do.  Then she could not find the right pair of Sketchers.  This went on for a long time until she finally decided on one pair.

My wife and son were away when we got back home.  I started most of the dirty laundry, but apparently the bag I did not start was the one with her bras in it.

My wife has to leave for work before I do and then I need to drive the kids to school.  Morning care does not open until after my wife has to leave.  The kids would not come down before she had to leave and she was screaming at them that they needed to be downstairs and ready for me to take them to school.  She was getting very tense, and I told her to just go to work.  After the threat that my wife would take his phone unless he got up right then, our son got up and dressed.  My wife left.  Then our daughter decided she needed to change outfits.   It was taking a long time and I was afraid my son and I would be late.  In a pattern that has become frequent, after claiming she was getting dressed for a considerable amount of time, she "discovered" she did not have a necessary piece of clothing--a bra this time.  Only when we were already running late did she tell me I needed to find one.

But I couldn't find one.  When I sort clean laundry, I make sure that all of her stuff goes into her room, my wife's stuff goes into her pile, and my stuff goes into my pile.  Our son is supposed to take care of his own laundry.  My wife, however, often leaves loads of clean laundry unsorted on the bed.  When it is time to go to sleep, she just randomly tosses unsorted clothes into her pile and my pile.  So both piles contain stuff from her, our daughter, me, and even our son sometimes.  I often have trouble finding socks because my wife has thrown them in her pile.  Furthermore, she does not put her stuff away very often, creating a huge pile with clothes from everybody.  I often can't match my socks because she has put one of them in my pile.  I go through my pile and put most of it away--there is not enough room in our closet my dresser to put it all away, but we plan to put a wardrobe in the spare room once we get our daughter's old bed out of there.  So I searched through all of the laundry in our daughters rooo, through all of the laundry in the dryer, and through all of the laundry in our room.  I could not find anything except the bra she wore the day before--which she refuse to wear again.  And she refused to go to school without a bra.  I threw the "dirty" bra into the laundry and told our son he had to walk to school.  I called my wife and she just told me to look through all the places I had already looked.  I have a sore knee, and it got worse while I was kneeling to go through my wife's huge pile of clothes.  Eventually, I did find a bra in that huge pile--but our daughter thought it was dirty.  I searched again and again, and finally found another one.  OK, she would put that one on.  But it took her much longer than it should have.  Then she complained that she could not find a specific brush.  I finally got her to use her other brush.

I wound up dropping her off at school at 8:30 and did not get into work until 9:20.  I can't afford to lose this job, and I have a new boss who may not be as understanding as my previous boss.  The stress was of not being able to leave for work was incredible.

All of this also brings up some issues from my past.  My sister, who is older than me, was always getting new clothes.  She would wear something once or twice, and then decided to never wear it again.  Our daughter is quick to decide that clothes or shoes she has worn a few times are too small or do not feel right.  I had to do with hand-me-downs and cheap stuff that I would get teased--and beaten up--for.  (Yes, when I was young my parents actually gave me hand-me-down girls clothing. Some other stuff was decade-old, out of fashion stuff from older cousins.  I was the youngest off all of the cousins.)  My mother also had a habit of throwing all of the laundry into one big pile and my clothes would often disappear for months at a time.

Hello All,

I am 39 years old and was diagnosed with ADHD 4 weeks ago and have had the usual veil lifted.  I am currently taking a time release Adderall, low dose and I have been referred to a CBT.  All good things I know.  Honestly I am looking forward to learning more than I have and working diligently to accept and grow with having an actual diagnosis.  

A short summary is that I struggled in school but managed a decent GPA, I came from a small school so I was gifted the opportunity to play 3 sports a year, participate in German club, FFA, FBLA, Band, Marching Band, Knowledge Bowl Team, Math Team and I worked for the family farm anytime that I had a vacation from school.  After high school I struggled to stay focused and did not perform well in college because my structured high school life was no more.  I floated around for a few years and I starting dating my wife at 23.  Like a true ADDer I asked her to marry me after 8 1/2 months of dating, we were married 9 months after that.  Honestly, best decision of my life.  I started school again and was getting a 4.0.  Then my Dad had to have major heart surgery and I started going to school 4 days a week and driving 150 miles a day to take over the farming responsibilities.  Soon thereafter my wife and I moved to the farm and I started farming full time and going to school online full time.  About a year after I joined my father in the trucking venture that he had for many years.  So at that point I was going to school full time, trucking full time and farming in between.  Not but a year later we were pregnant with our first.  So 9 months later I was going to school, trucking, farming and trying to be a father...full time.

Unfortunately between a few bad crops and my parents accrued debt those ventures failed and my wife understandably wanted to see more of me.  But, what I ended up feeling was a sense of failure that I still harbor today.  After those ventures failed I quickly finished my degree and pursued a career in insurance...I tried the office life.  After a year and a half of unhappiness in my career and a new found love of making sure my children ate healthy foods, my wife and I started a new farming venture, one on the smaller scale than the 2000 acre one I had with my father, and we started trying different types of farming.  

So, after many years of trial and error, learning animal husbandry, trying to find a niche in the marketplace and marketing and branding our butts off we finally had something to show for it.  My wife and I were running 10,000 pastured meat birds that we sold nationwide, we had an egg laying flock of 700, we were running cattle and I was farming both hay and grains.  More information than necessary but I wanted to qualify what happened next.  Our flocks came down with a bacterial infection.  That year we lost over 8,500 birds and all of the birds that we processed came in under weight.  Needless to say we were not able to continue farming and we had to move everything we had back to my hometown, 450 miles away.  Twenty four loads of stuff and animals later (I still have another 4 loads to bring back and some very large equipment) I found myself extremely depressed.  I wasn't in a rut, I was in a canyon with a pile of boulders on top of me.  For me farming has and is my life and I do not see myself doing anything outside of agriculture, it is my identity (see suicide rates of farmers and the accompanying articles and it helps paint the picture).  So after having now having 3 failed business ventures go down by the time I was 37 made me feel like an absolute failure.  

To cope with the depression and the ADHD that seemed to be ramping up during this period I was using alcohol to cope, escape and for whatever reason gave me enough clarity to focus my thoughts so I could at least take an idea and follow it through in my mind.  The last became something of a target with my alcohol.  I would sometimes find myself abusing alcohol, severely, in the middle of the day so that I could find the clarity to make sense of the myriad of ideas/thoughts that flood my mind.  So, I have given alcohol up, possibly for good, because of the turmoil that I found it caused in my life.  ADHD meds are helping but the counseling is what I believe is going to help me unlearn some of my defense mechanisms and behaviors.  

This long spiel is out there because I know that for the last couple years my wife has had to put up with a lot of crap with me.  My depression and alcohol abuse made the emotional outbursts that I used to have much worse, sober or not.  Since discovering my ADHD I have had enough self awareness to recognize why something small will send me into such extreme anger, it doesn't change what happens but I now recognize it.  Throughout all of the failure that we experienced in the past 2 years I have still been able to keep that dream alive, to farm and produce good foods.  We have taken our last dollars and tried to make a go of it again with a more precise focus.  At the same time we are navigating debt collectors and the inevitable bankruptcy (which also causes an extreme amount of anxiety).  So my ADHD mind continues to spin a million miles a minute, coming up with different ways to improve our operation or to expand it.  The expansion part is where my wife and I have a large miscommunication problem.  Through my education I have been taught to look towards the future and never stay complacent with where you are.  To set goals and to at least have a loose business plan/goals, that can guide the business towards something.  I am not innocent by any means here, I tend to have several different ideas that I am constantly working on in my mind and I can typically run a cost benefit analysis in my mind as I am working throughout the day.  So I am certain that at times I sound like a broken record and it is probably scary that I am always coming up with new business ideas when we are currently under financial duress.  

So my wife gets upset with me, I in turn get upset with her, the argument escalates into a fight and then my emotions take hold and it just gets worse.  My new tactic which actually upsets my wife more, is that I stop talking and shut down because I know I am going to make it worse.  In regards to my pattern of thinking and trying to come up with new ways to make the business work I do not know how to slow or stop that.  If I was going to be able to do that, I would have to be on a pretty strong tranquilizer.  

So I don't know how to proceed. I don't know how to stop looking.  I do not know how to slow that part of me down.  I certainly understand that I need some very serious help in concentrating and focusing but that is not going to stop the way my mind works.

Sorry for the explanation, just wanted the situation to fully explained.

My ex-husband said to me once or twice, "I can barely take of myself."  This came after I felt at the end of my rope and shared with him how stressful it was and how sad I felt that he was not contributing more to the family via financial, emotional, and logistical support. It was devastating for me to hear him say this but humiliating, I'm sure, for him to reveal it.  

Hi again, I've been posting a lot because I'm entirely alone (not one single family member or friend) and one of my major issues is deciding where my boundaries should be as a wife of a severe ADHD-er,  how much I'm supposed to endure, and if I should keep trying or truly get away. Having outside perspective helps very much so thanks in advance one again for reading/helping.

So please tell me what you would do:

My husband is a compulsive liar. I did not discover he was until 10 years into our relationship, he's just that good. Then a few years back he came out that lying was his way or survival as a child, and it was almost always a positive outcome for him. He readily admits he has an issue with it, and wants to fix it. He swears he will stop. But the issue continues. His lies primarily surround work.

About 3 times a year or more, I notice paychecks have stopped coming and are very late. By this point I recognize the subtle diversions and excuses he'd been giving for those delays for weeks to months. During this time he swears up and down his work is complete, and it's whatever client being away on vacation, or accounting error, or other seemingly understandable issue keeping the money from coming in.  Eventually I am able to se e through it and I discover the reason is actually him not delivering finished work on time. The deficit in work by this point is so large, it takes a month or two of hell (me doing everything els so he only works...slowly) to rectify the situation. Then eventually the cycle begins anew.

Aside from the issues of trust in our marriage (which I'll get to), it prevents me from having the facts of where we are financially. Which prevents me from keeping to budgets and planning to where we are realistically and accommodating for our family of 6 (we have 4 children to care for) effectively. His lies essentially keep me from reality and the right to choose what's right for my family and my own life.

The reason I keep giving him more chances are his awareness and ownership of the problem, and his genuine intent to stop.  And for awhile things are as they should be. But slowly and unnoticeable the lying worms its way back in, snowballing back into a financial/career catastrophe I have to get us out of somehow. And so it begins again.

I just found out Tuesday he'd done it again. Aside from the financial and career issues, I feel so betrayed and disrespected. I check in with him every week, and ask him to please be honest if theres an issue with work. I tell him how the lying is what hurts more than anything, and how much our marriage needs trust built now more than ever. He then looked me in the eyes every time and said " I understand why you don't trust me, honey. But I promise that's not happening anymore. I wouldn't do that to you again". And to my horror, I believed him every time.

I feel like such a chump for trusting the word of someone who has lied our entire marriage. I feel like an idiot for believing my well-being meant more to him than his own ego or fears. I feel like I don't know who I'm married to.

Anyway...would you continue trying with someone like this who keeps breaking trust with lies but who is genuinely owning the problem and wants it fixed? I've dealt with it so long...this along with all the other ADHD issues. I feel unloved and like there's no hope for my future.