My wife (ADHD) and I (Non-ADHD) have been together for nearly 20 years, married for over 10 of them. 1 kid. I have always been the breadwinner as my wife has struggled to ever hold down a job and struggled with anxiety and depression. About 5 years ago she was diagnosed with ADHD. I hold my hands up in that I never engaged with her much about it and was a bit of a sceptic until recently. Over the last couple of months we have had some very bad arguments that have pushed us closer to a break-up than we have ever been. Since we were so near the edge I took it upon myself to read up more about ADHD and wow I wish I had done this years ago. My wife demonstrates so much of what Melissa describes and sadly I found that my responses were also not helpful. So I have been actively trying to change myself to help her. Its been a big change for me too and I have tried to do so many things to change myself and our relationship over the last few weeks. This change in me though has also made me realise that I also have found coping mechanisms to deal with her ADHD, I just didn’t know it. In an attempt to change I have also had to try to break these coping mechanisms to rescue our marriage. As such, it has made me much more emotional and open about my feelings. I don’t feel however that this is going down too well with her.

I feel that anytime I express my feelings it is met with huge defensiveness and almost like she is offended I dare even ask. After a few weeks of really trying to do things differently I just tried to communicate my thoughts to her. I said that I feel unloved and that I feel insecure and paranoid sometimes that she doesn’t want to be with me (I know I am pursuing but its so difficult not to). I don’t know why but I expected this to be met with some empathy. Instead, it was met with “I have told you I love you!” (true but its always me that initiates saying it). The actual reaction to me expressing how I felt turned out to be “why do you try to make ME feel bad?” and “what more do you want ME to do?” and “I can’t believe you are having a go at ME again!”. Yet this was about me expressing how I felt. This is the part of ADHD I find SOOO difficult to accept as the Non ADHD partner. I can deal with the disorganization, picking up the slack with our kid and managing all the finances. It’s the emotional disconnection and the, what I perceive as selfishness of the condition. It always feels like I have to apologise for everything. I am always in the wrong. Even saying I feel unloved (even if she thinks that I shouldn’t feel that way) is met with anger, resentment and defensiveness. I don’t feel like I can ever say anything without being resented for it, no matter how I say it. The reality is that it is like living with a mannequin sometimes – you can give all your love but you never get any emotion or attention back. I try to snuggle her, I tell her I love her. I have even left little notes around the house saying why I think she is great. And had a song recorded to express how much I love her and then sent it to her as a surprise. She says thanks and I think she appreciates it but it comes across more as I have made her feel awkward. These things that took a lot of effort are met with the same response as the thanks I get for bringing her a cup of tea. I’m not expecting or wanting a huge thanks anyway, just for her to feel that love and maybe reciprocate it somehow, if only with a smile a hug or a kiss on the cheek.  She can’t even look me in the face anymore and tries to avoid eye contact whenever. She has told me that she is just focussing on getting through the day but I find it so hard to accept that. I know I should accept that. But imagine someone not being able to look at you all day and seemingly escaping into other rooms for hours and shutting the door. Its hard to take especially when you love that person so much. Even though reading Melissa’s book has filled me with a lot of hope I just can’t understand why something so simple as the odd peck on the cheek, eye contact, or and ‘I love you’ initiated from her rather than a forced response to me saying it is so difficult. It seems like a 2 second thing to do and that’s the bit I find hard to understand. So I end up thinking “why does she seem to hate me so much?” and I don’t think anyone could blame me for thinking that? But she has no empathy to that. Instead, its about her and “why did you tell me that? Why are you trying to make ME feel bad?”.

I know she is working on herself. She has just started to see an ADHD Coach. And I know she isn’t able to give me much emotion until she sorts herself out. I also know she is still very angry at me for some of my responses to her ADHD in the past. I get all that. I also appreciate how her mood is always very sad and lethargic (she has the inattentive form of ADHD) and she prefers her own space to deal with things. What gets to me though is that during the week the wife that I get is lethargic, unmotivated, snappy and unwilling to engage with me. Yet when the weekend comes and she goes out with her friends they seem to get the best of her. She is happy, dancing, laughing, interacting positively with people. It feels unfair that I put all my energy into helping her during the week, get blanked, but these other people get the best side of her. I am jealous of them for that but also angry that she can’t show me the same. I know that ADHDers are reward seekers. I get that going out with people, getting drunk and escaping boring old me is a great dopamine hit and reward. But it just feels that is very selfish regardless of the ADHD. Are we all just to accept that because of the ADHD they can do what they want and not care about the people most close to them? At what point does the excuse of having ADHD get abused?

Without this just being a rant, I have some questions relating to it all:

Is there a different way to get your partner to open up about how they feel about you? Saying I love you is just met with a “yeah I love you too” response and never sounds sincere. I want her to tell me more. If I ask “do you love me?” she gets defensive. What other questions can I ask to establish how she feels about me?

If you are an ADHD person how would you warm to someone again that you have grown disinterested in? What would you want them to do?

Any Non ADHD stories of how you have got your partner to fall in love with you again? Is it possible to get back how it was in the beginning?

I may have undiagnosed ADHD and I looked into it more after 2 things that happened: I listened to the Mel Robbins podcasts when she did an episode on ADHD and announced she had it and also when I got fired from my last job for working substantially more hours during busy season but still under performed my peers. To add onto that, both my wife and in-laws are high performance, high wired people, where their minds are operating at 100mph and don't slow down. They had to think that way to get past survival mode when they immigrated to the US. I was raised by strict parents due to their Christian background, but was not forced to over exert myself when I didn't need to. Whatever I worked on, I would take the amount of time needed to complete it. Here's where I think may have undiagnosed ADHD. My mind cannot process information as quick as my wife and in-laws, so it leads to slower execution. In addition, I would overlook things that "normal" people would not overlook. This has caused many arguments between me and my wife. Also, if my in-laws saw that I accidentally did something incorrectly or too slowly, they would be like "what's wrong with you?!" My wife says that to me too and then they would complain to my wife about my inadequacies. So right now, I feel like if I'm inaccurate or inefficient, I'm useless and my kids are seeing that as well. Also, my older daughter may show early signs of ADHD as well, the inattentive kind just like me. I remember one night my wife said that if our daughter has ADHD, I will never forgive you because you ruined her life and my life. Although ADHD makes life more challenging, it's not impossible to overcome. It's that my wife is afraid my daughter can't be more than average even she grows up. On top of that, I have suggested therapy for myself as well as couples counseling. She adamantly refuses both because as long as the way she carries herself generates better results and more usefulness in society, she doesn't feel she needs to change. And I can't get therapy for myself because she thinks I'm too "stupid" to be fixed and she micromanages all our bank accounts so she will flip if I attended therapy. A few other notes, she is the breadwinner in the family as she make significantly more money than me and if we were to get divorced, the kids will easily side with the mother. 

I don't know what to do. I'm either stuck in an unloving marriage and if I divorce, I might only get visitation rights. If you have any suggestions, I'm open for options.

Anyone else following the work and outputs of Dr. Ramini? Specifically, the few podcasts she's put out with Mel Robbins? I know there's a blog post on how to not confuse narcissism with ADHD behaviour/symptoms, but man, when she speaks, I feel like most of what she says can be applied to our situations but really, the only option is to leave. And that makes me so sad. 

I'm really struggling right now with the sadness of what is in my heart. It's like my brain and body know what to do, are screaming at me to do it, but my heart just doesn't want to listen or understand. It keeps saying 'it's fine, it's going to be ok, it's going to sort itself out, don't worry about it today, nothing you can do' and now days, weeks, months, YEARS have passed and I'm almost 45 and I've made a promise to myself to NOT live like this any longer. But then, taking the steps towards this is really scary and frightening and I genuinelly don't know if it's the right thing to do. Truly. I don't know. There are times that my ADHD spouse 'comes to' and is engaged and it's like 'YES, it's all going to be OK!' but more often than not, he's so disengaged we live parallel lives and I definitely do NOT live in my values or boundaries or whatever. 

And I woke up today really, really sad about it all and not sure what to do about it. 

I get it, I really do - but the comment approval process is proving a bit of a frustration for me at the moment lol and I imagine will do for any other ADHDers coming in to this site to try and earnestly engage

I was pretty happy to just grin and bear it (and still am for the most part) but I commented on a post last night and, it got approved overnight but I thought to myself "there's a little more I could add to this actually" so edited the comment, and the edit needs approval. Which is fine, but now the whole comment is gone because it's back in an "awaiting approval" state

It's mildly frustrating trying to have back and forth conversations with people when they're able to comment instantly and my comments only appear once or twice a day - the other day someone posted a question to ADHDers re mess, and I responded that day and over the course of the weekend a few people said something along the lines of "I'd be interested to hear the answer to this", and I'm like "I've tried to answer!" lol. Also one unfortunate ADHD side effect is - there's nowhere to see my "comments awaiting approval" and sometimes I genuinely can't remember if I actually replied to something I intended to or not.. I think I did? But I'm not sure

Like I say though I do get it - you've had abusive users in the past so some form of approval process was necessary, and you don't have many people approving, and they're doing it in their own free time - my comment was sat awaiting approval all weekend because, it's your weekend - and I genuinely am not asking you to deprive yourself of even more free time

This isn't a request to change things, just an expression of frustration lol, hope this makes sense