It's a sad day when you realize your reality. I am saddened by the fact that my husband with ADD cannot change his symptoms and they will not go away. I will always have to be the adult. There is no one who has my back. I am the rescuer, the nurturer, the responsible one, the bill payer, the housekeeper, the laundress, the cook, the kitchen cleaner, the bed maker, the flipping everything. I do not get to come home from work and just plop down on the couch and play games on my iPhone and watch TV until bedtime. I have to prepare dinner, feed the animals, clean up after dinner, help him with his work paperwork. We have been married for 25 years and I have always (stupidly) held out believing that he could train himself to be there for me. I can't count on him to make sure our livestock is fed and watered. If he's supposed to do it and I check to make sure he has done it, he gets defensive, but the is a really good chance that he hasn't done it or has done it half way. I had surgery a couple of years ago and I came home to empty watering troughs for my horses. They could have died. No remorse on my husband's part, just mad that I brought it up, like what's the big deal? They didn't die. I could just scream sometimes. I have a million stories just like that. 

I did not sign up for this. Well, I did when I took my vows for better or worse, but you know what I mean. I knew he was dyslexic but had no clue about the ADD or what that would look like in my life. He has absolutely no system for prioritizing anything. He will go work on the neighbor's farm when ours is in dire need of working on. He has this need to be important and I get that but why can't he try to impress me like he tries to impress everyone else? He never tells anyone no except me. He loves all the attention he gets from all the extracurricular activities that take him away from home and family. I sometimes tell him to pretend I'm a neighbor or a stranger or a sports parent so he'll help me the way he helps them. My praise does not hold the same weight as a stranger's. Maddening. 

He is a coach and comes home late 3-4 nights a week. He is frequently gone on the weekends due to coaching sports. This leaves me alone to handle the kids, the animals, the farm, etc. This is not an equitable relationship. I am tired. I am sad. I am angry. I am frustrated. I feel cheated. I feel used up. 

I think about how it would be to have a husband who is thoughtful towards me. Someone who I could have a real conversation with, where we are equals, where I am not the mommy figure. I hate ADD. I know it's not my husband's fault he has ADD. At this point, knowing that isn't helping me to cope. It's as if I don't matter at all. I am just the means to an end. 

Thanks for listening. 

So what is a person to do when there is someone who bugs the crap out of you to the point of distraction making you less than you could be?  Before I was married I liked myself and was proud of who I was.  What has changed that I have lost my ability to be a whole, secure, contented entity without resentment?  Why have I permitted myself to be thrown off balance?

Sometimes I feel lonely and bored now that I am slowing down my business and involved with fewer people daily.   Then my mind fills up with what is my daily life which is lacking interaction with people.  I find my mind going to my history with H and going over it and over it and find I am incredulous that I let this happen to me - 40 years of marriage and then RESENTMENT! I had permitted myself to be a victim for 40 years thinking I was being a sacrificial servant to family and home - but I was also being a compromising traitor to my self.  Work was my balm and I worked and made decisions without thinking about my self.

So what SHOULD I have done?  I SHOULD have kept my strength of character that I once had.  I should have had respect for myself and honor my own values and my own life and not compromised so much. 

I have to STOP GIVING MY SELF AWAY...stop thinking about my regrets and get on with my own life.  The person I am really missing is Me.  And I am missing my spiritual self and missing the strength that God used to fill me with.  I so needed H to be someone I could count on and love.  I feel like the world is topsy-turvy.  What I was taught - modesty, humility, service, committment - all seem like things a weak, dull, person would do.  TV and the internet are full of sexy people using words I would never use, dressing in a way I would never dress, saying ideas about self, sex, self....that I have become old fashioned prude and not "with it".  But "it" seems to be everything I was taught NOT to be.  H seems to be "with it" - independent and carefree and easy to cuss and spew and "do his own thing" - and I resent him for that....there I go again....concerning myself with H. Ugh. I battle with myself.

Lessons learned from the Bachelorette last night.  So Blake was so bent out of shape because Lucas was always so silly and inane that Blake's ire and obsession got him booted off.  I saw myself in that scenerio with H.  I get upset by H's silliness/irresponsibility and who he is and who he is not that I sometimes lose who I am and who I want to be.  It was easy to see that Blake should just STOP IT and mind his own functions and character. He didn't have to be a whistle-blower, tattletaler on Lucus to his own detriment.

So, to go forward, I will be working on being a better friend to my self. Walking daily with God and trusting that I am loved and OK. I will give up my diligence of H's life.  I will try to be more independent and part of the greater world.  I need strength to live my own life. I need to work on my own health - physically, emotionally and spiritually. My work of the day - finding my own strength. And sharing my stronger self with people.

I need everyone's help.  Please forgive me ahead of time for the long post.  This is my first post and I need advice or reassurance.  Not really sure.

7 years ago my husband and I met online.  We emailed for about 6 weeks back and forth and got to know each other pretty well.  He seemed to push the sex talk alot but I just kinda went with it.  We met and it was instant fireworks.  I knew he was someone I could fall for and I did.  For the first few months there were gifts, kind gestures, our intimacy was amazing and he made all the effort to be romantic both in and out of the bedroom.  However about 6 weeks after our first date I found evidence that he had a daughter.  Not something I minded but something I should have been told.  I confronted him and he said yes he had withheld that information because he was afraid it would scare me off.  I never knew because we always spent time at my place.  After that I forgave him and understood why he lied.  He swore he would never do it again.  A few weeks later I kept asking him to start hanging out at his place, when I confronted him again he told me he didn't live about 20 minutes away but rather 1 hour away.  I didn't understand why he would lie about something so silly, he said he was worried I would think it was too far.  I pleaded with him to come clean about anything else and he swore there was nothing else.  Then a few weeks later, I found out (on my own) he had not had a job for almost 2 months, since basically we had started seeing each other.  I was about to walk out but he swore that was it.  He put on the charm and I was already in love with him (3 months in) that I stayed.  Hind sight is 20/20

As the next 2-3 months wore on, our intimacy that was AMAZING!! in the beginning started to fade.  I kept asking if everything was ok.  One day I discovered while using his computer that he was looking at porn and webcams.  I am insecure and with the fading intimacy I was upset.  I asked that there be no more webcams but reluctantly said ok to some porn as long as it didn't interfere with our relationship.  The months wore on and I ended up moving into his house a year after we started dating, the next month he proposed.  Our intimacy was not where I would like it but I thought ok things will be fine bc he said he just didn't have a good body image etc.  In order to move in with him, I switched a job I love and moved away from my friends.  A few months later I discovered pictures of naked women and conversations he was having with these women, even plans to visit them but that was squashed when I found out, though there was some evidence to suggest it has happened already with one.  I flipped, and told him no more.I was so devastated.  I had moved everything for him.  I didn't know what to do.  I didn't have my friends near by and I had just started a new teaching position.  He begged me not to go and stupidly I stayed.  We got married 9 months later.  I kept asking him to meet the mother of his child but he said it wasn't the right time.  He swore she knew about me and that I would meet her eventually.  She was suppossed to pick his daughter up at the wedding venue the night of our wedding.  We drove separate cars to the place so I told him I would meet him at home while he waited for her to pick her up.  I got home (we only lived 10 minutes away) and waited for him to get home.  An hour later he got home.  I was pissed, I told him that I knew she idnd't come to get her and that he had never told her about me.  He told me that was not the case.  She was very late.  I dropped it and forgot about it.  I got pregnant with my daughter right away.  Even though I was pregnant I still wanted intimacy though he was less than thrilled.  On a few occassions I caught him getting off at night to it after I had gone to sleep.  I have always told him WAKE ME UP!  He never did.  There were even occassions before we were pregnant where I would ask if he was in the mood, he would say no, and I would wake up to find him doing it at night.  Very hurtful.

Fast forward to 4 months after my daughter was born, I still had never met my step-daughter's mother.  Though he swore she knew about me and my daughter.  Then one night I found out that she had found out about me a week before that and this was after they had been texting sexually and sharing pictures.  He lied to me about telling her for over a year, and never told her about our daughter.  The pictures/texts etc were cheating in my opinion.  I was literally packing a bag.  He started our marriage on a lie and was having inappropriate sexual conversations with a woman whose child I was helping raise.  I made him go to counseling for his problems, but he didn't stick with it, and just like always I forgave him and set my boundaries up again.  I always set my boundaries and he barrels right through.  Over the next 4 years, the porn useage and webcams continued, the lying has continued and recently I found out that he is still flirting with those women online.  The worst part is that he is viewing webcams again and viewing really violent porn (people forced to do stuff).  He also has been trying to flirt sexually with my step-daughter's mom again for over a year at least.  she always denies him and ignores the texts..  He is attempting counseling but something like work always comes up and in 5 weeks has only gone twice.  I asked at first for him and I to go together and he was adamant that I not go.  He has only recently changed his mind but once again doesn't seem to be that invested because work always comes first.  He parents think this is all his ADHD, I disagree.  I have been to a lawyer and am ready to leave.  He knew my limits and has 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on chances.....I don't know what to do.  I worry ppl with think I am wrong to leave him but I cannot live like this anymore!

Any advice would be helpful.  His parents claim all of this is because of his ADHD... I however don't buy it.   

I've learned of codependency. And I see my past patterns in all of these threads. If my life was a football field, I'd always be down at his end of the field - never at my end, and never sharing the 50-yard line. Reading books to help him, modifying my life to handle him, giving up my day to help organize him, recovering from his unexpected 180 of mood and attack-invalidate-stonewall-abandon abuse cycle. At some point, one needs to say "he's a disordered jerk, and even in the world of disorders, there are choices and decisions he makes that are more about being a selfish jerk than about being sick." It is compassionate to 'explain away' his behaviors as "Well, he made me cry and then yelled at me for crying - but it was the ADHD." But SELF CARE - you were still hurt! YOU need a website, YOU need a support group, YOU need him sitting around reading how to help YOU out of your PTSD from the abuse. But that doesn't happen with the ADHD spouse.

I have more and more strongly insisted I'll share the 50 yard line with him but I will nolonger run down to his end of the field and live there. I defined what I need: a partner who equally cares for me as much himself, and who welcomes for me to do the same; and someone who can handle life's up's and downs, so that a flat tire is just something to to discussed and handled, not something that so offends him that he has a right to punish me for it.

On the days when he does not come to the 50 yard line, I'm sad, but I try not to seek solace from the disordered abuser. I am trying to make him a smaller part of my inner circle, adding more to my circle every day. I also vow to step away from fires that burn me, not toward them. A healthy person does not get burnt and go back for more; that is a disorder. I seek to be healthy, not disordered. If my sitting at the 50 yard line results in us being apart more b/c he won't come to the 50 yard line, then he's made his choice, but I will NOT give up healthy boundaries anymore. 

So where we are now is: after 22 years together he was just diagnosed - every 2-5 years we identified a new "clue" or psych diagnosis for the recurring cycles in our marriage, but the ADHD just lifted the lid on the entire crazy train. He was put on vyvanse - 10 mg, then 20, now staying at 30mg. He is gone for a week, talked at 8pm 2 nights and he was a  jerk; the meds had worn off. Then I asked him to call me when he's ON the meds (b/c he keeps saying how great he's been feeling - read a book - 70 pages without skipping over to espn.com etc.) So the last 2 days he's called at 12pm when his meds are active and it's been rainbows and butterflies. I say negative truths (eg he asks how I am and I'll say "well, I'm still hurting b/c you blamed me irrationally on the phone last night and then hung up; and I'm generally hurting b/c I am a wife and mother but my true experience is being completely alone and hurt repeatedly by the one that supposed to be my support system." So that TRUTH would normally set him off, but when he's on the meds he went the opposite direction "I'm sorry to hear that and I know it's always my words and promises of future change, but I really want to do that and be there for you. And you are the best mom ever and I'm so thankful for the way you talk through things with the kids and you see what's wrong and really work to give them the support they needs. You are really so amazing and I want you to know that." 

??? It's NICE but the butterflies and rainbows sweet talk scares me just as much as his angry outbursts. Do the meds make this much of a difference? Do I now treat him like Fiona in SHREK? Only talking to him from 8am - 6pm so that the "meds" keep him talking sweet and nice? It feels like a bridge that will break. And am I married to a jerk who is dressed up in pretty meds? Or are the meds bringing out the "real" him and the thoughtless, selfish angry him is "just the adhd?" 

I NEED to organize this in my mind with some sort of model. If he was in a wheelchair I'd say "Can I live a life with a man in a wheelchair, yes or no." But the guy in the wheelchair isn't a tornado of psychological abuse. The adhd is. .... which brings me back to the top - am I just still a codependent allowing someone to scare the sh*t out of me even when he's nice? Stockholm syndrom is NOT the marriage I sought when we met 22 yrs ago. Mother trucker. They are mindf**ks. I feel we become more like them, not the reverse. It's a robbery of an entire life. Even me spending my 1 free hour on a Saturday - I feel ROBBED of normalcy, sanity. But as another post-er said: he faked it so well in the beginning, I was duped into doing the biggest most important thing I thought I'd ever do with someone - have kids. My kids are the MOST important to me; they are the next generation. I'd have left my husband years ago if it were not for my kids. Yet I've read all about how it's healthy to leave a spouse to give kids a model of how to have self-care, self-compassion, even if it means breaking up a marriage. Yet b/c of career changes for my husband, the kids have already managed so much change, they just need consistency (my younger sees a therapist for worries about us!!!). So I just need THEM healthy and I do yoga and mindfulness work. But it always seems like he's the riptide trying to pull at all our good grounding work. 

Where is the light - the order - the plan in all this? And are the meds the answer - or does it set us up for more roller coasters and deep dives?  (This is my first post - new member, so lots of unanswered quesies as you can see.)