Recent forum posts (all topics)

  • Love and respect by: BurnedOutLady 7 months 2 weeks ago

    I think part of the dynamic is when we, the partner without ADHD, imagines that if our partner with ADHD just LOVED us enough and RESPECTED us enough, it would act as some kind of motivator something akin to dopamine or adrenaline or something, to allow them to accomplish what they need to do in order to be good partners and stop torturing us. We imagine that love like a force that can propel them over their hurdles. When that doesn't happen we imagine they just don't love and respect us enough.

    We also imagine that if our partners had any idea of how tormenting their ADHD is to us, how overwhelmingly frustrating and corrosive it is, again this would act as some kind of propellant to push them over the hurdles. So we vent our frustrations, but all that does is spur the RSD.

    I understand that the ADHD brain works differently but what I still don't understand is why the rational mind with its understanding of consequences cannot, after 10000 incidences, not make a decision to override the ADHD behaviors for the sake of the relationship and the health and wellbeing of the supposedly loved person.

    But of course the love itself probably gets worn out, right? Because everything gets corroded in the fighting and frustration. 

     

     

  • ADHD partner no longer “the problem “ by: Nevergoodemough 7 months 2 weeks ago

    My partner who was already diagnosed as a child has now after 20 years together decided that he is no longer the problem. It's me, it is all me and my high standards and expectations. 
    This is the new them and they demand to be accepted as is. They are done believing that ADHD is causing our issues and it is now time for me to put in the effort to change and accept. 

    I am angry, I am bitter, I am frustrated, resentful and furious. Not a slither of my old joyful self is left and they firmly believe they had nothing to do with that. 
    What's next? Anybody else experienced such a shift?

  • Question for the ADHD folks about mess by: BurnedOutLady 7 months 2 weeks ago

    If there are any people on this forum who have ADHD and would be willing to answer a question, I just asked it on another thread but I thought I would open it up.

    One of the biggest problems I had with my ADHD husband -- and they spanned the gamut of the symptoms and issues -- was his mess. In the end I think it is the thing that just drove me over the edge. Because we live and work together, it was a daily thing. All day. In the end, his RSD also made it nearly impossible to deal with it as he would rage at me if he felt criticized or if I was at all irritated.

    He would, very rarely, cop to the problem. He'd say he was always like this. And apparently he always was according to his family.

    In the end it simply seemed impossible for him to change, or to maintain any effort to change. There have been attempts. Maybe there was even something like a 15% improvement. But overall, he remained a force of chaos in the house that I had to deal with, and it just wore away at me. Particularly because a lot of it was small messes that he could easily clean up. EASILY. That's what I say, anyway, but apparently it was not easy for him!

    So, I just can't understand this. I would like to understand it better. I can't talk about it with him. So I would like to ask others who have this issue to maybe cast some light on the inner experience of someone who does not clean up, who can't organize themselves, who has a lot of clutter, who makes constant chaotic mess, and who is being asked by their partner to PLEASE do better. What is going on? Why don't you, won't you, can't you, change the pattern? Be more mindful? Remember that someone has asked you 10,000 times not to do something, or to do it, and you love this person? 

    Do you just not even think about it in the moment?

    I really want to understand more. 

  • Update on leaving .... by: BurnedOutLady 7 months 2 weeks ago

    So, I posted here last week about leaving my ADHD husband. I was staying with a friend. After some days I met with my husband to talk at a cafe. It was a very hard conversation just like every other one we've ever had. He was angry and defensive and blaming. But in the end he softened up as he started to understand that he did not have to blow up at me, yet again. And he realized I was serious about leaving.

    But my situation for leaving is also extremely bad. I have no savings and all my capital is tied up in a house that I can't really sell. Also, it's a house I don't want to leave. It will take a long time for me to carve some other path for myself and I don't want to be forced into making rash moves. He agreed that I should not, as he said, "be driven from your home." I mean ultimately he knows that he's the problem. 

    So he offered to move out. There is another house that he built next door that he can live in. We were going to rent it for more income but at this point we both understand that we can't live together. And that I should not be forced to flee my home, which I have put all my blood sweat and tears into. 

    So he moved out. Slowly! But he did it. And now he is next door. Which is maybe too close still but that's what we could do for now.

    And in the last few days of him not being here .... oh my GOD. THE HOUSE IS CLEAN. And even more amazingly .... IT STAYS CLEAN!

    I swear it is like a Christmas miracle.

    There is this sweet, quiet calm. And every time I walk into a room I marvel that .... it is exactly how I left it!!!! Seriously, I could cry with happiness. 

    He will never know how his relentless mess impacted me. Also he will never care. Literally the day he left, he left me a bigger mess than usual. In a way it helped me to overcome some of the pain of him leaving.

    He has a lot of problems, complex problems. Serious ADHD, PTSD, maybe a little narc in there too. I do believe he loves me in his way, and I have loved him. And I am going to work to remain friends because our lives are still connected. But I have to take this time to really look inward and see how I was part of a co-dependent and toxic dynamic. And I still am. This is my work now. To unravel my own psyche, and to find the strength to move forward without the kind of loving bond with him that I have found so important, and so devastating to live without. When the hell did I become so weak? Why? 

    I have been with him for 13 years and I do recognize that I have lost myself rather significantly in this time. He is a very strong personality, very dominating, and though I am also a strong person, I guess I could say that I swam in his wake. I let him lead. I followed. There were reasons for this. 

    Anyway, I will not go on and on. Unless it helps someone else think about their own relationship. 

    Meanwhile I have accepted an invitation to a business conference out of town. I will be leaving town for the first time in years, and without him. I hope that helps me feel what life can be like outside the relationship. 

     

  • The fourth entity present in ADHD marriages? by: alphabetdave 7 months 2 weeks ago

    I just posted a reply in "can ADHD make nons too empathetic" but, tbh this is something I've been trying to clarify my thoughts on for a little while and been meaning to write a topic about - somehow it all came together in response to Swedish Coast's topic and figured it was probably worth a separate thread (feel free to delete/not approve that reply if needed - also I've no idea what to categorise this so apologies if the category doesn't fit!)

    I've been thinking a lot lately on whether ADHD is really the only thing that causes issues in an ADHD marriage. Don't get me wrong, it absolutely is one of the things - but I struggle to get fully on board with the formula that "there's a third entity in your marriage, ADHD, and this is the source of your issues". It's a better way of looking at it than blaming the ADHD partner as a person but I feel like it misses the mark slightly, particularly with how understanding of ADHD has changed over the last few decades

    Fundamentally what makes ADHD a "disorder" is not that we're broken and incapable, but rather that we deviate from the majority in terms of the way our brain works. And it['s this expectation that we're going to "do things the normal way" that does so much harm, to the ADHDer specifically but it's also the source of a lot of the frustration in the people around us. By the time an ADHDer settles into a relationship they generally are pretty broken, but it's unfair to just call that brokenness "ADHD" - it's the cumulative effect of living their life up to that point with ADHD, not living up to what people expect of them and being beaten down repeatedly, and all of the internal hurt from people being unable to deal with their symptoms.

    In my opinion there's a fourth entity in these marriages which is "neurotypical expectations" - and to be clear here this isn't something that the non partner brings into the relationship. We all grow up in a neurotypical society and often the ADHDer will have neurotypical expectations too. There's this feeling that for some reason "we've not grown up yet", and this expectation that there's some landmark moment round the corner that will act as a significant moment, inspire us to step up and we'll be a fully functioning person from that point on (thanks, Hollywood in particular for making that message so abundant but I imagine it shows up even outside there) - maybe we think it'll happen when we get married, or have a child. But it doesn't, we just have even more responsibility, with the same brain and the same expectations, so we get even more overwhelmed

    My point is I do wonder how different my life could have been, if I knew about ADHD early on. If I and the people around me had realistic expectations of what I could do/be and allowed/helped me build strategies that worked rather than letting/making me flounder trying and failing to do things the way everyone else did, and putting me down whenever I tried to do things in a way that worked better for me. And I wonder how different my marriage could have been if we'd both known I had ADHD, knew what I could expect of myself and where I'd need to build strategies rather than do things "as expected". Maybe we would have decided it wasn't going to work, I don't know - but at least we would have had a better idea what to expect.

    I imagine relationships with ADHD are hard regardless, but IMO the "undiagnosed" part of "undiagnosed ADHD", particularly where it's also "not even remotely on our radar" does an awful lot of the heavy lifting in terms of the hurt caused, on both sides.

    Doesn't seem like I've really answered your question at all here lol (for context I originally posted this in the thread "can ADHD make nons too empathetic") - I think the link is just that, these neurotypical expectations (and let me again be completely clear, not the non partner's expectations - I'm talking about cultural expectations that have been present your whole lives and that get brought into the relationship by both partners here) exacerbate a lot of the friction in the relationship, and raise the level of stress and dysfunction (in ADHD terms, the less we feel understood by those important to us the more we tend to compensate in maladaptive ways) to the point that the empathy you need to exercise to keep any kind of relationship going is absolutely through the roof

    I'm not trying to imply that ADHD doesn't cause issues in relationships, I hope that's clear. Even with clear expectations and a life free of trauma we'd probably still be difficult for NT partners in particular, I just think that the idea that "ADHD is the third entity in the marriage and the source of all your problems" is a bit simplistic and puts too much blame on what is fundamentally just a different way in which our brains work, and doesn't address some of the reasons why ADHDers get so dysfunctional.

    And don't get me wrong, it's not a non partner's job to resolve those dysfunctions, or that trauma - not at all. My point is more that I think where a relationship has ADHD present and NT expectations (e.g. that the ADHDer will "grow up" and become functionally NT), it tends to add to that trauma/dysfunction rather than reduce it. And in fairness no doubt it traumatises the non partner as well - I'm coming from the ADHD side here but I recognise that a lot of your experiences are valid and horrific, and also not a million miles away from my wife's (near identical in some cases)

    Hope this reads as intended - I believe everyone posting here has tried their best at their respective relationships including those that ended, my point here isn't to say anyone could have "done better", if we were failed by anything it was a culture-wide expectation of homogenous neurotypes, and nons have been failed by that just as much as ADHDers, and the autistic community and just about anyone who was considered "sub standard" for having a brain that worked differently

  • Can ADHD marriage make nons too empathetic? by: Swedish coast 7 months 2 weeks ago

    After a conversation with a friend I started to think about empathy. My friend has a healthy integrity. She has a respected position in a caring profession. With all her resourcefulness, she is also kinder than most. She humorously described some interactions she's had with close relatives lately. She's intrigued by not being understood by them at all. Her relatives seem to mindlessly take advantage of her generosity without showing any consideration for her needs. I recognized this. During two decades with an increasingly vulnerable and dysfunctional partner and later children, other people have often benefited from my initiatives but not chipped in. I've become more and more confused, ashamed at my exhaustion, hurt when not understood, and bad at asking for help. When overlooked, I've felt resentful. During this time, I've also developed much more empathy than before.

    It seems my friend and I as professional caregivers share an attitude to empathy. We use it as a tool, it shapes us, it's part of us and what we value and do.

    But my friend has not been laboring with psychiatric illness on the home front. While she can pause her empathetic work for rest and private rewards, there really hasn't been much of that in the ADHD marriage. 

    I wonder, can ADHD marriage make nons too empathetic? I don't have any taste for martyrdom and dislike unbalanced relationships. What happened was just a lot of time spent with a troubled and different mind. Do nons maybe stretch their empathy so hard to understand their partner, that they break something to do with integrity and self-preservation? 

    And also, after that break, when integrity leaks and invasion follows: what boundaries do we need for other people who like to lean too much on us? 

  • My Non-ADHD Partner Always Feels Invalidated... Help Me Validate Him! by: HalcyonLuna 7 months 2 weeks ago

    My partner (NT) very often says that I (Dx) leave him feeling invalidated when he brings up issues with me. He has stated that my initial reaction of getting defensive makes him feel like he's unheard and unseen.

    I have been actively working on becoming less defensive when he brings something up to me, but clearly it has not been enough. I backslide sometimes into becoming defensive before I validate his feelings, and it's really taking a toll on him.

    Would anyone be able to give me some tools or insight on how I can allow him the space to feel his emotions and help prevent me from disregarding him? 

  • How to compassionately respond to RSD by: mstdn 7 months 3 weeks ago

    Hi all,

     

    first post here. I (M, non-ADHD) have a wife who has not (yet) been diagnosed, but shows all the symptoms of ADHD and RSD. Together for 16 years and 3 kids. I have read both books from Melissa, as well as another book (Is it You, Me or ADHD), and 2 other books to work on myself to deal with the parent-child pattern better and take care of myself and my own boundaries better.

    For us I think there is a whole lot of unspoken frustration on both sides, so I believe that — even if she would not be diagnosed or treated — a lot could be gained just by communicating more, better and being much more transparent about our own feelings and emotions, and also ask the other about them more. So, even though I have feeling of neglect, not being loved and not being shown interest or attention from my wife for years, I do try to stay positive. "Be the change you want to see in the world" is an inspiring quote to me, and I always keep asking myself "have I done the best I could to make the situation better", and I think at this point I have not. The situation is very very frustrating at times, I absolutely do have to admit, and I would not be surprised if ultimately it does not work out, because I am not the "next shiny thing" anymore. Anyway, I want to give it a shot...

    My main question for now is this: my wife regularly shows signs of RSD. It can be the way I look, my voice, mentioning something completely neutral but she starts rolling her eyes to leaving the room or stop talking to me. Or if I just express my opinion and it's not the same as hers. Or, just not understanding what she means when she says something because she forgot to mention a step, or something can have multiple interpretations. Asking what she means has already a high probability to cause annoyance or anger on her side. So, I really do have my fair share on RSD on a very regular basis, unfortunately. But... I try to stay positive (don't get me wrong, I feel absolutely terrible at times because of the whole situation). Now say, I make the decision that her RSD behavior is her responsibility, not mine, so, I can choose not the get sucked into the situation (I try, not easy) and stay calm (also not easy, especially if your buttons are being pushed, or she responds to such small things that I am sometimes speechless as to how completely opposite it is from how I would respond). And so, if I would choose to respond with compassion, and empathy. After all, she's very likely "suffering" from the whole RSD as well. How would I do that? What would I say? How to express yourself in a compassionate and empathetic way? I am struggling to figure out how. Especially since everything is so sensitive. Or is it just basically impossible? My wife does often walk away and if I want to talk about it or try to understand it, she firmly keeps saying "never mind... no... you don't have to say anything". 

    How do I break this pattern? Can I do something? How?

    Thanks!!

  • Is it me by: Catterfly 7 months 3 weeks ago
    Non-ADHD spouse, 17 year marriage. Spouse diagnosed about a year ago. After 17 years of marriage, I’ve had to let my standards for cleanliness and order go. I’ve had to endure him blaming me for clutter - which is all his our our children’s. I’ve had to endure him calling me crazy for trying to connect, needy or too sensitive for trying to talk through issues (related to him or not), and of course been the target of RSD rages. He is helpful and has good coping mechanisms for ADHD, notably rigidity and strict conformance to what he self-assigns as “his” chores. But he is incapable of recognizing what I do. He blames me for everything wrong in his life, including, most recently, blaming me for our daughter’s mental health issues. My biggest issues are of course complete emotional neglect, defensiveness and rage whenever I bring up anything that needs to be worked on (no matter how proactively), and neglect when I’ve been deathly sick or trying to heal after a c-section while caring for a baby and toddler. Also, I told him a year ago that I am “not ok” and “not able to cope” with the extreme stressors in our lives (daughter’s mental health) and that I needed his help. Out of that, absolutely nothing happened. I’ve had to be there for my daughter daily, while no one is there for me. No one outside of our four walls can see the Jekyll and Hyde behaviour. They think he is wonderful. And shamefully, we’ve lost friends and aliented family members - or rather, I have because I can hardly bite back my rage towards him. He understands that he has ADHD, but claims it is minor. He has read this blog and is taking Melissa’s course and claims that none of it relates to him, since he has “such a mild case”. Of course to me, it’s severe and everything I’ve read and learned here relates to our marriage exactly. Please, I’m drowning and desperate and don’t know what to do. How can I get him to see how badly this has affected us, and stop blaming me for everything? I don’t think we can move forward or be stronger parents until we start making ADHD the enemy, and work collaboratively to solve the issues.
  • Leaving him by: BurnedOutLady 7 months 3 weeks ago

    So I am leaving him finally, my ADHD husband. I don't know how. Right now I am staying at a friend's house. I have no idea what I'm going to do next or how I will move forward but I am certain that I must leave. 

    The reality is that this will never change and that he has been slowly sucking the life out of me for years. This ADHD thing, along with other deep traumas he has, and maybe some narc issues as well, it is all far too much for any woman to handle. There is no woman who would have stayed with him as long as I have, which is 13 years. I know his ex wife and she went through everything I'm going through. She left him after 11 years. 

    He has been to therapy and as long as he keeps going, there is some improvement. But his therapist is not available and he hasn't been in months, and everything is getting worse. 

    The thing is that he just seems so crazy to me. So emotionally disregulated and incapable of self control. So willing to put me through hell. 

    The last thing was about puppies. We have these puppies someone dropped at our door. Three of them. And we have them in the mud room and they are shitting everywhere. So we got puppy poop papers to put on the floor. So he brings the puppies inside after they had been out all day in the garden, and he does not put the papers on the floor. I had been working hard in the garden and I was exhausted (he never helps me in the garden), and I come in, and he is watching TV. I ask where the puppies are, he says in the mud room. I ask if he put the papers down. He says no. I, frustrated, say, you have to put the papers down! I say, if you don't put them down, fine, if you want to clean up the poop.

    Well. That was it. He is triggered. He is reactive. And we're off to the races. He yells at me that they are my responsibility, which is ridiculous. I say they are OUR responsibility, I didn't personally receive these dogs. He storms out. 

    I decide to walk the big dogs, give him some space to calm down. When I come back after half an hour, it's hard to tell if he's over it. But it seems he is not. So I sit down on the porch with him and ask, are you still pissed off? And he says, sarcastically, no, why would I be?

    So now I see he is not going to have a mature conversation with me, he is going to escalate it and drag me through some more emotional hell. So I ask him to please not do that. I tell him I am too tired to deal with it. I invoke some of the therapy that he's learned in order to have better communication. And he angrily says, I don't need a lecture from you! And he gets up and storms off.

    All of this over puppy papers.

    And soon it will be something else, and something else, and something else, and something else.

    This came just a few days after the last fight where he emotionally attacked me in a really controlling way. He later apologized, because he always eventually realizes he was wrong. But not until he puts me through hell.

    The horrible problem is that my life is 100% enmeshed with him because we also work together. We have a beautiful home that we have built together. I have absolutely nothing outside of this situation. I have no cash savings, I have no other job. And after all these years I am so exhausted from him that I feel like a flattened piece of clay. I have lost myself totally in this relationship and I don't have any motivation or desire for anything except rest.

    I wish there was someplace people like me could go to just rest for a few months, to get clarity.

    I think it is impossible to know how to get out, how to get to the next step, without some time for rest. 

    It's possible that the only way for me to do this is to basically jump off a cliff. Just buy a plane ticket and go far away, destroy my entire life and start new. Because otherwise, every single time, I get immediately sucked back into the same patterns with him. I mean, I could stay here and try to slowly carve out some other paths and opportunities for myself, but I am afraid if I do that he will suck me back in and I will fall into the complacency that so easily sets in because everything else is horrendously exhausting and scary.

    Why do we always have to wait for things to become entirely unbearable before we decide to leave? It's amazing how much we can put up with.

    The thing is that he loves me a lot in his way, but he is just a mess. And he's not young. It isn't going to change. And I am getting older as well. If there is any hope for me to have peace in my life, and maybe even find a healthy relationship, I need to go. 

    I feel like I am caught in tar. 

    I would like to hear from people who got out of their relationship and how they did it. 


     

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