Recent forum posts (all topics)

  • Needing help....the space between knowing there's a problem and going nuclear by: Off the roller ... 11 months 3 days ago

    Guys, I'm looking for support and help from both nons and those with ADHD on the site. It's been a tough few days. Hurt feelings, rage, resentment and more. I know I don't want to be in a marriage like this, I deserve better....but when the DX has happened within the year and we haven't found our footing but dang, it's really taken hold, what can be done besides working on myself. 

     

    It can't be that I just have to continue like this, in a way that isn't true to me or my values, and wait for the day that he finally has some self awareness?? Yesterday had an expolsive conversation that at it's core was me needing to express a need/want/desire. And it just blew up. And I hate it. But I have to matter too. 

    My question is this: when times are like this and its tough and you know there are avenues to take, and one of the avenues is the extreme of leaving (going nuclear), how do you sift through this all?? Like do I just need to sit through and ride it out or what? I'm not really sure I want to leave or can leave at this time. I also have a son and I do have to consider him. I'm also in another country. This is my home so there is not somewhere else to go (and the laws here are in favour of the mom as long as she's in good standing).

    I havent read the books yet, but im working on Boundary boss. Finding it tough. I'm doing the work on MEand me alone. I refuse to work on a partnership that isn't a real partnership. But bringing anything up to him is jist dismissal, denial and deflection. EVERY. DAY. its just exhasting. 

    So what has everyone's process looked like? Does anyone have any advice for me? What about that space and time between you know you don't want to live like this but you aren't sure going nuclear is the right option at this time. And when we haven't even tried counselling, how does that convo work?? 

    I'm going to get Melissa's book and even if he doesn't do thr work, I'm fine to continue working on myself. But this is not something that I want to role model for my son. Its shit. And heartbreaking. And hurtful. Its hard to see past thr pain and hurt to be honest. Oh and I'm also in therapy but even then, when it's tough some days you gotta take a break

     Le sigh. 

  • On the brink of leaving him over a single incident. by: mazzystargirl 11 months 5 days ago

    Trigger warning: references to blood and bleeding.
     

    I've been with my ADHD partner for 8 years. It's been a great relationship, partly because I committed to learning about ADHD and have made adjustments. I'm a very chilled and non-confrontational person. I'm a happy and sunny type, a little shy and reserved - he is the opposite. 

    So.....I never thought I'd ever say this, but I am now seriously considering leaving my partner. I'll explain: 

    He's never been able to hold down a job for long, which isn't usually an issue because he's self employed and earnings are high, even if he only does a couple of days. However, this last few months, he hasn't wanted to work. Him being from a wealthy family, I set expectations around this - I said, what with just me being the earner, if he wanted to maintain our lifestyle, he would need to ok this with his parents as they may need to help out (they usually do without issue). 

    Here's where it started to go terribly wrong. A couple of weeks ago, he called me and asked if I needed something sending as he was away. I said I was fine and just needed some minor and inexpensive supplies. He then snapped at me, said it was always down to him to sort money out and hung up! I didn't get the chance to tell him I've been earning and working mad overtime for several months because he's decided he didn't want to work for a bit and he asked me if I'd like anything ordering! 

    Roll on a few hours later, I randomly suddenly started to hemorrhage blood. At first, I thought it was my womanly/monthly thing - it wasn't. I lost so much blood, I'd left pools and trails of it everywhere and had to call an ambulance. The floors, sofa, bed and bathroom were like a murder scene. When I was sat on the loo pouring blood and clots and trying to deal with this and panicking - he was vile and nasty to me. When I say vile - I mean like he wanted me to bleed to death there and then and he wouldnt bat an eyelid. Cold. So cold. I'd told him in a panic what was happening over text - his response - he couldn't give a sh*t and I should go sort myself out and he was sick of me. 

    My loving partner :( after all these years together....he said that? All the while, I'm bleeding all over and waiting for the ambulance (I was rushed into hospital and couldn't be stabilised in the ambulance, my body was starting to shut down). I cannot get over the trauma of him saying that to me. I just can't. I feel like I'm on the verge of tears constantly. I can't get it out of my head, the horror of what I went through and what he said to me - I just cannot get over what he said. 
     

    When he came home after I was taken away to hospital, he arrived to the blood scene and stuff the ambulance people had left behind. I think this really shook him up and he suddenly couldn't do enough for me, even cleaning up the blood (he never tidies up!) and spending several hundreds of pounds getting me gifts and new clothes. I think maybe he thought I was lying and the reality of the situation really shook him up. He apologised to me over and over, said he had an ADHD meltdown over something unrelated and trivial and I got the harsh end of the stick with it. He said he is immensely happy in our relationship and wouldn't change me for the world. I am very confused. 
     

    I can't tell you how traumatic everything was and to have the person I love the most turn on me like that. I just can't move forward with it. I feel anxious to be around him. I do not believe that he loves me - he can't?! You can't love someone and do that...? If I did that to him, I wouldn't want to live with myself. 
     

    At that time when I was going through this, my friends were piling on the support - one of my friends was minutes off jumping in his car and driving the 400 miles to accompany me. Other friends were terrified and lining up to be at the hospital, to come around and help clean up, to cook, to give me a lift home from the ward. Him: I got nothing but abuse. 

    We have gone from blissfully happy to me feeling absolutely dead inside. I am putting on a brave face and making out everything is good, but this is haunting me all the time. I'm such a reserved and quiet type, I don't deal with confrontation well anyway :( Any advice or kind words? I need 'em x thank you. 

  • Why do we try so much? by: Swedish coast 11 months 6 days ago

    Recently there's been debate on the forum on whether it's irresponsible to carry on with problem-ridden ADHD-non marriages. When it's hard, should we just end things?

    I'd like to add another perspective. Have been reading about French sociologist Eva Illouz who says women are often unhappy and emotionally unfulfilled in today's romantic relationships. This is thought to be partly because men as a group tend to use emotional distancing to excert power. I've also spoken to friends who describe a lot of anger and clashing needs in marriage. Half of marriages end in divorce, often in mid-life, at least in my country. Also, there is a lot of fighting and disharmony is all kinds of family relationships. Experts say it's because with those closest to us, we tend to express those sides of ourselves that we are least proud of.

    So I'm wondering how, in challenged ADHD-non marriages, we are to know that our struggles are on a whole other scale? We're expecting living with someone to be hard. Every family is pretty impenetrable from the outside, so it's not easy to compare hardships or understand how other people's partners function. Some of us weren't aware ADHD existed. Or had no idea it was the reason for our partner's difficulties, depression, anxiety and tantrums. I also wonder whether ADHD is hugely underdiagnosed. Otherwise, why would so many women I describe the misery of marriage to untreated severe ADHD to, shrug and say: That's me and my husband exactly.

    At this point, I'm amazed that any couple can stick it out for any period of time.

    I feel, however, that the love issue is very complex. My feelings about my ex-husband reach over the entire spectrum and are simultaneously true, even if they show up one at a time. Still wish I could by sheer creativity have shoehorned my stressed out self and that incomprehensible mind of his into being the happy couple we once were. 

    Eva Illouz also claims she doesn't believe in therapy, because our discomfort is due to structural problems in society rather than something individual that we can work to change.

    If we even do change. I have this feeling I will never understand anything about the ADHD universe, and it's not for not trying. And ADHDers rarely seem to enter my universe.

    I feel very humble in this. Why do we try so hard to save the relationship and the family? How should we protect ourselves when integrity is lost so gradually, so inexplicably? It's rather like being a frog in a kettle. How to defend ourselves when everyone around, family and friends, like the ADHD spouse and don't acknowledge our cries for help? We might do what I did and think the threat was outside the nuclear family. Work demands, difficult relatives, stressful society. But the reason I almost caved with stress was him.

    I'd be interested to hear your views on staying or breaking up.

     

     

     

     

  • Knowing whether to stay or go... by: mlcrenovator 11 months 1 week ago

    I'm currently in a marriage of ten years that has been gradually going downhill for the past 8 years.  My wife and I got together when we both had young kids from previous marriages, and I feel like we did a great job of raising a stepfamily despite all of those challenges that come with being a stepfamily. Now, two of our three kids are off in college and the youngest (my stepson) is 16.  So, he hardly needs (or wants) our continual attention, but he does need care like any kid. 

    One thing I have noticed is that, now that most of our kids have left home, there really isn't much of a connection or shared goals between the two of us.  Maybe there never was a connection beyond the intense courtship phase other than our kids.  Our life has been scattered and disorganized for as long as I can remember.  My wife mentioned that she had been diagnosed with ADHD as a child, but has never received treatment or expressed any interest in treatment.  Now that I have learned more about ADHD and its effects on marriage, we're a textbook case.  In addition, I've noticed that my wife has a lot of symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder and has several untreated physical ailments.  They all feed off of each other and a lot of times I feel like I am married to a black hole that eats all of my energy.  I've seen what situations like this can do to a couple because my wife's parents suffered through 50+ years of unhappy marriage due to similar conditions.  Overall, my wife is a nice person and a very accomplished researcher, but I feel like beyond that, our life is in shambles.

    Honestly, I am so exhausted at this point.  I'm not the person I want to be, and I'm not living the life I want to live.  If the only problem was ADHD, I feel like I could work through treatment and rebuild a life with my wife.  But, I'm 50 and I don't think I can commit the rest of my healthiest years to address three major challenges just to get back to a point where we both are happy.  I want to leave and I often daydream about how nice life would be on my own.  I would also feel terrible for leaving my wife because she seems a bit hopeless day-to-day.  I would love any advice you could offer.

  • Adhd partner broke up with non-adhd me…what does that say about me? by: Anonymous (not verified) 11 months 1 week ago

    This is just bizarro world. We've been together for 5 years. Been through many sessions of couples therapy and have made a lot of progress, and lately it's been all success stories. We had been really happy lately. An old conversation/issue escalated in the last week - and I will admit that the peak of the escalation was my fault - but that was it for him. With all the compromises and accommodations I've made in our relationship for rsd, negative adhd behaviors, all the disrespectful mistakes made in the name of adhd, all the room I've left for being imperfect and still lovable. I've made two mistakes in the last 5 years, one recently, and he has made at least two dozen extremely hurtful ones in that time, and the compassion and forgiveness I get is basically nothing. It was like a light switch. We were doing really well, made so much progress, and an unresolved issue came up, and now it's my fault for addressing it. I didn't address it in the way I should have, I admit that. But it's like I'm expected to be perfect in this partnership, give everything, and also expected to give him all the forgiveness in the world for his behavior. There has been no reaching across the table and loving me through hard times. I don't understand. I'm very confused. I've tried so hard for him and would continue to fight for our relationship if he was willing. But he says it's too much effort to be mindful in the relationship and he'll never be the partner I'm looking for. Despite the adhd complications in our relationship, he is such a beautiful person and I've loved him more than I've loved anyone else in my life. I feel so unloved and unwanted and rejected - and also so unappreciated for everything I've given and sacrificed through our relationship. One day I'm sure I will realize this is for the better. But at the moment, I'm just so hurt. I feel like he doesn't even care. 

  • Anti ADHD !? by: eclectica 11 months 1 week ago

    I'm reading a lot of comments on here which hit someone with ADHD really hard.

    I'm beginning to realize after 25 years of marriage that I should never have got married because I cannot consistently meet non-ADHD expectataions.

    I'm becoming ever disillusioned by romantic love and beginning to think that being vulnerable and expressing who I am is not possible in a relationship.because someone is always going to judge, criticise, verbally abuse, derrogate, and destroy my self esteem. Just a warped extension of childhood abuse and being bullied at school.

    I know I'm a mess, every surface covered with stuff piled upon piles. Sometimes I have motivation to do something, sometimes not - but I never know when; but I guess I'm not allowed.to be that disorganized. I have moments where I can tidy up stuff and be on top of things. I'm in impressed by anyone who can maintain that kind of approach consistently, just like being impressed by NASA scientists and complex differential equations and atomic physics.

    There must be a place for me where I can be appreciated and not ultimately be yelled at for not meeting another's anathema expections. Just haven't found it yet I guess. Beginning to wonder if I ever will. Always been a bit of an independent loner, probably just messed up my wife's life by not meeting her expectations. Suicide crosses my mind when I've been at the end of long verbal attack tirades of derrogative judgements. Often I'll slip into dissociation and paralysing freeze - which do nothing to ease relationship tensions. Trying to work through these outdated childhood based coping mechanisms but it catches me sometimes.

    Apparently I'm not allowed to find it difficult to do things anymore, and am always to blame if I forget something. If she forgets something, no problem, it's ok. Same when I'm late.

    Doing my best is no longer enough too apparently - as I was told at the end of a angry personal attack rant recently.

    Don't really know what to do anymore. I seem to be ever more up and down in extreme. Getting things done can be virtually impossible sometimes because just WTF is the point - because someone is going to tell you that it was the 'wrong thing' to be doing and there were so many other 'pressing things' to be done.

    Super difficult to live up to the expectations to a perhaps pathological 'doing' based person who cannot stop because it is 'too painful to face the silence of stopping' - her phrase.

    I'm not sure how to show up anymore, every which way is wrong, so I'm losing/(lost) faith/hope completely for a marriage of true connection, vulnerability and love. Walking on eggshells trying desperately to work out what she is expecting to be done is so exhausting. If I ask, I should have known - it was apparently obvious - so another verbal attack ensues.

    She does a lot of the thinking, I appreciate that it is exhausting, but dare not now show how grateful I am, because it backfires into another verbal tirade of 'should have'/'lazy'/'useless'/'stupid'.

    Perhaps there is no where to turn, except out of the door and live alone. :(

    E.

  • Get crazy by: dalanak 11 months 2 weeks ago

    My husband has ADHD.  Yesterday it turned out again that he forgot to turn off the auto-renewal of the unnecessary service, and a sum of money was deducted from us just like that.  Because it ignores warning messages.  I was on nerves all day yesterday.  Today I was involved in a traffic accident.  And it turned out that my husband mixed up the dates and we don’t have car insurance for this week.  We'll have to pay for the repairs yourself.  This has been going on for many years.  He doesn't exercise, he doesn't meditate, he doesn't take any obvious steps to work with his ADHD.  At the same time, he says at every trouble - I have ADHD.  Leave me alone.  You don't understand how hard it is for me.

  • I filed for divorce - its over by: Elliej 11 months 2 weeks ago

    After a 15month trial separation, i filed for divorce. Its over or maybe the fight has just begun. 

    From the point of realising he had ADHD It took him 3months to get a diagnosis, a further 6months to get medicine and 10months to start therapy. I started therapy may 2022, he started september 2023. He let me fight all alone. If it was important to him, he would have tried.

    This man has done so much to me from sexting another woman, to getting fired for sexual harassment, from porn and camera girls to daily marijuana misuse, attempted dating profiles and flirting with women online. He has constantly told me im wrong, interrupted me constantly, dismissed and diminished my feelings and always pulls it back to himself and how he feels when we talk.

    But worse of all he has abandoned me and our family, broke my heart and twisted my reality that this behaviour is normal. I no longer trust myself or men or people. He has officially broken me and ive lost my son 50% of the time. 

    He forced my hand to do something i never wanted to do......break up my family. 

     

  • What to do if it's over? by: Astrosneddy 11 months 2 weeks ago

    On the 3rd, she sat me down and told me it she was ending things. I'm acting the way I wish I can look back and be proud of. We have a daughter, 3 years old, were both exhausted, we have had other emotional issues going on and I can't stop trying to talk about them because I felt her pulling away so I chased after her. I've made every mistake possible, then began the ADHD effect on marriage yesterday and it's so triggering because it's just too late, but so accurate.

     

    I don't know what I'm looking for here, I got diagnosed April last year and I'm not close to proper management yet. I just got through sorting medication and have begun therapy but I don't think my therapist is the right one. 

    If it weren't for my daughter, I would just have comment dissociated but somehow I'm holding myself together where it's needed. I don't think I can ever go back to my job. It's very new and in not living it to, (I lost my other job about a month after my diagnosis) I feel too raw. I feel poisoned, and weak. I want been what I lost. It's not exactly the marriage, that's gone and it was a title anyway. What we were was far more than that. Bit more just about everything familiar and comfortable in my life has been changed and removed overnight. My birthday is on the weekend. I'm...just defeated.

     

    I have one splinter of hope keeping me together and I'm terrified of losing it.

     

    Thank you for listening.

  • When you're not the breadwinner... by: Eighpryl_AB 11 months 3 weeks ago

    My husband is self-employed.  He runs a fairly successful business and we usually do pretty well.  He had a charge back on a popular vendor website a long time ago, it recently caught up with him and they shut his shop down.  The amount was quite high and he has not been able to pay it back yet so he can reopen his shop.  We process all orders through our own website and processors now, but the vendor site was his main advertising.  He hasn't had a sale since early November and we're starting to feel the squeeze.  That's not to say he hasn't had any interest.  There are still plenty of inquiries, but no actual sales.  Hubby wants me to open a new vendor shop for his product under MY info, and I don't want to.  I don't know if it actually makes any difference since we're married, but i feel like if anything goes sideways, it's on ME.  But I also feel guilty about it.  When we were first married, he wanted to keep our credit separate, but bullied me into putting so many things on my credit and in my name bc he technically made enough to afford it, even tho his credit was maxed out.  I didn't want to, I didn't like it, but he was the sole breadwinner, and he wouldn't let it go when he had something in his mind that he wanted and he was a nightmare to live with until I gave in... many of you know exactly what I'm talking about.  My credit got destroyed right along with his during the recession.  While he has changed the way he spends money now and makes much better financial decisions, I no longer want to have my name on anything of his that I don't have to.  I don't even like him putting me on his credit cards and he keeps doing it (so I have to figure out how to get OFF of them).  BUT we need that paycheck...  I don't know what to do.

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