I've been visiting this forum for a few years now ever since I realised that my husband must have ADHD - some of his family are diagnosed; he isn't and we can't financially afford a diagnosis at the moment. I read about ADHD to help us both but he doesn't do any research on his own. He thinks he has ADHD too; he had a school-teacher who mentioned to his mother that he most probably has it as well as his (out of control) diagnosed brother.

I find it very hard sharing here. And my own situation is quite complicated as I'm physically disabled from an accident so I have to rely on him to do lots of physical tasks. My disability has got worse and I need surgery to correct this (docs didn't properly assess me at the time of the accident all those years ago!). We met one another when I wasn't disabled and a year later when it happened I actually gave him the option to leave a disabled woman - and he said he still wanted to be with me.

I'm also highly sensitive AND (!) have c-ptsd from childhood/adulthood, of which I've done much work on myself.

I used to be highly independent, organised, outgoing for a creative person. But physical disability changes you as a person - and so does living for years with an adhd spouse. None of our faults of course. :)

Our couple problems began when he suddenly brought his sex internet addiction back... in the middle of the night caught literally with his pants down. That really hurt, especially because he suddenly went off our lovemaking which made me feel so connected to him. And he even chatted up another woman - younger, able-bodied - which hurt me again. Caught him looking at her photos and you know what... He has no desire for me that way now. And I've never experienced that in my earlier relationships with others. That does impact you negatively especially when in middle-age. 

He says he still loves me. Whatever that means.

The reason I'm writing today is because I had a most awful day, Sunday. When I just wanted to relax a little with him... and he wouldn't stop complaining for 4 hours straight! I'm usually the 'voice of reason', very logical (he's the highly emotional reactive one despite my childhood trauma) but even I yelled at him to STOP complaining! I just couldn't take another moan. I'd bought us some nice food and juice and a subscription to the film channel he always expresses an interest in. We were enjoying the film. But I can't stand him endlessly complaining - and then always picking on our old dog (verbally, emotionally). I put my foot down when it comes to our animals. He says he wants to 'boot her' because she is whining (as well as him!, but she's old and this whining is new, exacerbated by him). But then says he wouldn't really boot her and I say you better not because you're a strong man and she's a small old dog.

This has left me sad and more anxious. I also have an elderly mother who we care for between us - I usually do the telephone, email work/arranging. And I come from a toxic family of origin who I've had to put up firm boundaries with - no contact with siblings, sadly. I was physically assaulted 3 years ago by a friend of one of my siblings, another drug addict. 

I needed so much to relax yesterday. My voice is already damaged from all the speaking I've been doing with various people over the last 6 weeks - stuff I won't go into, but stuff that has to be done and there's only me able to do it. And there's various deadlines - academic study and my mother's matters.

What hurts me most is that I am shut out, ignored, with (unnecessary) defenses in place. While he is extremely friendly, nice and smiley with just about everybody else! (I remember that man).

I'm a 52 year old man, diagnosed a week ago, on my second day of medication. Obviously that's a mixed outcome, it's great news, very late. After a lifetime of struggles to achieve what I thought I should achieve in school and in my career, I have some explanation. I went from a college dropout to a honors graduate of a top law school, there were failures and struggles, but real successes too, it's just I needed to be interested (and it really helped in law school that I needed to focus and produce for only 3 hours per class at the end of each semester). My career as a lawyer in law firms was marred by my inability to focus, and the stress of trying to figure out how to bill for 7 hours of unfocused progress and 3 hours of hyperfocus). I found and fell for my wife more than 30 years ago, and eventually persuaded her, and we became a couple way back in 1993 and married in 1998, and unfortunately separated in January and she's preparing to divorce me. Our marriage included some very high highs, we have five wonderful children, and there was a lot of laughter and love. But the marriage and our family life has been marred by ADHD. By my inability to focus at work, depriving my family of my time, but mostly by my quick temper and low tolerance for frustration. As the stresses of life compounded (did I mention we have five kids?), my ability to hold things together declined. We hit a patch where one kid struggled with a serious eating disorder that stressed our marriage, there were no good answers and it seemed we blamed each other for that (our daughter is years into recovery and is doing really well now), followed by a brief return to normal, then the pandemic, then some professional challenges for me with a really unbalanced workload and extra stress for more than a year, I'm sure lots of people recognize those challenges.  Then in mid 2021 I developed an autoimmune disorder that for months I didn't understand I had, and really lost it during that time. I was working 50 plus hours a week, not sleeping, in pain constantly, confused, and exhausted. My emotional dysregulation reached record levels. I thought I was handling it well, but I was not. I ended up losing my job in early 2022 and moving to a different, lower stress position, but the job loss was painful, and there was litigation around the termination, which was another incredible level of stress, it's not fun to fight with people who were colleagues and in a couple of cases friends. I'd always managed my stress and some of my emotional dysregulation with exercise, during the pandemic I was cycling 4000+ miles a year, but when I got sick, I slowly lost my ability to exercise, so my hobby of 35 years and my principal coping mechanism disappeared. That didn't help. Despite 30 months of illness now the only days of work I've missed where when I was jobless, but I know my desire to continue to work through the difficulty so I can provide for my family almost certainly has caused me to be worse to be around. I don't know what the right answer really would have been, the fact is the mortgage does have to get paid, we have 3 kids in college for the second year in a row, and my wife has a low-paying job after two decade as a SAHM. I thought I was sacrificing for us, but it looks like I was really burning our family up. 

My wife has had enough, and, since I've read a lot here, I get it. She says she thinks she has PTSD, and whether she does or not, I'm not in a position to say, she's certainly suffering with anxiety from the unpredictability of living with me and with trauma from dealing with my explosive outbursts, things that had happened through our marriage but which increased in frequency and severity as time went on. We are both separately in therapy, mine focused on my emotional dysregulation and learning to manage that, a process that began before my recent diagnosis. 

I would love to ask for advice about how to be better and how to invite her back, but I've read enough to know that I need to focus on being better, and she will come or she won't. I want to support her healing and I'm frankly terrified that that might mean letting her go. She's the best person I know and when we are good, we are wonderful, so it hurts to contemplate, or worse, acknowledge, where we are and what's likely coming. And, selfishly, it hurts to lose my favorite person in the world, especially after losing my health and in many ways losing my career. I don't even know what rebuilding without her would even mean at this point, the losses are just too much.

Rather than asking for advice on that--here's the twist--I'm looking for advice to help her see that she has ADHD too. Yep, we're one of those couples. When my daughter was diagnosed over the summer (it's a family affair!), she said to me, dad, you both have this. I'd long ago suspected I might, but my ability to focus, in particular to read, I thought meant it didn't fit--I just didn't understand what ADHD is. In trying to understand what my daughter is experiencing, I read a lot about how ADHD and saw that I had it, now confirmed, and read a lot about how ADHD presents in women, and I saw what my daughter saw. My wife has struggled with anxiety and depression for decades (independent of the issues in our relationship). She's a classic mixed case, she paces when we watch TV, when she leaves the house she makes 3 trips back in to get the forgotten items, she is always driven to be busy. She's coped by having a million lists, and by tolerating more chaos (more exactly, failing to bring order out of chaos) than I'd like, certainly more than most families have. (5 kids!) She's a wonderful mom in every way that matters, I shouldn't need to say that saying it's clear she has ADHD isn't a criticism of her as a person or wife or mom, but I'll say it anyway. 

How can I help her see that she almost certainly has ADHD? How can I help her understand the role that ADHD played in our marriage, when we both didn't know we had it? And its role in her anxiety and depression?

It's clear that so many of our struggles came from my ADHD, and in some cases from my ADHD reacting to hers and hers to mine. Both of us felt at different times that we needed to be the non-ADHD partner, but to be honest neither of us has the strengths of a non-ADHD partner, so playing that role made us even more frustrated, even angrier, than I think would be the case with a typical non-ADHD partner. Add in that we're both very sensitive to slights and perceived slights, rejection sensitivity. Maybe we just weren't meant to survive having this big family. I keep thinking we almost made it to the finish line, and then I realize she held on almost to the finish line. 

Anyway, that's the story, it feels tragic from where I sit. If you have thoughts about how I can invite her to see one of the sources of our and her struggles without making her feel insulted, let me know. When I've mentioned the possibility, it hasn't gone well. ADHD is my problem, you see, and she's not entirely sure it's caused trouble in our marriage, it seems convenient to find it now. I can't help but think that seeing what we were would help us each progress, would help her at least understand what went wrong in a different way, which seems like it might facilitate healing and forgiveness even if it doesn't lead to reconciliation. 

I posted in the midst of great frustration last night, which is something that I try to avoid, so I am going to delete this.  

So I am at a very hard and difficult place in my life. We are not married but have been together for 4 years. It's to the point where I have been in and out of counseling for years after being diagnosed. I really never took it seriously that I was the majority of the problem because of my ADD symptoms. I finally am very serious about my treatment as it being a non negotiable for her in our relationship. Well now we are not in a relationship but are still living together due to our son. He is from her previous marriage . He is my son and I don"t care what anyone thinks he is mine. I love him so much. That has been a problem also because of my inability to bond with him and not take accountability for my short fuse, irrability and not being present in those moments that count and are lost due to me being distracted. Recently him and I have really bonded. Her and I are in bad place. She feels emotionally abused due to me not giving her what she needs emotionally. Lack of being present, distracted by God knows what. I admit and know I have hurt us. It may be too late I fear. I am back in counseling and remain for the rest of my life. I love her, I love both of them. She says she loves me.but ia not in love with me. I am scared, insecure and a whole realm of other things. I don't know what to do. I have not been asked to leave the house yet. There is so much more to this situation that is affecting us. I know I have done a lot of harm, hurt and damage. How do I fix it? She states she will take attention if the opportunity arises from anyone. That hurts bad. Have I ruined us from being together and being happy? Is it too late? Does not want me to go anywhere with her. Feels disrespected due to me staring at other women bit I would never ever cheat or do anything. I have been cheated on in my previous relationship and know the pain. But yet my actions have hurt her from staring and gawking. Her and I were doing counseling together via remote Skype.  I stopped doing that due to well I don't know why. Because I did not accept that my ADHD was the problem. I am lost and so confused. I will fight till the end for us. I pray that my counseling and accepting my part and being accountable for my actions will help me first off and us. Advice needed and appreciated. Any questions as well for clarification also.