Recently, something has hit me. My boyfriend doesn't understand what its like have depression and what everyday is like for me. He has made some inappropriate comments about my depression, which is what led me to believe he doesn't understand. I do have ADHD and anxiety as well, but he never has made inappropriate comments regarding those issues. Therefore, I'm not as concerned about getting him to understand what its like to live with ADHD and anxiety everyday. So, now my question is this. Does anybody know of any good resources that explains "life from a depressed point of view", so to speak? Blogs,forums, websites, articles you name it. Thanks and it will be greatly appreciated!

My dear husband left our home a month ago.  I have ridden waves of saddness, anger, grief, fury, numbness, pain... all of it.   I gave 4 options, the first two of him coming back home or moving into his own place and I would take him seriously about working on our marriage.  The second two - him staying where he is at (in a friend's spare room) but loosing regular loving communication with me (I have to protect myself and I set the boundry), and then to just throw everything away and divorce.   He chose to stay at the friend's house a week ago.  He says its so that he can "make it on his own" and its all he can afford.  Not true.  A week before he finally decided on what he was gonna do I sent him a list of apartments in our town that are less than what he is paying his friend, all bills paid.  He has retreated back to the video games that ruled his life so much - aknowledging that he was doing so and risking our marriage.  He did it willingly because "he was paying his own way".  

Makes me feel like I was PAYING HIM to not do those things that harm us.  I thought he stopped doing it because his life was better with out that monkey on his back.  Thats what he said when he finally broke the addictions. 

He started smoking again, even though it took him 2 years and ALOT of physical and emotion pain (for both of us) to quit after smoking for 20 years.  I was so proud of him. His health improved so much.

He now goes to the bar and drinks all the time - when he refused to ever have a drink with me in the saftey and comfort of our own home.

It breaks my heart into peices so small that I am sure I will never see most of them again.

I was left behind to clean up the mess both literal and figuratively he left behind.  I dont know if he will come back ever, I dont know if I will be ABLE to have him come back.  How many times can he prove to me that I and our marriage and life we have built together means so little to him.  I want to believe that deep down he loves me for real, and that he will snap out of it.  He has alot more going on than just the ADHD, there is alot of trauma in his past he needs to work through.  But I dont think going and staying at a friend's party house with people who are only going to affirm him going back to old damaging behaviors is him working on those demons that haunt him.  He needs help, and I am scared he wont get it now. 

How to I move forward when the person I love more than anything in the world is just drifting away and doesnt even seem to mind.  The rejection hurts so bad that I feel like I cant even breathe.  I have burried myself in chores, work and everything I can think of.  I dont stop until I am dead on my feet then I take as much medicine as I can to sleep and hopefully not dream.  I am so angry at him, and so hurt.  He says he left me because I deserve better.  But to me thats a cop out.  He knows I deserve better, but he doesnt do anything to GIVE me better.  Its like seeing a starving kid sitting at your table while you feast  - you know the kid is starving, they are begging for food, and you dont bother sharing what you have because you think the kid needs someone who can cook better. 

I honestly and genuinely hope that while we are apart that he honestly takes a deep look inside and really puts an effort in dealing with his past.  I want my husband to come back to me.  I want him to find his way home.  But even if he never finds his way home I hope he finds a way to heal.  I know that life will probably never be "normal" but he can conqure anything he wants.  He is extremely intelligent, and can understand anything he wants.  He is one of those amazing people that are loving and forgiving almost all the time.  He is kind and generous when he is stable.  When he has the ADHD under control - he is like superman.  Can do anything.  He was doing so well in May... working out, eating well, following his coach... then something happened in June, and I dont know what it is but something happened.  And it all fell apart.  I couldnt take it.  I broke down and let my emotions get the better of me by mid-july and I made a mistake by talking to a lawyer.

I apologized and begged him to forgive me and come home, but he didnt. And now, even though I have forgiven SO MUCH MORE, and been through so much with him-  here I am alone.  Some moments are ok and I think - I can deal with this!  I can be strong!  But the reality is I am just completely and totally gutted to my core.  I know if he never comes back I will survive and I will get through somehow.  But right now, in the moment, I feel like I could just evaporate to nothing from the pain.  I am glad I have my dogs because with out them I think I would really loose it. 

I have lost too much...

I can't remember the last time I posted, I suppose it has been almost 2 years. The roller coaster ride continues. I've made huge steps forward myself, I've managed to stop engaging about 75% of the time. Briefly, for those who don't know my history (it is all posted here in previous posts), we have been married 17 years (as of yesterday) and for a while things weren't terribly bad. Job loss, his mother dying, my father dying, an affair (he had), and major financial issues caused him to start spiraling out of control in 2009. He hit rock bottom (or so I thought) in spring 2012 and ended up in a facility. He seemed to get his life back on track, got another job (he lost his when he went into the facility), and was doing better than I had seen him in years. He had some issues, obviously, before 2009, but his ADHD was much controlled when he made a lot of money. I am not sure why, but his mood and happiness is directly related to money. Things started to decline in the fall of 2011 when I found out he was drinking again. They steadily declined and in the fall of 2012 I had pretty much given up on our marriage. He had started making comments about not being interested in spending time with me and about how he'd have never married me if he had known I would expect him to help around the house. We have a low functioning autistic son and I stayed home with the kids until he lost his job in 2012. I started working full time and was trying to get him to help, to no avail. I truly didn't think he cared. I developed a crush on a co-worker, sent a friend an e-mail about it, and he read my emails and got on my FB and saw where I was chatting with him. The email made it clear that nothing had happened or ever would happen, but he didn't believe it...even though I had no reason to lie because I had no intention of him ever reading it. We were friends as far as he or anyone else knew. It was a secret crush that I felt a lot of guilt about and the God's honest truth is that I had worked it out with God before it went further than a crush. The coworker never knew and it was over before my husband even knew anything about it.

He went completely off the deep end. I had never been afraid of him. I had never been threatened by him. We'd been married 15 years. He was threatening to kill me almost daily. I was having to grab my kids in the middle of the night and run and hide because he was becoming threatening. About two months into it, it had gotten so bad that the cops were called by my step daughter. He left before they arrived and that was the beginning of a two month separation. I felt guilty for hurting him and tried to appease him in every way I could, but enough was enough and I wasn't living with him and being afraid. He still continued to torment me through texts and threats so I finally went and stayed with family and refused to talk to him for several days. He finally knew I was serious and the threats stopped. Still, to this day, the ramifications of it all are very real. He is still drinking, increasing amounts. I work nights and appx once a week he will text me while I am at work and tell me he's leaving, is done living with me, he means it this time, he can't stay here anymore, etc. I've begged him to stop. You can imagine the emotional damage this does and how destructive it is to our marriage.

I've started working very hard at having peace in my life and have made it very clear to him that if that means I have to divorce him, I will. My sister moved to TX (very devastating for me) in Nov and as much as I do not want to leave TN, I've told him I would pack and move there and he'd never see me again if he cannot stop the mental abuse and threats. Over the course of the last few months he's been doing things, without going into details, that lead me to believe he's lying to me and quite possibly cheating. again. He emphatically denies it. He admits he's not doing well at all. He admits he's out of control. He admits he's got a drinking problem. He says often how unhappy he is and how miserable his life is. I've done everything but roll out the red carpet for him to just go and find whatever he thinks will make him happy. He has a counselor he loves that he won't go see. He still takes ADHD meds, but they obviously aren't going to work if he's drinking. He talks constantly of feeling guilt for what he's done to me and about how I deserve better than him. He hates his job too, he says. He works for a local Christian university and is getting a free education. He had a diploma when he started, he's now a junior and will have his Bachelors in IT within 18 months or so. He does nothing but complain and moan about how much he HATES school.

What compelled me to write is a conversation we had last night...the night of our anniversary. We're flipping through the stations and he sees the PBS special "ADHD and loving it". He watches for one segments, turns off the TV, starts crying and says it was eye opening and it was nice to know he wasn't alone. He then proceeds to tell me he only keeps his jobs for me and the kids...adding that he feels like complete sh!t about himself because he resents me for it. He says something along the lines of "what kind of a$$hole am I for resenting you for it?" Also, I am constantly telling him that all I want is for him to be nice to me, for us to have peace and get along. He says last night that he has never been nice to me, not in 17 years, and that is because no one ever taught him now to be nice. Honestly, I wanted to punch him. Reality is, he's right. He has consistently and constantly done hurtful and destructive things. All 17 years. He cheated 6 months into the marriage...when I was pregnant with our daughter. Lastly, he's been getting mad and leaving...and not coming home for 2-3 nights...saying he's up on the mountain and needs to find what he's looking for (I guess meaning he needs to figure out why he's so depressed and maybe possibly trying to deal with his guilt?) He mentions it, I tell him that it hurts myself and our 15 year old daughter. He accuses me of "bringing her into our problems" and I told him that I don't have to say a word (and I DON'T), but that he's her daddy and when he's not home it hurts her. She's told me so. Said she was "frustrated" which means she's hurt and confused and scared. He said "to me, it is normal. why should I be forced to be here when I'm more comfortable there?" Ouch.

I am usually pretty good at interpreting what he's TRYING to say because he never says exactly what he means...maybe he doesn't have the ability?? I cannot translate this...I cannot figure out the between the lines on these three comments he made last night. Any input? I finally told him to stop talking, that he was just doing more damage and it was the ramblings of an over tired, overwhelmed ADHD mind...at 10:30 p.m.

Or rather......what isn't ADD/ADHD?  Does anyone really know?  I don't really know either but I'm sure I have it (me ADHD) according to my therapist and everything I've learned and read about it over the last 10 years.  I fit the list of criteria perfectly.  I pass all the tests with flying colors.  Other people say I act or behave like I have it.....you know what they say?  Who are they THEY anyway?  Are They the ones who made up the concept of PC?  Actually...that was the Moral Majority (which are neither).  Are They the ones who decide social constructs?.....the ones who decide one day what was good is now bad....and then later, neither one instead???  Sounds like a carnival ride?  I don't think I trust what they believe I am whoever They are.  I don't even know them and they certainly don't know me.

Every person that I have ever met who says they have ADHD are completely different than me in almost every way except for a very few similarities.  Maybe that's a clue?  Let's see......likeable, talkative and open, active, has lot of interests, good sense of humor, not good at house work.  Sounds more like a dating sight profile?

Is ADHD all the things that your parents said about you when you were growing up?  One of my favorite quotes from the late Frank Zappa was..." if you had realized just how lame your parents really were when you were young you would have killed them in their sleep."  He was joking of course but he raised a valid point.  I've pretty much discounted most of the things my parents said that "I was" by now......most of the time in fact, mine didn't know shit about noth'in...it's true!

Is ADHD the collective complaints made by all of the non spouses on this forum?  That would be: a lazy, lying, ,cheating, messy, disorganized, spaced out, video game addicted, alcoholic, pot smoking, drug addicted, unemployed porn addict....who is also an insensitive, self centered, self absorbed narcissist who is not very bright with a bad memory and is angry all the time.  Sweet Jesus.....who wouldn't be angry with that list of accolades!! Did I miss anything?

Can anyone really tell if someone  has ADD or ADHD just by looking at them?  Do we really act different, talk different than everyone else?  Couldn't you apply any one of the character traits listed above to literarily anyone any where?

 Is it a disorder?...and just what constitutes a disorder different from a group of personality traits.  Why do some who have it do well...and others who do not? 

Is it a learning disability?  I had difficulty with math in high school....does that count?

If all the books and literature written by people who research and study ADD/ADHD keep changing every few years...couldn't a person make the assumption that what is believed today will be different some time in the near future? I have to keep reminding myself every time I go to the doctor when he is just about to stab me with a syringe that......he only practicing medicine.  When will they ever get to the place when they stop practicing and get it right?  And what if they are wrong?  Who ever THEY are!!

All I know for sure about myself is that I am fundamentally a hard working good person who makes a genuine attempt to live by the golden rule.....and routinely walks into the next room and asks myself....." what did I come in here for?"

Please...if anyone knows the one definitive answer to this questions I would greatly appreciate it........I can use the sleep. Thanks

J