I'm a 35 year old non ADHD wife married to my 41 year old husband, for the past 15 years. We have 5 children 2-16. The past 15 years have been a nightmare. My husband was diagnosed, but refused medication. No drug or alcohol use ever on either of our parts. No cheating in my end ever. He has never been caught.

He's a compulsive liar. Lies about everything and daily.

Says he knows he does bad things but cant stop doing them

he foreclosed on our home. I had NO idea until the sheriff served me papers. 

Refused to ever let me pay bills, would tell me he was paying them...then lied and would have frightening amounts of debt.

repossessed my car, his car... Again had no idea

he makes zero sense when he talks, contradicts himself constantly, hypocritical. 

Never keeps his promises

extremely selfish

Demands sex like he becomes obsessed with it. 

Verbally and mentally abusive. 

Steals money out of my purse.

I woke up the day after christmas to find out he had taken all the gifts my family got me, back to the store and returned them and took the money.

told my 16 year old that he was putting my sons paychecks in the savings account for a car, but stole all the money and never paid him back.

Will harp on the same three things and repeat them over and over and over

only focuses on the negative, never says good job to the kids. Ever. 

Cannot focus when i talk so he then accuses me of not telling him things or saying, "You never told me that".

has to constantly have some kind of drama. Like he cant just relax, always something.

washes his hands, checks locks, obsesses over the same things over and over, cant sit still.

Works for a month then plans his escape route to quit working. As if it takes every ounce of his being to maintain at work.

He ruins just about every evening with his irrational nonsense, trashes every holiday with arguing, it's hell.

i CANNOT afford to leave or I would, in a heart beat. He has demolished my credit. My little boy has Autism and ADHD, 11year old has severe ADHD, and i have a toddler. I cannot do anything until she goes to kindergarten. I have no family NONE! i have to find a way to survive with him and still give my kids a good living environment. 

Right now i am trying to get him into see a psychiatrist, earliest appointment is a month away. He promises to get help, then kisses butt for a few weeks, then right back to hell. Then work schedule wont allow for appointments. My question is...I can handle no love or connection. I feel like he is another child. Not sexually attracted to someone so hurtful and mean, to someone I have to mother. But if he doesnt get sex, he is a horrible bully. I feel like a prostitute. He wants sex, and I want a loving husband. I'm not witholding sex to punish him, it makes me extremely uncomfortable. I need some guidance here. I just need to make this the best i can and for the most part can put my feelings aside. But i cant seem to "fake" it enough to want to go to bed with him. I either need to look at all this in another way or I dont know. I do have sex with him...like every two weeks but its hell. 

I have let this cycle to continue and i have no good explanation for it other than, i kept hoping he would "get it", stop, or maybe I just keep thinking he does it on purpose or can control it. I have been stuck in this mess for so long...i myself am totally confused from being so entrenched in it. I welcome and appreciate any productive thoughts, experience, advice. Ty ❤️

I am a newlywed and My husband has adult ADHD, at least that's what we think since he was diagnosed as a child-- reading the book ADHD and it's effects on marriage, almost every page of that book has almost mirrored my own life. Let's just say I get a lot of anxiety reading this book. My husband has not been diagnosed with it as an adult because he has never gone to see a doctor and talk to them about it. And now that we have health insurance finally, he still is doing what he wants to do, at his own pace--meaning getting care for himself.

While reading the book, ADHD and it's effects on marriage, I stumbled upon the actual website and was thrilled to find there would be a seminar for couples who are facing issues with ADHD every day. I then presented it to my husband in what I believed to be a non-threatning way. AND then the ADHD kicked in. He had little to say about it except that he was very overwhelmed by it all and he had some anxiety about it. I saw that as a good thing because then maybe if I went on the journey with him he wouldn't be so overwhelmed. WRONG! When I asked him what the anxiety was from he basically said nothing--I told him if there's too much anxiety about it all then we won't do it, but then again I feel like that is "giving in" to his antics once again. Maybe he's just not ready to have anyone be a part of it. In retrospect, maybe this was a little bit too much for him--he was diagnosed as a child but hasn't been to the doctor since to see about it in his adult years. I asked him to think it over and also if he would commit to once a week of doing the recorded version. He said he would try it, but if he's going to just "try it" then it will basically be wasted time, energy and money..he then said he would think about it. We really have not discussed the topic in depth, and last night when I presented the idea of doing this seminar he was very uncomfortable about it. Seems to me that he feels ashamed knowing the reality that he struggles with it.It is interesting to me because when he was in college he made use of the office for students with disabilities and was okay with it, he would take exams in a controlled setting and was able to take as long as he needed. The way I see it is that it's now or never to address it with compassion, instead of "just not talking about it" since it's already been 6 years and the topic has never really been talked about between the two of us.

I get the feeling he doesn't want me to be involved in the first scary and anxiety ridden step of facing the fact that the diagnosis may in fact be true. I also feel that he may also never accept it because he was raised the very same way and had basically NO resources and his father was in denial about the whole thing also not taking the recommendations of what the doctor prescribed.

so what is a non-ADHD spouse to do? Frankly I feel like dropping the whole subject and leaving it to the Divine, but at the same time I am fascinated by the urge to do this seminar....maybe I'll do the seminar on my own!

If my bf takes something I am saying as criticism, the focus turns from the issue I brought up and my feelings about it to his feelings of being criticized and telling me how wrong I am. He has a situation-specific rationalization for everything he does, but sometimes he is the first to criticize me if he thinks I am affecting his time or money. Then if my feelings disagree with his intentions or recollection of what happened, my feelings are wrong. It's like I have to pay vigilant attention to certain things about his life but he can randomly decide when something is or isn't important.

For example, he recently started a new job that is hourly. He started obsessing about his time to the point where he said commuting from his parents' house or my place costs him 1-2 hours of money at work plus gas money, so he decided to stay with his cousins. He pays them monthly rent and he says it's worth it for the short commute. He has spent a total of three to four days there in three weeks. He got so focused on money that he would skip lunch and almost devalue his off-time as not being lucrative. I won't even go into his recent over-spending, and I don't go down that road with him because it's his money. This is frustrating for me to watch, but I try not to say much about it. 

I asked him to do me a favor two weeks ago and be at my apartment while they were inspecting it. It was done early and he missed 1-2 hours of work. He acted like it was no problem (I even offered to pay him), but during a later argument he held it against me. He also has said things in the past like "don't you know how busy I am," as if I don't know or don't support him. I know that's a product of him feeling overwhelmed, but he puts the accountability on me in a way. Yesterday apparently he wasn't feeling well and wanted to catch up on some things at home, so he left work early and drove to go do that. I wanted to say, do you know how busy you are? I don't understand how leaving work early and driving so far is in line with anything he has been saying about time and money. I know I shouldn't be concerned, but I was upset that he has lectured me on his time and money (as if I impact either, which I don't) and then treats both so loosely when he feels like it. Granted, he is often easygoing about these topics, but they come up in arguments as ammunition on his end. I feel like I have to be hyper-sensitive to those topics because it may be held against me later. If he doesn't like what I'm saying he tells me I'm wrongly characterizing what actually happened. I think he has a tendency to get really excited about things and then cut corners or blame others when he has trouble keeping up. In my frustration I questioned whether he is serious about his job, which I know I shouldn't have said. I just don't know why he always has a rationalization for being inconsistent but sometimes talks to me like I have no idea that his time is valuable. Deflection, perhaps? And then he withdraws and says things like "you can think whatever you want" and "I don't need your validation." I wouldn't mind the inconsistencies if he didn't sometimes lecture me about his time. 

I want to add that overall we have been getting along pretty well lately. This catch-22 never seems to go away though.

We had been planning to take a vacation together in the summer, but he said he wanted to wait until November so he could have more time off. November was my thirtieth birthday, so I thought that would be perfect to celebrate. In October, I told him to give me his share of the money for the vacation and after much prodding, he did. I told him if he didn’t want to go, he didn’t have to. He told me he’d give me the money after he asked for the time off.

I went ahead and booked the vacation and made the plans. The day we were supposed to leave, after he had brought over a suitcase (which I think in retrospect was empty) and his passport the night before, as I was getting ready for the flight, he told me he had to tell me something.

He told me he had forgotten to ask for the time off and could not risk getting fired by not going to work for a week. I was devastated and had a complete meltdown, crying, shaking, and in shock. I spent the next five days crying off and on. I stayed with my father (my mother was out of town) and slept next to him every day because I was so badly shaken. My friends took me out to dinner on my birthday, which was Friday. My parents have said that it is obvious we need to break up.

He says he doesn’t know why he did it. He says he knows his ADHD caused it. He apologized profusely. He said he would get treatment.

After all of this, and after having seen progress in his life, I have no idea what to do. Throughout all of this, he has told me his ADHD has caused all of his problems, but he only would take medication and go to occasional CBT. It’s obvious that this is not going to be sufficient in the long run. I just have no idea what to do because I am afraid now that I will not have a husband and a family if I stay with him, as he feels he is not ready to get married right now and I guess I can see that he’s not. But we love each other and have stuck it out through everything that has happened. I don’t know if I’m ready to give up, but I am damn close.

Does anyone have any possible insight into this situation?