I've lived with my ADD husband for the past seven years. My daughter and grandson both have ADD (no biological relationship to my husband), and I've notice this phenomenon. I know we aren't supposed to generalize but I can't help it. Why can't you do anything when we ask?

Even trivial things: I was once doing dishes and the water was running. I walked into the living room and said "Will you hand me that pile of dishes on the floor?" I got the classic "in a minute." WATER WAS RUNNING. Why couldn't he have done it then, so I didn't have to go back in the kitchen and turn the water off and come back to get them? My daughter didn't leave for work when she should have and so was always late. That cost her some jobs. I swear if I told my husband the house was on fire, he'd say, let me sleep 5 more minutes.

He does say " you can't tell me what to do" but for people who live together, they do have to tell each other what to do. For example, my hearing is much more acute than his. If I hear the trash truck and say "You've got to put the trash out NOW" he'll say "give me 5 more minutes" and then he'll miss the trash. I concluded I can't change this, and it was one of the nails in the coffin of our marriage, but I'd still like to know WHY he does that.

Hello all...

first, Yay! I have a job interview coming up!  (I'll know exactly when sometime next week...)

Also - totally had my mind blown yesterday by a series of lectures by Dr. Russell Barkley, Ph.D at the Centre for ADD/ADHD Advocacy, Canada.  You can find these lectures on Vimeo.  'Jon' posted about them in the thread about selfishness.

They were depressing and somewhat liberating.  It is VERY technical, and VERY thorough.  Explaining in great detail what areas of the brain are affected, and how these areas in our brains are smaller than they should be.  It is upsetting, to me... but he does confirm a lot of things i'd already suspected, for example:  ADHD is not a gift.  it is not something that makes a person quirky, creative or super-smart....  famous adders are not successful BECAUSE of their ADD, they are successful in SPITE of it.  This is comforting for me, because it lets me know that the things I actually AM good at are not just symptoms of a severe disorder.  They are real.  And there IS something more to me than a socially impaired, dysfunctional weight on my husband's shoulders.  However, the things I am good at are of no use to anyone, really.

It's so hard learning how serious and never ending it is. The statistics.  The stories. The things that are normal that don't make sense to me will never, ever make sense to me.  I must continue to try my best to fake it, force it, MAKE it all happen so i'm not destroying anything/anyone.  I also know my kids will suffer, too.  I can't pretend anymore that 'oh... well, they MIGHT not have it."  I know they do.  I've got one hyper and one inattentive type.

When do you tell them?  and WHAT do you tell them?  I will always be in this surreal fog.  It's like ALWAYS being drunk or something, and never knowing where you are or what is actually happening in any given situation, trying to speak but only slurring, unable to see clearly (is that the important CEO I met yesterday, or is that someone from high school?)always trying to pass for sober.

See?  I can't even stay on topic.  what's this?  oh... right... progress...

um.

I told y'all I've got an interview, right?

Ellamenno

Those of you who have read my posts before will remember, my posts were full of things other spouses of ADDers face-no job, no help around the house, etc. I finally got a legitimate "work from home" job and found myself, within a few weeks, working 60 or more hours a week. I spent hours working away on my computer listening to him watch whatever TV shows caught his fancy-mostly off-network reruns like Ghost Whisperer, NCIS, etc. And he did nothing to clean the house or make my life function better (except he did cook). This went on over a year. He never even looked for work. His excuse was that my work monopolized the computer, so he couldn't do a job search.

Our dishwasher finally broke and I paid someone $200 to clean my kitchen because he wouldn't; it was "too overwhelming". That just got it to the point where I could let the appliance guy come in. That was a couple of months ago.

Finally, I went to stay with my daughter 90 miles away. She needed help at her office temporarily. But I went home on the weekends. When I left one Sunday, we had run out of toilet paper, and when I can back the next Saturday, there was still no toilet paper. He had a car (paid for my me) and a debit card with enough money to buy a whole warehouse full of toilet paper. For one thing, that's disgusting. For another, I have had 3 surgeries for incontinence, so it seemed to show a remarkable lack of interest in my needs.

Today, I moved my personal possessions to a storage unit and I'm going to move in with my daughter until I can find a job. I will have better luck in her city, I think. I will let him stay here as long as he can pay the rent, but without a job and with his unemployment running out, how is he supposed to do that?

I just can't do it any more. His ADD is stronger than his love for me, and stronger than me. I just can't fight it any more.

Hello ladies.

I hope I can get this out before my medication wears off lol.

Where do I start? *pause* Wow.

Story of my life hmm I suppose I will start to how I got to this point. Well first, I am Chris I am 20 years old and in the USAF and have been married for a little under 2 years, my wife is 8 months pregnant and we were in the process of divorce until about a week ago. She left about a month and a half ago to stay with family in Miami until our child was born and I stayed here in Hawaii. Most of you probably found this website whilst searching for support, saw a few testimonies that described your spouse, created a log in name and started writing your story in search of help or understanding am I right?

Of course lol. Well so did your ADD spouse just not quite in that order. I just wanted to write this as an explanation in your spouses point of view so that you may find hope...maybe. So there I was surfing the internet on my phone as always when the idea popped into my head to search "ADD military discharge." So im looking and low and behold I find randomly a story of a pregnant woman who's husband has ADD in the military. Not quite what I was looking for but oh well my attention was grasped and now I am reading accounts of women with ADD husbands. Then I decide that I am going to write this story from my point of view in hopes of explaining my complicated non chronological story. As many of you followed logical steps to write a post I did not. First I got off my phone and transferred to the computer. Second I changed the channel on the tv. Then I checked Facebook on my phone again (with the computer right in front of me, why I don't know? I am actually writing this sentence after I have written "okay" down below in the second paragraph). Then I sat down and attempted to create an account. Fifth I created a sign in name and attempted to sign in. I went to the sign in page and it told me I had the wrong password. Next after entering multiple passwords and clicking the forgot password option I realized that I had never created one. After that I went to my email entered the password provided and signed in. Whoshhhh finally right? Nope. As I began writing the first sentence I noticed that I couldn't write this without my meds and decided it was time to take an adderall if I wanted to accomplish writing this. Then I started writing but not chronologically like most people do but as I am writing I read over everything and start adding pieces I forgot to make things make more sense....unfourtanantly it makes less sense sometimes.

Okay. Now that I'm done revising the last paragraph (hopefully) I can continue to tell you all what I came here to tell you (what was it again? *reads everything again*) Oh it's my side of the story!! Right, I am sure by now you can tell that there is a lot going on in my head and I hope you can understand the magnitude of the difficulty of having ADD and communicating ideas to people. Thoughts are constantly going through my head in which I am motivated to do or say different random things. I know personally that I am a very intelligent person and actually more intelligent than most and can see things that others can't. It is a gift and a curse. To the outside world I might seem like an idiot or a screw up because I always lose things and when I try to talk my ideas come out all jumbled up and out of order. Really we are not doing this on purpose we just try our best to create order in chaos and try to do so with as much dignity as possible. The reason many are opposed to seeking treatment is because we feel if we recognize this "problem" and acknowledge its existence it will be used as an excuse (internally) as to why we can't be normal. Guess what though? Even if I don't say it all the time, the thing I think about most is that I am a screw up and how I've screwed everything up. Really, we understand everything you say about us. Everything you say is thoroughly processed thru our minds and contemplated at a molecular level at some point (almost literally). We don't need anyones help in putting ourselves down because that's just another thing to contemplate about and make us depressed or angry. Some of you might or might not notice that the majority of the time you are nagging us we are quiet or unresponsive or try to pretend like everything is fine. This is because one, we don't want to argue all the time and two because it is really hard to formulate what we want to say back in the moment. You all (very reasonably) claim that we are not listening but actually we are thinking very hard about what you just said along with every other thing that is going on in our world and the rest of the world. This is where the explosions of what looks like unreasonable anger and outburst come from. We are not only defending ourselves but defending our sanity. The impact of "nagging" is not only emotional it is psychological and we are always trying to control the little crazy man in our head that says to do irrational things. Often after I explode I have the need to apologize because I understand that my wife doesn't know the war that is constantly being waged in my head. I have the need to tell both her and my self I am not some sort of retard or maniac. Outburst are usually counter productive.

We don't need someone to point out our issues. We have enough of that from ourselves. We just need someone who is patient and understanding but not always lenient. When I say "not lenient" I don't mean constant reminders and frustrations. I mean when you say to do something now (like a task) convince them to do it at that moment. Routine is good. Patience is needed here because there is an unreasonable amount of forgetfulness that goes on in the realm of an ADD person. People often tell me I should write things down on some sort of list...but it is very easy to forget to write things down. Furthermore it is even harder to remember to read where you wrote it down or even the concept of remembering when or even that you have to read this list of things that you may or may not have remembered to write down in the first place. Don't even start me on keeping a pen for a whole 24 hours. It's really is a lot for ourselves to be patient with our our problems and I understand that it must be ridiculous for you. But there is hope!! Master procrastinators we are. Well at least I am. I call it control under the illusion of chaos. If I say I am going to get something done or taken care of I will wait to the very last minute and do it. This upsets my wife a lot because shes a get things done NOW or the world is going to end type person. This can be often viewed as laziness and in a way it is. I am a, formulate a plot in my head and a second before the world is about to end save it type person. This along with my impulsiveness make me kind of hard to understand. Everyone else seems to have this natural super driving energy and you don't understand how much I would like that. This is why kids with ADD are sooo very smart but don't ever do any work in school. Give us some medication, tiny bit of structure and a little bit of discipline and we can do anything. Having ADD is like knowing how to do most anything without needing to "study" but the downfall is we are distracted by so many things or feel unmotivated to prove ourselves all the time. It's probably all of the unorganized thinking that makes us tired.

Take just a simple stroll down the street for example. In my head I am contemplating the existence of everything around me. I'm looking at a bird and trying to figure out what is going on in his life and where he has migrated to get there. Has the bird ever seen anyone get killed? What does the bird think about it if he did?  Does the bird even know what is going on? How did that deep score in the concrete get there? Look at those tire streaks. Did the people in the car crash" Who was in the car and who were they? Were they drunk? Maybe they had an argument? What were they arguing about? What did that homeless guy do today? Who and where is his family and how did he get that way?

That is just a sample of what is always going on. Often it can be very annoying and I wish I could turn it off and concentrate on just walking and being happy without contemplating what's going on in my body at a chemical and molecular level while I walk and what happiness really is and how other people experience happiness.

Maybe from what I have said you can understand why we sometimes form outlandish conclusions and why we are the way we are. There is hope though. I have recently decided through plenty of contemplation my wife and I are going to build our relationship with God as the center. God can heal all things and provide the structure your family needs. God has shown me to forgive my wife and not always be so over analyzing of every situation and how to be the man I need to be. God provides someone to whom I must answer to when I am being harsh towards my wife. Just be patient please because we are not hopeless.  We don't always mean the things we say. I am telling you now as a man who almost divorced his wife that if you put God at the center of your relationship it will not fail.

Jah bless