7 years of marriage and two children later and it's finally time to end things. My husband was diagnosed with ADHD as a child, but I wasn't aware that he had it for many, many years into our marriage. I was seduced by a charming, attractive man who was once my world! From the day we got married I cooked, cleaned and tries to be the perfect wife. I even let him have several boys nights out with the guys because I trusted him. Two weeks after we got married I sat down to our laptop and found him still logged into his email. Tie weeks after we got married I found out that he had been having an affair from the moment he proposed. I quickly kicked him out but let him come back days later because I loved him. I would later find out that he went to her house to have sex with her that night. I wish that I could say that things got better after that time...but, he was always broke, wouldn't help out around the house and started hyper focusing on bowling, NASCAR and wrestling. I felt so lonely and I had to beg him for a date night...he told me he could squeeze me in on Wednesday evenings when he didn't have anything going on. Then came the pregnancies...I threw up for 4-months straight with both pregnancies and has to go to the hospital Often to get IVs, he left me alone upstairs in my room for nights at a time. I would cry myself to sleep because I was so jealous of those women who had men who would run out for pregnancy cravings or get excited to feel the baby kick while my husband's new obsession had become semi-pro football. Eventually the house had gotten so disgusting that I had to my a mask just to clean while suffering through the morning sickness. I thought it would get better...but, while I was in labor for 48 hours my husband was complaining that he was tired and falling asleep or playing on his phone while my sister-in-law helped me breathe through contractions. I finally had a c-section and my husband left me alone for 6 hours to drink beer with his dad...meanwhile I has no one to help me get my baby up to breast feed or assist me with going to the bathroom. I sobbed uncontrollably. The following weekends he spent out of town with football, leaving me with a newborn baby...my heart was broken. Three months later I was pregnant again..

It never got better. Their were many other email relationships that I caught him in...he'd never really apologize or never seem to think he'd fine anything wrong...I was dying a little every day. I was overwhelmed with trying to keep it all together with 2 small children and an ADHD husband. I would talk to him about my hopes and dreams or cry to him when I was upset and needed emotional support, but within 30 seconds he'd interrupt me to talk about himself or something random. Eventually I just stopped talking even when someone closed to be passed away. I felt such sadness and I was angry! I yelled and screamed just so he would hear my cries for help but it never worked. Then he became obsessed with porn...the object of his new hyper focus. I was always a super confident woman, but the affairs, the porn and the non-acknowledgement raped me of my self-esteem little by little until I was overweight and suicidal. How could a man who promised to love me hurt me so bad?

My husband had our utilities shut off several times, planned vacations for himself with his buddies and friends from high school but never once took me overnight anywhere or on any vacations. He probably only took me on 5 real dates in 8 years. Yet I stayed even though every day I was so unbelievably sad...why couldn't he just love me enough not to let his ADHD ruin everything? I gave and gave to him. I was the bread winner, the maid and the cook. I just wanted someone to care and to hold me when I hurt. He did try meds for one year but wouldn't really try with the cognitive therapy. He could never taken responsibility for his ADHD and would pass the blame to me. I would try to help him with lists, texts and phone reminders but he'd ignore them and I get pissed! Love starting turning to hate...and, finally I decided to get out. His ADHD was affecting me and my kids and causing psychological damage. My kids were upset because daddy would sleep the weekends away and wouldn't play with them and go kid stuff...he started hyper focusing on car shows instead and his dad time with them would only be bringing them along for his hobby not caring that three and four year olds are more interested in the zoo than car stereo system competitions. The final straw came when the water and gas was shutoff again on my children and I forcing us to bathe with water bottles and not being able to cook because gas was out...all while his 32-year-old self was partying for 6 nights out at the bar every single night on a bros only Florida vacation. I finally had the moment of clarity that I could go on with his failure to find ways to control his ADHD or I could get out and finally have a shot at real love and happiness. It was like I was relieved of a 1000 pounds of baggage. I generally feel sorry for by soon-to-be-ex...he has no money to move out and he still blames everyone else for his problems instead of the ADHD. I'm going to eventually be fine...now I worry about my children visiting him...

The real kicker? I'm a senior non-commissioned officer in the United States military with many awards, decorations and educational degrees, I'm a Veteran of two wars, highly successful in my career and a loving mother. I can fight the Taliban, but I could not fight my husband's ADHD. How sad is that? I've never failed at anything...I put up with my cheating, self-centered ADHD husband for too long and it almost made me take my own life. I'm thankful that I have seen the light and have decided to let go of the toxicity because I know that one day I'll find someone worthy for me to love and someone who will love me completely... 

...when she's been up all night, it's 4:30 in the morning, and without any word her mother hasn't yet come home from the birthday party she went to last night?

Pb.

Going to put this post here even though it is not your typical happy ending. So many posts and comments here filled with such pain and an utter loss of hope where the non spouse has given up in hurt and anger and/or has decided to forge ahead and make his/her way to a better, less painful life by ending the relationship. I'm in the latter category with one thing to add: I adore my husband. I love him so much that I just want to see him happy. He is a wonderful, an amazing human being with so much life, compassion, brilliance, courage, and creativity in him that I respect and admire him more than I can say. He is also a cheat, a liar, an addict, and in absolute, complete, utter denial about the final addiction he has to face (sex/love) and about his adhd symptoms and their impact. This morning I told him I need a divorce. Period. And that it will be okay and that I wish him well. I have been through so much turmoil that it is taking a definite physical toll on my health and also impacted my sanity. As a struggling couple over the last several years we began with AA and Alanon. They sort of helped but not really. Then he stopped drinking, of his own volition - so proud of him! A huge, gargantuan step. (His alcoholism was the area of our lives where I actually learned to successfully detach - this helped a ton with the adhd symptoms as well so I'm also proud of myself.) Then we tried marriage counselling and individual counselling. Lots of help but not enough. Sadly, the counsellor we both saw does not seem to understand adhd in adults very well. Then 12 step programs for sex addiction and for partners of sex addicts. Oh, that fit very well and helped a ton, but not enough. So he worked hard and tried differently and changed much in his life, as did I. Sex became healthy and enjoyable in our relationship again and has been ever since, and he has gotten a grip on the effects of porn, sex, and masturbation. But, still not enough. Meanwhile I (as an elementary school teacher) recognized that he has adhd in spades and began reading up on how it works in adults. Then he realized it as well on his own and went for evaluation and got a formal diagnosis. Through the diagnosis he realized what I've always known - he has a brilliant mind! Super high IQ but always saw himself as stupid. Started treatment but lots of our "experts" here are behind the times. Family doc prescribed Dexedrine because it was all she knew and she didn't do nearly enough follow up and tweaking. Psychiatrist didn't become involved in his treatment at all other than to approve diagnosis and the need for meds, then left the choices up to the family doc, not following through with my husband. No fewer than four medical/mental health professionals were all "treating" my husband and all of them dropped the ball in the spring by not following up when he quit his treatment out of the blue and saying nothing to them, saying to me that meds had too many side effects (I don't doubt that but he refused to talk with doc about trying other meds) and that accepting treatment forced him to deny his true self. My take on it: successful treatment, which was happening at that point, was going to force him to take the final step of breaking off his platonic but romantically invested relationship with a former affair partner. He left this morning to "give her a ride" from the place she's been working about an 8hour drive away. Translation: give her a ride = spend the weekend together. They haven't been sexually involved for years but his mind is so hyperfocused on her that it doesn't matter - I fade into non-existence when she enters his field of vision, literally or not. So, here it is... I told him this morning that we'll be divorcing. He's terrified of divorce and has fought me on it before - he had a horribly traumatic experience over his parents' divorce at age 6 so he has been unwilling to consider it for us. I have my work cut out for me! We've lived separately under the same roof many times in the last several years so we'll hopefully be able to do that again (large old house, separate floors for each of us) for the next 2 years until our second daughter graduates. Meanwhile we can fix the house up for sale, save some money, scope out a lawyer, etc. 

Here's the crux: if I had known then (15 years ago) what I know now about adhd, I am 100% certain that he and I would be happily growing old together. We're an amazing couple - we both have a joie de vivre and a fun and loving spirit. We've healed soooo many things through increasing knowledge but we were already too far gone. I"m sobbing as I type this - he'd be an amazing person to grow old with - he's an incredible man and I still can't believe that he chose to be with me all of those years ago. We had our first child before we were married and I can see, as if it were yesterday, the look of joy and wonderment on his face as he looked at me when I told him we were having a child together. Like nothing imaginable could be finer than creating a family together. And all along, when we're good together, we're amazing together. But he's filled with shame and distraction and impulsivity and inability to take in information and compulsion and fear and... He blames me for so much of it now and so when I call him on his infidelity, as I simply must, he just receives confirmation that I'm dangerous and not to be trusted. Too late, too late. 

Everytime I write something on here, I go on for far too long. My poor adhd spouse - having to focus on the ramblings of such a wordy person for all these years. But I posted because I need to share in a safe place the decision I've made. I'm afraid I'll back down and I have to stay strong. I posted under this heading because I can see the beauty in the person who has treated me, at times, like shit because of the ways his brain works, not because he's a bad person and I want us all to remember that. I posted under the heading of hope because I know that we would have had hope had we just tried differently sooner in our relationship and so many of you who are here and are learning can live that hope. I know that we've been on the right track and that if time had been on our side we could have made it together! Non- spouses: there are potentially beautiful people within those scattered minds and behind those hurtful symptoms. ADHD spouses: try to do what my husband cannot and see and accept the love that is always there (whether it seems that way or not) that keeps your partner by your side through thick and thin, for better and often for much, much worse. I'm going to sign off very dramatically (hey, at least I admit I'm dramatic! Sometimes I make myself roll my eyes) by saying that I'm going to go cry now and grieve for what sometimes was and what should have been forever.

Beginning to let go... Thanks for "listening" and helping me to feel less alone.

This is my first post.  I read Melissa's book, and others, and it all rings true for my husband and I.  We have an appointment on Monday to see a counselor.  My husband doesn't agree that our relationship issues stem from ADHD, but I know that they do.  I "worked on myself" for years, I did counseling, thinking maybe I'm depressed, maybe I have postpartum depression, maybe this is anxiety... it got to the point where my insurance company wouldn't support any more therapy for me as a "reason was not clearly defined."  He was so good at making me believe it was all my fault.  The resources I have read have been the affirmation I was missing all these years, that something bigger was going on.  When my husband was diagnosed, I tried to become an expert on this, reading all that I could, so I could understand him and help him.  As a teacher, I always believed that it was about disorganization and distraction, but it is SO MUCH MORE than that!  I wish he could see this.  If I read him excerpts, he gets mad saying I'm not a doctor and nothing I say is valid.  He makes wild assumptions, like I'm out to get him, or gather information to use against him.  I'm just trying to save us!  He doesn't get it.  Before I knew this information, we tried marital counseling from a therapist who shared that she had ADHD herself (I thought this was unprofessional?).  All the sessions seemed to hyperfocus on things like who should have done the dishes.  At one point, I voiced concern about all the junk in his car and the baby being transported in it (dozens of metal clipboards, heavy books, trash, etc. can be projectiles in a crash) and all the therapist said was, "well, being tidy just isn't a priority for him.  Maybe you should clean out his car."  I was at a loss.  We stopped going because our relationship got worse.  Now we are about to try again and I am so afraid that this new therapist won't know about the non-adhd partner's struggles, and he will just say "told you so."  We have hit rock bottom.  I left him this week and took my children with me (I have a 2 month old and a 3 year old who are suffering from all the dysfunction) when communication had broken down so badly that I couldn't say a single sentence without a defensive attack.  I'm not good at handling all this hurt.  I've gone on so long feeling crazy, unlovable, unattractive, uninteresting, like I'm just a dictator, a micro-manager or a maid.  I can't stop crying, I have no appetite but I am nursing so I need to keep eating.  I don't know if this is even salvageable.  I'm so scared.  Divorce seems like the end of the world, but I don't know if I can live in this hell anymore.  Our mothers got involved and it is ugly.  He and his mother want us to remain under the same roof, "go through the motions" and wait until Monday, like it's going to be a magic fix.  I, on the other hand, feel like it's mental torture, watching him be able to "put on a face" and go along with his life while I am grieving and feeling sick.  He is angry that I left for 2 days with the kids (yet had no problem sending us away for entire weekends so he could do things he wanted to do) so I took them home to him, only to see him put them in front of the TV while he went on the computer.  He didn't even notice it was lunch time!  I don't think he can take care of my kids alone, but he demands 50/50 time with them.  I'm already see signs of hyperactivity in my 3 year old.  I feel completely stupid for not getting out before having children.  Now I feel like I MUST find some hope, I must make this work.  I can't regret my children, they are my heaven.  I have put all my hope into this new therapist on Monday.  I hope we can get somewhere.  I worry I won't say the right things.  I worry I won't be articulate, and I thought about making a list of things to talk about but I don't want to go in looking like a controlling person or like I want to place blame.  I just need to learn how to react to his behaviors but it is so hard.  Can't he see our marriage is dying?  Can't he look at what the future will be like?  For him? For the kids?  Can't he understand the gravity of the situation?  Why can't we get along and be happy?  We have everything to be thankful for, healthy children, no one is dying... At this point I'm rambling.  Sorry.  I am just so sick with fear.