First of all, I appreciate Melissa's words and experience, and all of the people on this site so much. All of you dealing with ADHD in your marriages, your advice and experiences are getting me through the days right now. I wish I could buy each of you a cup of coffee or something:-)

I am so mired in a morass of sadness and helplessness that at the moment, I don't know where I went. I would appreciate any ideas anyone out there has. May be random, and long, but here goes: 

Hubby was diagnosed with ADHD by family doctor a few years ago, in early 40's. DH is currently ill and on leave at home. His condition is difficult for him and painful. We have been together 12 years and have 2 young school aged children. Family doc prescribed medication, but did not assert the need for any type of therapy or anything to go along with it. DH primarily used meds to work and to wake up in the morning (terrible sleep issues). DH is an artist and brilliant, successful in his field. He is charming and knows everyone. I don't think anyone who knows us would believe how horrible our home life has become.  The ADHD makes it increasingly difficult for DH and I to be together and function happily. I am miserable. He is not very happy, either. He cannot take his ADHD medication right now because it interacts badly with other meds he must take for his current condition, so the situation has degenerated fast. 

First issue: DH refuses counseling. Period. Everything from blatant honesty "I just can't take sitting there and dissecting everything over and over, it is like torture, like acid being poured all over me," to belittling it "I am my own best counselor, I am smarter than anyone else," to blame shifting "you are the one with the problem, you go to a counselor," to stonewalling, "counseling doesn't work, people don't change, you don't like me for who I am." I realize that this is partly just defensiveness and fear, but when I tell him that he may lose me and beg him to try it, and he won't, where am I supposed to go from there? We have been in this loop for a year or two now. 

Second: The fighting and tension is out of control. I have become a negative, sad, nagging person who is perpetually tired and hurt. DH is defensive, very quick to anger, quick to yell. We just can't resolve these things. I am trying. DH is very bright, an extraordinary debater, and wears me down. He picks apart the words I say and dissects things until I am in tears with frustration. Frequently he somehow ends up being the victim and I am a terrible, angry person and that is the problem. Here is an example: He makes huge messes and then does not clean then up. Starts construction projects without talking to me about them first and then can't finish them. Moves heavy junk into a main pathway to the garage and then just leaves it there. 2 weeks ago, DH decided to paint the room he sleeps in and convert it into an art studio. Great. Except, he used a helper and moved every, single thing, which was a ton of accumulated junk, out into our main living area. Including his own bed! I walked in one day and it was everywhere. Piles of things. Baskets full of things, bags of clothes and heavy pieces of furniture. And it has all sat there for two weeks now. You can't even walk through our house, literally. It looks like a pigsty, like crazy people live here. I can't function with it like this. He won't let me just move all of it to the basement, isn't physically capable of finishing the renovation to the studio himself, his helper is out of town, and he is just stuck. Can we talk about this? Are you kidding? All I said was, "This stuff everywhere is affecting me. I need for us to make it a priority to finish whatever you are doing in that room so we can clear it out." He heard some frustration in my voice, it's true, and that became the issue! That I was always mad at him! But you know what? I was PISSED when I walked in and saw the mess, and I waited until I was pretty calm. Every single time I try to tell him, "I don't feel like you hear me, I don't feel like you acknowledge or respect my feelings about this, your decision affects me," there is a huge blowup.  I told him once, "I could deal with anything, really, if you just spoke to me in a respectful, loving way, and if you just showed some empathy for my feelings," and you know what? He yelled, "I DO have empathy, I am NOT talking to you in a bad way. You are overly sensitive! I DID apologize!" To me, an apology that is yelled at someone is not helpful. I am at the end of my rope. I feel like if I committed every fiber of my being to not reacting to anything, to letting him do whatever he wanted, to being careful not to show any "negative" emotion or response, like walking on eggshells, I could live in peace, but I just can't do it. 

I tried Melissa's book! I had him read it, which he did, all in one sitting, and he told me that many of the things in it did not apply to him, that my anger is the problem, and basically dismissed trying any of the things. I just can't keep doing this. I cannot imagine one, or ten, or thirty more years like this. I am a strong, smart person and I can't believe how trapped I feel or how unable I am to change this! And why do I keep trying the same things over and over, when each time, they end in the same awful argument and don't work? How do I go about accepting that this may just not work, and how do I stay strong and believe that I am doing my best, and it is not my fault? 

Third: I am falling apart. I am in so much pain I feel like my chest actually hurts. My world is unraveling. I just don't get it. He is a smart guy. The consequence of not fixing this is going to be separating him from me and his children, maybe forever. I have calmly told him this. I cannot even fathom ending my marriage. I am loyal, committed, and I love him. And I feel like the world's worst person because he is sick and hurt and there is no one else around to help take care of him. His family will HATE me. My children will suffer. Our house is a nightmare, half finished in a renovation, and we don't have the money or ability to get it in shape to put it up for sale in what is the world's worst real estate market. And my heart will just be broken in two. I have never cried so much in my life. I am so exhausted, I feel like a shell and about a hundred years old. It takes all my energy to be "normal" at work and around other people, and to try to be sane around my lovely children, who are the greatest gift of my lives. 

If there were an empty, free apartment next door and one of us could just quietly move into it so I could think, and remove some strife and conflict from my life for a while, I would be ecstatic. But there isn't. We have a small house. No family in the area. No money--he is on disability. He is home ALL THE TIME now that he is sick. My job entails me not working during the summer, and I am already very worried about the dynamic of this structure being removed from mine and my children's lives. I don't have a lot of free time and my home has turned from a respite to a place I dread being. 

I appreciate everyone listening. I am sure many would say, "Why don't you just cut your losses and leave? Why would you put up with this?" And I don't mean to sound like I am not able to control my own life or that poor me, I don't have the power to change anything. I guess I just can't BELIEVE that two smart people can't do better than this. That I have to give up and walk away and this can't be resolved. I must be codependent to a point, always searching for him to validate me despite the repeated failures on my part to receive this validation.

To me perhaps the hardest thing is this: my husband is THE person I want to turn to when I hurt, when I feel someone has been unkind to me or treated me unfairly, when I need loving support or advice in dealing with a difficult situation. He is the person I trust most in the world in that we began our lives together, more than 20 years ago, with a foundation of mutual respect, honesty, caring, understanding, etc, etc. and have created a wonderful family and a (mostly) comfortable home and life together. BUT where our relationship has led us, through both of our mistakes and misjudgements and, especially, through untreated ADHD, addictions, and all of the conflicts therein, is to a place where I feel pain and betrayal at his hands. It seems I can't win: I don't want to separate, although we did for several months during which time he resisted ending our marriage so vehemently that I found it nearly impossible to proceed. Some changes and commitments were made and we reconciled. I cannot live in the constant state of turmoil of the past several years because it's eating me up from the inside out. I cannot see how I can accept his behaviours though, because they are so hurtful to me. 

My husband was diagnosed last year at the age of 48. Because of living with untreated/undiagnosed ADHD for so long combined with a challenging childhood, he is a very intelligent man who has always felt stupid and ashamed and has learned a myriad of coping strategies which, although he developed them to serve a purpose (such as building a freelance career in a creative field to maximize his skills and prevent disorganization, etc from causing problems at work), make it very difficult for him to do so many things. He currently struggles with aspects of his career, his education (he's on his 4th or 5th year of a 2 year masters degree with no end in sight), relating to family members (he won't talk with my mother at all and our 20 year old daughter hasn't been able to share with him her plans for moving into her own apartment because he's too distant), organization, time management, remembering things, participating in the household, maintaining healthy friendships, and most of all, our marriage. He has learned to be suspicious and defensive: last night I was muttering innocently to the recycle bin and he actually ran out of the house because he was certain that I was criticizing him under my breath which started a whole chain reaction in his head. 

During the past several years we have survived so much: multiple affairs (his), alcoholism (his), financial struggles, family blowouts, marital blowouts. All of this on top of the stuff that life already throws at "normal" couples if such a thing exists, like cancer and death in the family, job crises and raising teens. Add to all of that the other layer of ADHD challenges: he doesn't notice chores that need doing, doesn't even remember that I've asked for him to do them or that I've tried to implement systems, then he gets upset when I react with frustration or resentment because he says that it's unfair that I didn't just ask him to do the chores! Sheesh.

The object of his most recent affair/infatuation is getting married this spring, to a man she cheated on with my husband, and still she's garnering as much of DH's attention as ever. Lives halfway across the country but is still more present in his mind than I am. I get it - it's hyperfocus, infatuation, dopamine, and all that, but good grief, I'm tired of it all. This is the rollercoaster part. After an epiphany last spring regarding this woman and some lightning bolts of awareness regarding his inability to write a paper even though he's a talented speaker, my DH sought a diagnosis of ADHD. Up the roller coaster to a high point! Then he started to grieve the loss of the girl and we went down to the pits again. Enter ADHD meds and counselling - things are looking up! Then a crisis hits and back to the depths of despair and, oh yeah, says he, I actually can't live without this girl in my life. Then Dr. suggests an increase in dosage to help with focus at school and, suddenly, things look balanced again. In fact, this past Feb he was finally on a fairly large dose and the results were very positive! He was going to bed at a regular hour and following a routine. Since we were going to bed at the same time we actually had opportunity to cuddle up in bed and chat or make love before going to sleep (a routine which has not been commonplace for more than 10 years!) He seemed to be getting a lot of his own work done and still have time left over to be a husband and father in the household. His relationship with our daughters seemed easy and open for the first time in years. He stopped asking me to do things that he had forgotten. And, most of all, he had an epiphany regarding the girl in his life, telling me that he realized their relationship was not real but was simply a high, that it felt no different than drinking beer used to. And that with this realization in place he would no longer feel the need to pull away from me as he's been doing so often for so long. Stupid me, I believed him. But next thing I know he's quit treatment and, thud, I've plummeted down the roller coaster again. 

I give up. I've told him I don't have the energy to fight against his interacting with women anymore (although if/when he starts sleeping around again, that'll be the last goodbye) and he's ecstatic. Brain full of dopamine, or endorphins, or whichever it is. He gets to have me around to tend to the gamut of needs at home and, when he's not stimulated enough he'll get on the internet and spend some time with the "true love of his life." Retch. I am married to two men: the one who I want to be with, who I only see when he's in treatment and doing the hard work, and the other one who I really kind of want to push down a flight of stairs. I can't reach out to him or appeal to his sense of what's right because he can't hear those voices in his own head. He's so defensive that I really can't tell him anything, certainly can't suggest what course he should follow regarding his ADHD. He is so much the puppet of his symptoms, and the actions that he takes because of his symptoms are so very extreme that there's no way I can avoid reacting to them. Try avoiding the symptom-response-response pitfall when your dear one tells you that he has learned so much about how to be in a relationship from the 25-year-old and that if only you could act more like her dear... Here I sit, reading Melissa's book and wishing we could do the activities at the end around household chores but there's a gigantic elephant in the room named "The homewrecker who just won't quite leave." There is absolutely no point whatsoever in raising the issue of equity in dishwashing when all that his brain seems to see or hear is a loop replaying about how he married the wrong woman. And yet, when I actually went so far two years ago as to sit him down across a lawyer's table from me and begin to "set us both free" he absolutely wouldn't do it. He showed up, began the process only because I was so angry and because I insisted on it, but then point-blank refused before we could actually begin. Honestly, I've seen enough potential for a terrific marriage, when we're BOTH working on it but living with potential is exhausting and demoralizing.

This week the roller coaster is at an all-time low. I feel so lonely and demoralized that it's hard to hold my head up. Meanwhile, life goes on and I have a job to go to and a family to care for. I keep thinking that, if I had stayed down at the bottom of the ride it might not feel so bad but, in February I had such incredibly high hopes for us - higher than they'd been in years. Meanwhile I know that there are actually worse things in the world - someone close to my daughter was just given weeks to live - and I want to feel as though I can grab hold of life and enjoy, but it's so very hard with all of this on my mind and with our home feeling like a minefield, never knowing when a symptom will be triggered. 

Why is the idea of "trying differently" so hard for ADHDers to grasp and agree to?  I'm just having a bad day of frustration over my relationship that ended.  We spent a great year and 1/w and then we spent a year at each other's throats - but always coming back to each other - and that didn't work.  I suggested that the way we were working on things wasn't working, so how about trying differently -  that was not welcomed. We talked of ADHD and he finally got a diagnosis after he told me he could no longer try anymore.  I told him i could forget the past and rebuild with what we've learned- he said no - too much hurt from the past.   I used to reach out to him and he to I as we both have family members that are ill, but as I realized i needed to take my own medicine (and advice from here) and try differently.  Differently with him and with me (yes confession, i still hold out hope he comes to his senses).  Haven't communicated (any form) in 12 days (longest for us) and i don't plan to.  Working on myself and regaining self esteem currently, but have my days where it seems like such a waste - so as my topic says - why is it so hard to agree to try a differently way?  And why does it seem that it's the male ADHDers that i read on this board and others who, on the majority (exceptions to this duly noted!), refuse to move past the past and rebuild?  Is it the grief of admitting it was part of the problem?  Just such a waste!  Thanks for comments - everyone hang in there!

Kit Kat

I have coped all these years of marriage to ADD husband by distracting myself, rationalizations, prioritizing, working for the greater good, having occasional tantrums, and denial all while being confused.  Yes, those are exactly what a sane person does to cope with a situation that is not to their liking but needing to accommodate.  I am new to the realization that DH has ADD.   With this clarity, I am glad for the confusion to be lifted.  As I process what has gone on all these years and how we are today, I see how good I actually did with it and how I survived the confusion and "took it on the chin" all the times I felt unloved, overwhelmed and alone.  Now that my children are grown and I have this new information, I am trying to face things, learn more and be the person I want to be.  Denial gets to go be dealt with now that I have a clue what has been going on.  I don't want to use distractions (kids, house, events, work etc) because I want to live a life with passion and be real and true to myself.  As I work through these steps, I am angrier than ever as I take into account the habits we have in place where I am expected to clean up the mess, schedule, care for the family, forgive, change my expectations, (I could go on but you all know).  It has become a system of me being responsible.  I want to cultivate a state of mind where I can tell my life story (to myself) and give myself the accolades of what I have done rather than constantly beating myself up because things for 35 years seemed so frustrating and wrong somehow.  As I try to put my anger on the ADHD rather than my husband, I am so sad we didn't know, that I seem to have lost myself, that I didn't know how to be true to myself with all this.  And DH does not have a clue other than he is trying to do the best he can and can only focus on a small part of the moment he is in with whomever he is with at the time. His main focus seems to be to detach from anything unpleasant, detach from responsibility and distract himself with idle activities. I accomplished what I wanted to.  DH has self confidence and believes in himself and is happy.  When young, I thought that was a good thing to work for because he would have to be the breadwinner and I would support him in all ways.  I thought he would love me for it.  It feels to me that he hates me because I have turned into an unhappy, workaholic harpy. And he is not the breadwinner. He has become very proud of himself for his ability to manipulate me. He has quite a big opinion of himself. He is an "expressive,expressive" if you know what that means - no introspection. I feel manipulated.  His reality is now so off, I am so alone.  It is too late for us to do anything to change our relationship - other than me leaving.  We are in our 60's and looking at retirement with my 401K and his outstanding business loan he took out 20 years ago and "just didn't get around to paying off".  Meanwhile his "babytalk" and jokes and casual, cocky manor that seem endearing to others makes me want to hit something.  That's not the ADHD.  That is just from lack of responsibility and the confidence I worked so hard to support.  Thanks for letting me vent yet again.  Just trying to work this out of me and know I am not alone.