well... here I am.  And hello.   I need help, I need support... I am SO tired.   I've been married to an amazing man for 27 years.  ADHD has entered our marriage for the past 3.  Although it has been present always, we've just KNOWN about it for the past 3.  And in fairness my partner's symptoms while present and I can recall times it surfaced, it has only escalated in the past several years.   We have REALLY been on the struggle bus lately and we had a HUGE fight today and we are at the point where we need to start doing some serious work. So there's the landscape.  Here are my main issues:

clearing the path...to my detriment:  I KNOW i do things that are not helpful but sometimes are just easier if I just do them...  IF we had children I would have not been a helicopter parent, but a BULLDOZER one.  CLEAR THE PATH.   I do everything in my power to make my husband's life easier... as when his life is easier . so is mine.  But that has been at my expense.   I know that and I know that is not a good coping mechanism.   It is exhausting and it's set us up to fail.  While his life has as much ease as possible - mine is NOT easy.  I "do all the things" and I am exhausted.  

shove it down so I don't get a bad reaction:   if I say something or ask if something is going to be done or question an action or task... it is interpreted by my partner as criticism.   This one has become a HUGE deal.  I also realize this is why he has not stayed at a job in recent years very long.   He's NEVER happy and NEVER appreciated enough by an employer.   He has successfully run his own business for YEARS in the past, seemingly quite happily, but he is not good at taking direction.  Having said all that - what it causes me to do is NOT say anything.   so I don't set him off.   He reacts poorly and often hurts my feelings.   He does not intend to and I know that.  But it does.  he's not abusive.. he is just angry and very defensive and sees it as criticism and offers excuses or the good old "well, I just won't do it at all if I can't do it right" so I have been conditioned to just not say ANYTHING

What kind of mood are we in today:  cue the eggshells - my life is dictated by his mood.   So I am constantly on vigil.... that's not fair to me.

the other ADHD common issues, finances, time management mildly impact our relationship but not nearly to the extent as it does others.   these two are less common issues for us.  

I grew up in a family that fought all the time.   I think as a result of that I do the opposite and are COMPLETELY conflict avoidant. 

I have a counseling appointment next week - and I have asked that he see a counselor as well and he is open to doing the work .  He is on an anti depressant and while that has stabilized his high high and low lows... Im not sure the meds are truly helping his overall mental well being. 

I need support from people who "get it" - this is all so brand new to me, currently reading Dr. Orlovs book and probably will participate in the self study. I have also read ADHD & US as well as "Is it You, Me or Adult ADHD".  Truthfully BOTH of those books leave me feeling exhausted and slightly hopeless. 

thanks for the ear, getting it OUT sometimes helps... but I would appreciate any insight anyone can offer

I have been with my ADHD husband for almost 8 years and married 8 months. I love him but not as much as years ago. I have always been an organised calm happy go lucky person although I am quite a controlling person but not any more. I am taking anti depressants and having counselling I feel angry frustrated sad and tired. 
my husband refuses to talk about his adhd and to seek any kind of help or counselling. We argue a lot of the time we do not have an intimate relationship and he works ridiculous hours he gets up very early and has so much energy by the time he gets home he is burnt out and wants to go to bed. He knows I am unhappy but doesn't understand why even though I have told him a hundred times. I could go on and on about his behaviour but I am sure you all know what goes on with an adhd adult. I don't know where to turn next

I've been married to my husband for 6 years. I had no idea anything was different about his mind when we were dating or in the first year. We were both working and contributing to the household.

During our second year he told me he was having panic attacks and always suffered from anxiety. I accepted it and tried to be supportive. Unfortunately I got sick and couldn't work for a year. I still tried to have meals ready, take the trash out, and do the grocery shopping because he was working 12 hour days. I drained my savings paying for my care and household expenses. When I had nothing left he told me I had to go back to work or we'd lose our house. We'd bought a fixer-upper that didn't get fixed up, I assumed, because I was sick.

Year 3 I took a job in a new state and he became a full time student. He was helping around the house. After graduating in year 4 he got a job, then lost it due to the pandemic. I encouraged him to be an entrepreneur. I earned a promotion that year and my husband's business was starting to take off.

Going into year 5, he wanted to buy a house because he was tired of dealing with our landlord. Unfortunately, I was an essential employee in an office that required me to be there in person 9-12 hours a day. We sat down and figured out what we wanted in a house. My must-haves were a kitchen with a lot of counter space and a walk-in closet; a garage would be nice. He wanted a space he could work from. Because he did a great job buying and selling our last home, I told him I trusted him.

He decided he found the perfect house and because I trusted him, I told him to make an offer. The offer was way over asking and to my chagrin, it appraised at the offered price. We were under contract before I ever saw the house, which had an even less kitchen counter space, no walk-in closet, and no garage, but a room he fell in love with for his office. He said he'd renovate to improve the things I wanted. Our first week in the place, the downstairs flooded and we lost all our flooring and part of a wall. 

I had to spend a month out of town and he promised it would be a whole new house by the time I got back. Roughly twice a week I'd ask for updates or photos but he said he wanted to surprise me. The night before I was supposed to come home, he was agitated when we were talking. He said he had to clean or I'd be upset. He's right that I was upset but not because of the cleaning. It was because the house was exactly as I'd left it. He said he hadn't felt like doing the work.

Next he shelved his business. Any time I asked him when he was going to work, he said he wasn't in the right headspace, or he just didn't feel like it, or he was having existential thoughts, or it was too overwhelming. He stopped doing anything around the house. He also stopped taking care of himself. I was ready to leave when he told me he gets overwhelmed and then depressed. He agreed to get help for depression.

When we lost our heater, he had zero urgency to get it fixed. His office was hot and that's good enough for him. We got a small space heater after a week. I caved at the month mark and got one that would heat the upstairs. Only then did he finally want repairs as much as I did. This was my fault for not being hot all the time like him. 

Around Christmas, my deck spontaneously combusted. Last month, my house was struck by lightning. No repairs have been made. The flood-damanged floors were finally replaced 10 months later when I found someone willing to do the work. I still need to get the walls fixed and as for the rest of the renovation? Light fixtures are sitting on the floor in their boxes, window coverings are still on the floor in their boxes, the kitchen shelving my husband picked is underneath his chair at the table, and the same t-shirt has been on the bathroom floor since he took his first shower here. He confessed that he picked this house because he was tired of looking at houses and I wouldn't like any house. 

This house turned my 20 minute commute into a 40 minute commute. After changing jobs and having to commute during rush hour, it became a 60 minute commute. Now that everyone's back to work, it's more often a 90 minute commute. I'm exhausted. There aren't enough words to describe the resentment I'm feeling about his decision to buy this house because it started with the words, "I trust you."

He finally saw a psychiatrist who diagnosed him with ADHD and sees a therapist once a week. For the last 3 months he's said he was going to resume his business but he doesn't. He hasn't helped around the house. He spends his days playing video games and not showering or changing clothes until I yell at him to get away from me because I can't take the smell. I know I can't blame him because he didn't choose to be this way but I need somewhere to put my anger. I keep fantasizing about having a rental closer to work that's intact, clean, and smells nice and I'd actually have energy to do things at night and on weekends. If it wouldn't bankrupt me, I'd be doing it already. I'm at the end of my rope. I love the man my husband was but I don't know how much longer I can live with the man he is.

I am writing to this forum because I feel very isolated in dealing with my ADHD husband. We have been married for 23 years and have a 24 year old daughter. My husband was diagnosed in 2020. He takes medication which he says helps his concentration but the issue we are having is that he also drinks heavily in periods and then his behaviour becomes out of control. Our daughter has always needed extra support in that she has dyslexia, adjustment disorder and an eating disorder. She has not been diagnosed with ADHD. I have read many of the posts here and so much of it rang true, even things that I had not previously connected to ADHD.

When the lockdown started, my husband, daughter and I were all living in our family home in isolation. My husband stopped drinking when Covid struck because he was worried about his business going under. He kept sober for 4-5 months and it was during this period that I could tell that he was not able to connect with everyday things that would normally take place at the house. He can't for example sit down and eat with us without getting up from his chair and walking around, he would constantly talk to us and not with us and he became very hyper focussed on things that were 'wrong' in our house or on things that needed to be fixed. He seemed in his own world most of the day, just obsessing over things such as investing in shares, saving money, and was becoming very resentful with the lack of support from his staff who were working remotely. I made him see an ADHD specialist and he was finally diagnosed and he is on meds now but he is not supposed to drink with it because it is affecting how affective the meds are. He started off well but things have recently become a lot worse. 

My husband has had his own business for 20 years. It is his baby. I have been happy to let him get stuck into work and keep us financially secure. I have had part time work but not a proper career so I have been managing the house with all the chores that comes with it. Many years later we have a very comfortable life, our own business, several properties and we have built up a large pension portfolio. But all this have come at a prize. My husband has always been a workaholic and he has put his charisma and intellect to very good use. So, the business is thriving and he enjoys the status and wealth that come with that. In the meantime, I have focussed my attention on our daughter who has needed a lot of support with school and later studies. For this reason I have had to make many sacrifices over the years to enable the family unit to function. I have almost single handedly brought up our daughter in every aspect. My husband has never showed much interest in her, other than making sure she always has the latest gadget and paid for her private education. He would never come to school functions, hardly engaged with other parents, help her with school work etc. To this day they never spend any time together just the two of them. So there is little togetherness.

Over the years I have become used to walking on eggshells because you never knew when my husband would loose his cool. Both my daughter and I have been regularly subjected to horrific tantrums and erratic behaviour that we both have found difficult to cope with. But, to the outside world he is Mr Charming. Nobody knows. It is my own fault because I have never confided in anyone. We have no family still alive in the UK so our support network is almost non-existing. We are therefore the only two people that knows the situation apart from perhaps some of his staff who undoubtedly also have been experiencing is aggression.

7 years ago our daughter became severely ill with an eating disorder after battling too many balls in the air (college/new home/first boyfriend that was a narcissist) and I had to dedicate my entire time to nurture her back to a healthy life again. My husband became very jealous of all the time I spent with her and was often hot tempered whenever he witnessed her panic attacks and would shout and scream at her instead of trying to calm the situation. I told him I would deal with her and that he needed to walk away from such situations. As a result, my husband now spends most of his day either at work, in the gym or in the pub hanging out with friends, where as I am left with all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, dog walking, gardening and supporting my daughter in her new little flat. On top of that I am managing several investment properties that we have bought because "he wants another income stream'. I obviously feel guilty that he is the only person with a proper income and I therefore feel that I have no other option than to do it all. We are also not physically as close as we were due to an episode 4 years ago when I discovered that he had had some holiday fling whilst on a business trip. I wanted him move out but he begged to be forgiven and I surrendered. My daughter was suicidal at the time and I just could not face dealing with it all on my own. We have a fragile situation with him and her and I try my best to smooth things over.

But sometimes, I just want to speak up for myself and put my foot down. Like one evening this week in the local pub. I had joined him in the pub on a rare occasion and my husband had already had a few drinks when I arrived. At the end of the night he turn to the barmaid and tells her that her hair is really lovely, that she must have lost weight and that it was great that her boobs had not reduced. I could not believe what I was hearing and the barmaid laughed embarrassingly and commented that it was an odd thing to say in front of your wife! The following morning I pointed out that it had been very embarrassing for me to sit through his comments but he told me to get a grip and stop being a drama queen. I pointed out that I was simply not going to be belittled like that in front of our friends. He then started verbally abusing me. Called me every name under the sun and ended with the usual "I'm leaving you', "I'm divorcing you" in addition to very nasty personal comments about my looks. He also said that I had ruined his life and that he wants revenge. I am not scared of him and that he will attack me but I am very alarmed about being in this situation with someone that does not think rationally and who clearly is unstable.

Today I have done a lot of thinking. I am coming to the point in my life where I don't want to waste any more time not living my life fully. I feel like I have been an extra in my own life and that all I am doing is supporting both my daughter and my husband so that they can go out and live their life to their best ability. I am desperate for some time for myself so that I can decide what I am going to do moving forward. This afternoon he still maintains that we are over and I accept that he feels the way he does. He resents me because everything in his life is not working out the way he wanted. And he says that he is in a loveless relationship even though we have just arrived from a trip away when we both had a lovely time.

This is not the first time he has threatened to leave when I hold him to account but I have a gut feeling that he will go through with it this time. What I am mostly worried about is that when he takes control of THAT situation I will find myself yet again unable to feel safe from his temperament. In my experience he is always more aggressive under pressure and does not listen to sense. He just escapes to the pub where he can spend hours talking to his 'friends' and returns drunken at the end of the night. I just know that he would want to punish me if we do go through with a divorce, even if it is him who is leaving.

I have considered e-mailing his psychiatrist that initially prescribed the meds because it is only going to get worse if he keeps drinking this heavily. In the past 6 months I have often woken up to him urinating in the bedroom because he does not know where he is when he wakes up in the middle of the night. Absolutely horrendous. He does not even care or clean up. I am the cleaner after all.

This does sound a lot like a huge whinge but I just have to tell someone what I am going through. I need to know what to expect in terms of abuse, when to seek solicitor support (he knows all the good ones) and at the same time take care of myself amidst it all. If anyone here is from the UK, do you know any good therapists with ADHD experience that I could potentially contact so that I can start to deal with the trauma I have been through all these years. I would be grateful for any advice that you may have.