I have been married for 22 years to a man who was recently (2 months ago) diagnosed with ADHD by a well known psychiatrist who specializes in ADHD in children and adults.  However, he only confirmed what I already knew.  Who can lose his keys everyday for 22 years straight?  Anyway, today was a bad day and prompted this question.  My husband makes stupid statements often, and as if they are not stupid the first time, he repeats them about 5 times in a row.  This is so frustrating and embarassing to our children, especially when said in front of others.  For instance this morning my sixteen year old daughter turned on the kitchen tap but I had placed a block of cheese temporarily in the sink on some aluminum foil for lack of room as I was making lunches for the day.  I said something like "Honey, come on..don't you see the cheese?"  She said "oh, I didn't see it there."  It wasn't a big deal, and I can't blame her really-who's expecting cheese to be in the sink anyway?"  Then my husband rushes over and says to our daughter "WHATS WRONG WITH YOU???..." to which she cuts him off and reacts rudely.  He doesn't seem to sense that nothing more needed to be said.  That scenario happens constantly.  Does anyone identify with this?  Is this ADHD or something else?  Minutes after this encounter, as my husband is putting on his shoes to go out the door to work he begins telling the dog "you should go up and poop on xxxxx's bed". (daughters name)  He goes on to repeat this about 5 times.  "OK I say, that's enough."  and out he goes out the door with daughter two steps behind( (he drops her off at school) saying to me "this is why life sucks!" as she goes out the door.  Does this sound familliar to anyone or is  my husband one of a kind?  He has a horrible relationship at best with our daughter and our son (18) pities his father and puts up with his behavior most of the time.  But not always.  I try to keep the children respectful but he has not given them alot to respect.  And when they are disrespectful he blames their behavior on me.  Honestly I  do bear a measure of responsibility for their lack of respect but putting up with his behavior for 22 years I'm pretty sure will earn me sainthood.  So I guess I'm asking about the social issues of ADHD.  I've read that ADHD persons have social problems but is this what they mean?  Is there anybody out there who can indentify or help me understand this?  Or is it just his own strange personality?  I've have so much more to say but it's hard for me to put on paper what I'm feeling and thinking inside. Maybe I haven't explained enough of his behavior for a person to understand. There is so much more to his strange behavior....  Thank you in advance for listening and I'm sorry if I added this in the wrong place.  

sad and frustrated 

I'm in a relationship that's on the rocks, partially due to my ADD. I'm looking for some advice from people who have been through something like this before.

I'm turning 30 in March, and have been dating a wonderful woman for three years. We've been living together for most of the time, but just before Christmas she strayed from the relationship. I found out and forced her to move out around the new year. She didn't cheat, but it was a breech of trust, to say the least.

After things blew up, we started going to counseling, and her concerns finally came out. I learned she's been distraught about my apathy for finding a new job. (I'm a newspaper reporter who's being forced to find a new career becaue of the decline in the newspaper industry). Apparently I make her feel like she can't broach difficut topics with me for fear I'll belittle her concerns or get upset at them. And sometimes I'll act rudely in social situations with her familiy and friends. At a wedding recently, I wasn't feeling up to partying and dancing, so I went and sat by myself. She interpreted that as rude. At Christmas dinner with her family,  I just had to take out the iPhone and read the news after three hours of talking with people I hardly knew.

She never brought up these concerns over the last year or so because she felt like she couldn't get through to me. She's a very bright, naturally driven person who might be pursuing a PhD in the fall. She's also a speech therapist, so she has some idea about how ADD affects kids, and is a very understanding person. But it's understandable that even the most understanding people in the world can give up if they don't see any other way to go.

A week or two ago I was formally diagnosed with ADD, and I'm learning that some of my traits she's complaining about can be atributed to ADD. Somtimes I say sarcastic or rude things to her, and ocasionally I have an outburst, although I think it's fairly rare. I attributed my lack of proactive career hunting to a confused time in my life and a terrible economy, although perhaps ADD contributed to it. In some social situations I appear withdrawn from the conversation, and if it goes on for a long time I'll even take out the iPhone and start reading the news (it was probably a bad idea for me to get the iPhone. It's pretty addictive). It all appears connected to this condition. I've been struggling with these things for my entire life, and have gotten fairly good at controlling them. Unfortunately, the deamons still come out some times, and they're still affecting my relationships.

Now that I know what her concerns are, I've taken immediate steps to address them. I've been more proactive with finding a new career - planning on going back to school in May. I'll leave the iPhone in the car when we go out to dinner. As a behavior therapist, she has suggested some strategies to help me with my outbursts, and she's learning how to approach me in ways that won't set me off or make me feel like I'm being attacked. I'm also on Vyvanse, but still trying to get the dosage right.

We're slowly learning and accepting that some situations are just hard for me to handle. I'm just programmed differently than she is, and when I do things that upset her she's learning that it's not on purpose. This perhaps is the most important breakthrough thus far.

I'm learning why I love her so much. I just feel so comfortable around her, because she has accepted some of these traits for a long time. It just got to the point where she couldn't handle it anymore, and she chose not to deal with it. Now we're dealing with it, and I think we're making progress. I would hate to lose this person who seems so willing to accept me for who I am, flaws and all.

I don't know if we'll stay together in the end, but I'm wondering if anyone has some advice or has been in a similar pre-marital situation before. Some words of wisdom or comfort would be appreciated. My parents' relationship has been affected by my father's inattentiveness and behavior in social situations, and I don't want to end up like that.

Maybe this isn't the right place for this...

I married my husband almost 4 years ago. We didn't know he had ADD. He had been working, at that point, for 6 months at a call center (not a good fit for the ADD brain, but we didn't know he had it.) Having gotten medical insurance for the first time, I found out I have sleep apnea, which requires a very expensive piece of equipment to treat. I already knew I have hypertension and had had a stroke. Between my diagnosis and my treatment, my husband got fired for hanging up on customers. He didn't work regularly for over 3 years, during which I had no treatment for my hypertension and sleep apnea. Our doctor "fired" us because we couldn't pay a bill, and that sort of specialized treatment isn't covered by charity care. I worked 2 and (for a while) 3 jobs and he stayed home and stared at the walls and watched TV. He did no housework and just expected me to take care of everything.

I figured out he was depressed. When treatment for that was only partly successful, I figured out he has ADD. Now he takes meds for that too, and he is working. We have insurance, and I was able to have some long-delayed surgery at Christmastime. I should be on top of the world, right?

But I am still resentful. I feel so much pain that he was unable to force himself to do his job correctly even when being fired could have killed me. Every loss in our life because of his ADD makes me want to cry. Things like not being able to buy a house, or paying 20% interest for his car because his last car was repossessed because I couldn't pay for it and he wasn't working. Or having to use a semester's tuition to get his car out of impound because he didn"t call anyone when it broke down.

I love him, I understand his ADD to some extent, but I am so responsible that I simply can't imagine not working. This resentment is tearing our marrriage apart. But how am I supposed to forget it happened? How do I say it's all right that I could have died because he wouldn't do the job he was hired for? How do I deal with permanent physical effects of 3 years of medical neglect? How do I accept that he's never going to understand that his actions (or inactions) have consequences? That hasn't happened with 2 different ADD meds, so I don't thinlk it's ever going to. Our marriage counselor wants to talk about things like housework schedules, and it feels like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Has anyone else had a happy marriage to someone who has neglected them like my husband has? Is there any way to fix this?

About 6 months ago, me and my husband were about to divorce. Then he quit smoking, and I found out about add in adults and immediately thought he could have it. I showed him internet stuff about add, and he was amazed to see that such a condition exists and that it looked so much like he had it.  He started to see a behavior therapist and I abandoned the idea of divorcing him, since he was doing so much effort to change. The therapist didn´t care about whether he had add or not at first, saying that it wasn´t important, and that he should focus on changing his behaviors no matter what was causing them. Finally, after 5 months of therapy, she decided that he might have add and it would be a good idea to try the medicines. She told him to see a psychiatrist. He has seen two of them. Both did, in less than a few minutes, discard the possibility of him having add, on the basis of his master and PhD degrees and a 10 year marriage. According to them someone with add couldn´t possibly achieve any of these things. They haven´t even asked about what kind of relationship we had, or how he managed to do a master and a PhD. We know how much he has struggled in his studies (I saved him lots of times..), how much longer than normal he has taken to finish his PhD (6 years and a half!), and how bad is our relationship (Actually I don´t know if my husband knows that). The therapy has helped a lot, but not enough, we were really looking for a chance to try the medicines. The doctors have been pedant, rude, not interested in listening, and very very quick to reach their conclusions. And, by the way, they had different conclusions. One of them suggested he has a "mild depression" . The other one has no doubt that he suffers from anxiety disorder, that the behavior therapy is taking too long and should be finished by now, and he should start a psychodrama group therapy (and hasn´t even explained what the hell it is!), and told him not to seek a diagnosis, but to work on the practical problems. How stupid... you just need a few minutes in the internet to know that they´re wrong, the way you treat a person depends on what is causing the symptoms, does it not? It is unbelievable! I still think he has add, because he has ALL the symptoms of it, and this actually makes me feel better about him, to think that he has a neurological problem that explain his behavior (which otherwise means no love, sellfishness, and total lack o care and respect) is a good thing. And best of all, to know it can be treated brings a lot of hope. How could a doctor say it is not important to have a diagnosis? These stubborn doctors won´t even prescribe the medicines to see if they work. Am I wrong? Should he accept the doctors point of view? Is anxiety disorder similar to add? Can a "mild depression" cause the same symptoms as add?