I am 45 years old and married with combination type ADHD with anxiety.  My marriage is falling apart and when we talk I can't control my symptoms and it is pushing my wife further away.  I can't remember dates and names,  emotional outbursts,  crying,  inability to sit still during conversations,  and having to take too many breaks to composer myself in order to try and have a conversation. It seems the harder I try,  the more I push her away.  Do I need more meds,  is this normal,  why does it make me feel like a failure?  I need help,  my doctor just wants to write a prescription and send me an article here and there.  I'm lost! 

Hi everyone,

I am new to the group and this is my first time writing. My husband and I have been married for 1 year. While we were dating he was totally a different person than today. He used to loved me a lot, spent time with me, used to travel with me but things started changing after we got married. He doesn't spend time with me or doesn't like to do things with me such as watching tv or traveling. I started noticing his pattern he will be super happy for two days and will be in his bed all day for rest of the week. During this time he wouldn't work or talk to me. He also mentioned that he can't focus on work if he talks with me or spend time with me. By talking to me he looses interest in his work and it doesn't motivate him to get his work done. And when he is in work mood he will work 24/7, doesn't even eat or sleep. He will do that for 2-3 days and rest of the week he will be in bed and on his phone. This is really painful for me and I feel very lonely at times. When I communicated with him about my feelings he started getting angry and tell me that he will quit his job and only spend time with me all day. Because he can't fo both at the same time. Every now and then we used to fight because I wanted more time from him.  

Recently, I have been reading a lot about ADHD and read the book 'The ADHD effect on marriage'.  I realized may be he has ADHD and talked to our family doctor. She told us that she will refer us to ADHD specialist but because of pandemic and only few clinics in our area we have been waiting for months and haven't got nay appointment yet. In the mean time, my husband situation is getting worse and worse. He doesn't contribute to any household chores, doesn't go outside, doesn't spend time with me. He only reads his book and sometime work on his computer. He feels very irritated if his routine breaks.

Recently I took him outside for 3 hours and his routine broke. It's been a week but he is still not over with that yet. He can't focus on his work as his routine break and he was supposed to do that task on the day we went outside. He is been blaming me and I have said sorry many times and I didn't know that situation will be this worse when I took him outside. He is always threating me that he will kill himself and I will be responsible for this as his routine broke because of me. Two days ago, I found knife under his pillow and he said he doesn't wanna live anymore and he told his parents If he dies I will be responsible for this action. I tried to calm him down at this situation but its been few days he is still not calm, still blaming me for his situation. He won't go to emergency, behaving very bad with me, insulting me infront of his parents over the phone. His parents think I am the criminal here. I am trying to help him but he won't talk to me. 

I don't know what to do in this situation. I feel very helpless. Please help me if you have any idea that might help him.

Hi all, 

Recently I feel like the imbalances in our relationship are starting to cause some serious damage that I worry may become irreversible. 

I have been with my wife since I was 19 which is nearly 11 years now but recently I feel like my own personal growth is pulling me further away from her. She was diagnosed before we were married and has taken learning about and treating her ADHD very seriously. Although from my perspective her knowledge in the area typically is used to excuse her own negative behaviour and criticize any personal failing of mine instead of coming up with solutions to help manage adhd symptoms. For example “you don’t have any working memory problems so why did you forget to do… “. I feel like there are two sets of rules for interacting in our household. There is the extremely charitable, soft tone, walking on eggshells that is necessary to have a productive discussion with her, all of which goes out the window when it comes to addressing something with me. A lot of the time it feels like she is waiting for me to break one of the rules so she can pounce on it and discount the entire conversation. 

Recently she has begun insinuating and suggesting that “I don’t do enough in the relationship” and it is driving me bananas.  I feel like she is completely taking for granted all of the things I am currently doing and it makes me feel invisible. This is particularly distressing because it is the opposite of what is going on in all other aspects of my life. At work I am being recognized as a top performer and being fast tracked for promotions (which wasn’t always the case). Physically, despite the pandemic I am in the best shape of my life thanks to a lot of hard work and personal training. It feels very weird that the primary source of negativity in my life right now is my relationship with my wife. I recognize that there is always room to  grow and improve but I feel like things are already so out of balance in our relationship that her suggesting that I need to do even more is sort of unbelievable.

Here are some of the ways I am currently contributing to the relationship:

Financial - I am solely in charge of 100% of both of our financial responsibilities. We are currently living in the USA while I am working with a top tech company on a TN visa. She is able to live with me while I work but is not permitted to work as she is considered a dependent on my status. That being said there is nothing preventing her from seeking out and applying for her own TN visa in order to work in the USA. While it is true that there is only a specific list of professions for which TN visas apply, there are multiple professions for which she has the requisite university degree and could qualify for. In the early years after we moved to the US she completed some (approx 10,000$ worth) ADHD specific career counseling and learned a lot about what specific attributes she is interested in a career. One of the primary conclusions was that she requires flexible/part time hours and would not be happy otherwise. This essentially rules out all TN visa employment opportunities as they all would require full time work. I support her in all of her coaching and her journey to learn more about herself but I also recognize that this is a choice. She is choosing not to compromise on her part time requirement and is choosing not to work. This is an incredibly privileged position to be in and I’m grateful to be in a position where I can allow her to make that choice but I don’t feel gratitude from her just entitlement.

Sexual - I have also become responsible for maintaining our sexual relationship. My wife enjoys sex but she does not initiate. It’s sort of like for 99% of time she is asexual and then during sex a switch is flicked and suddlenly she remembers herself and turns back into the woman I fell in love with. She will be incredibly present and responsive and loving. Afterward she tends to say things like “thank you so much, i really needed that” or “we really need to do that more”, or “I’m so lucky to have you, I can’t believe you did x, y, and z for me” but once the afterglow wears off it’s like the switch gets flicked back and we are back to square one again. Suddenly all the warmth is gone and she’s back to treating sex like a chore she puts up with for my benefit.

Persona Growth - During her time in the US I have strived to be 100% supportive of all her and I try to encourage her in whatever endeavors she undertakes. When her ADHD career coaching went past the 6 month limit she had previously set I did not complain, I said “If it is beneficial to you then it is beneficial to me and money well spent”. When she wanted a specific ADHD therapist who was outside our healthcare network and didn’t qualify for the 24 paid sessions through my workplace I did not complain or push back, I said “I trust you to find the right therapist for yourself and if this is who you want I’m on board”. This year when she wanted to start an ADHD coaching education program I didn’t quiz her about future profitability or how we were going to pay the money back, I asked her about what made her excited about it and encouraged her to take the opportunity. No matter what she is getting involved with I am always in her corner. 

Chores and pets - My wife takes care of our pets (2 cats and dog) better than a lot of people take care of their children. Growing up her family had lots of animals and a surprising amount of them lived for way longer than those animals typically do. Animals have always been something she is passionate about and this is an area where it is very clear that she is contributing more than I. For the rest of the chores I try to cook at least 3 times a week (I’m pretty good at it and paid for college working in kitchens). I also try to make sure I’m a net positive in terms of cleanliness. I can’t always clean everything but I strive to at least clean up after myself. I’ll be the first to admit that there are definitely times where I fall short, especially when I am super slammed at work with late nights and early mornings. The problem I have with chores is that when I am doing a lot of them I start to realize just how little it actually takes to sort out a lot of our long standing problem areas and it really makes me resent my wife. She has so much more free time than me and yet I’m still the one who has to sort out these household chores. 

At this point in time I’m at my wits end. I can’t really deal with all my contributions being erased and I’m certainly not handling the conversations about it well. I think overtime she’s come to take a lot of what I’m offering for granted and I feel like we need to recalibrate. I don’t really know how  to do this though. One idea is to completely separate finances. This would mean she would have to move back to Canada which isn’t exactly as extreme as it sounds since we are planning to move back to Canada within the year anyway. My hope would be that after remembering what it is like to need to work to support yourself and understanding that money isn’t just money it’s also hours of your life that you don’t get back,  she might be a little bit more appreciative about me supporting us both financially. 

If you’ve been in a similar situation I would be really interested about how you rebalanced your relationship.

Thanks for taking the time to read all of that mess.

Hi, 

I am married to my spouse with ADHD combined type for almost a decade, together a bit longer than that. We have two young kids, and suspect that the older one may have ADHD as well. This prompted my spouse to get tested at the end of last year and the outcome was confirmation of what she had long suspected (her parent was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult too about 2 decades ago). My wife is trying medication and is on a waitlist for a therapist. With medication she has stated repeatedly that she is unwilling to live with the side effects and has been clear that she sees this as a non-vital element of treatment. She has repeatedly threatened that if the next medication does not work she will give up.

I have my own issues non-ADHD and started working with a therapist recently. I know and see my own issues impact on our relationship and the ways I have responded to her ADHD as a result.   However, as I grow and change my patterns of interaction, and express my needs as a person (for the first time in our relationship), she has closed herself off to me, become increasingly defensive to my feedback (something that has always been a thing anyway), and lashed out at my needs with insensitive comments. When I have called her out on these responses, I feel that she uses her ADHD as an excuse and fails to take responsibility for her behaviors and how our relationship has degraded over time (e.g. "I can't take feedback because of my rejection sensitivity"., "i can't remember what you said, you need to tell me what you need", "stop telling me what you need, I just want things to be natural", "stop comparing things to
the early years of our relationship, that was my hyper focus").

It has become clear to me through my own therapeutic process that my wife is unable to handle constructive communivation about our relationship, and has to reject anything negative or positive that is said about her, and negatives especially have to be placed on others. 

I feel forced to accept her feedback and truth no matter how inaccurate her perceptions of a situation may be for me (her memory issues really makes it hard to  remember things for how they actually occurred, and I recognize that usually the truth lies somewhere in the middle of how we each perceive a situation). If I push back on anything I get stonewalled and more often than not, things are usually all or nothing, or black and white with her. There are times where I have asked for an apology for the very real harm she has caused to me through her impulsive and thoughtful comments, but she refuses to apologize, blaming her RSD and the way she was forced to apologize by others. But fails to see how those dynamics is causing very damaging dynamics in our relationship. It really pains me that I can't trust my spouse to apologize for when her behavior has hurt me. I want to move forward in our relationship and am committed to working on things.

I have let go of saving our marriage on my own, something I thought I had to do, because for the bulk of it, she blamed me and my issues for our conflicts. For most of the relationship I fully believed I did something wrong or deserved to be treated this way because I was not perfect enough to be loved as passionately as I was for those first few years. She blamed me for how I responded to her impulsive and hurtful lashing out, seeing me as the irrational one, without seeing how she triggered me and played a very real role in the dynamic. Now, I see clearly my part but also how she took advantage of my own issues to shift the blame off of herself out of self-protection of her ego. But the thing is she has to work on her part and the very clear role her ADHD has played to slowly destroy our relationship. So far, she keeps telling me to stop pushing her, so I did. I read the ADHD and marriage book for my own sanity and then backed way off. Reserving my efforts only for times where I felt that I was hurt (a boundary that I won't drop) and for times where her behaviors are impacting our kids. It seemed to be helping, kind of.

I am feeling isolated and alone. No one seems to fully understand what it is like to be the non-ADHD spouse dealing with all these symptoms.
I am educating myself, reading books, listening to podcasts etc., and ulimately, still working on my own stuff throughout this. I also need emotional connection and intimacy and hoped that I would have a supportive spouse throughout my own healing.
For example, I recently asked why she has been so nonresponsive to me when I express a need for emotional connection and empathy, and why she seemed able to offer it to others, or in the beginning of the relationship. She told me the empathy she demonstrates to others is because they are novel and she can hyper focus, and the empathetic human I knew the first few years of our relationship was just the hyper focus and can't be called upon now when I need it. This put me in a grief spiral for days. 

I would really just like a space to find emotional support and to vent. Any support, insights or wisdom on my story would be appreciated.