I ask couples to clarify their personal boundaries so that they are more likely to work as partners. When you first start this process, though, it can feel as if you are getting “rejected,” particularly if those boundaries have to do with intimacy issues. Let me help you understand why setting boundaries is an affirmation of your relationship, not rejection.
Are you angry that your ADD spouse is able to focus on something of great interest to him, and not to anything you want him to do (like the dishes, or childcare)? If so, you would not be alone.
It has been my observation that people with in ADD marriages violate each other’s personal boundaries quite frequently, and in both directions. This becomes a huge issue for the relationship, as both partners become locked in an unwitting struggle for control, lose respect for each other, and often lose a sense of themselves as unique individuals in a way that diminishes them individually and as a couple.
Do you have the experience where everything you do seems to end in conflict? Are you in the middle of a conversation and suddenly your spouse is going on and on about how you used the wrong word? One of our readers wrote about it this way: "the entire conversation is ignored and the one word is focused on, whether it be to accuse me of changing facts, or blaming her for something, taking a stab at me or just flat out missing the point...there is so much anger and unhappiness ... I have stopped talking since everything I say gets disected and used against me in some way."
