Forum topic: How do I accept that I'll never have a life if I stay married to him

Fri Apr 29th, 2011 - 6:34pm by Sueann

Forum: 
Anger, Frustration & ADHD

My life is very much about my husband and not about me. I hate it, but, with no job, I can't see a way out.

He has to have everything in our life that's good. He lost his cell, he took mine. When I got home, I got a call from the bank that he'd left it there, which means he can't get it until Monday. (Thankfully, we haven't dropped our lineline like so many people do. You can't lose that.)

His car blew its engine because his *** job makes him drive 30K miles a year (no reimbursement), We are going to turn it back and get a new one. This means I will have that on my credit for 7 years, so no new car for me (mine cost $500 on eBay.) and no house for us. A house is my deepest held dream. But he won't give up this job and find one that pays for the driving or pays better because he loves it. He won't work a second job because he's afraid he'd be "too tired" for his primary job if he did. I can't get a job with a 1992 car with a bad cylinder. The jobs in my field are all 90 miles away. No one will hire me for a job where I need to be on time EVERY DAY with a car like mine. And since he's going to crash our credit so he can keep his job, even if someone does hire me, I won't be able to replace MY car with one dependable enough for that kind of long commute.

He also is "too tired" to do any work to maintain our house, so I have to do all that. Ok if I'm not working, but I've just come off a temporary month of work and he did nothing and I did everything.

I divorced my first husband (no ADD there) because he had this "what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine" attitude. I raised 2 kids alone and put them first. Then I married a man who hyperfocused on me and thought he actually loved me that much. Then I find out that wasn't real and I'm an afterthought in his life and I'm just here to solve his problems. Our marriage counselor won't return my calls to make another appointment. I don't have a job and I don't see a way to make him love me if he doesn't want to. I'm 57 years old and sometime I'd like to have something in my life besides taking care of someone else.

He's taking meds but is only doing a med monitoring appointment every 3 months (At the last one, he didn't even mention to his doctor that he hadn't been able to afford the meds and hadn't had any in 2 weeks.) Our marriage counselor apparently doesn't want to see us any more. Since he's hyperfocused on his job, he won't take any time to do it during the week, and I can't find another counselor who does weekends. He has no personal counseling, his doctors apparently never mention it to him. He won't read Melissa's book.

Does anyone have any ideas how to get off dead center, or am I going to end up as one of those homeless people with a cardboard sign, but mine would read "Husband has ADD"? Sorry about the self-pity, I just can't seem to find a way out. (Counseling for me is not an option-we dropped me from his insurance.)

Comments

Submitted by Hermie40 (not verified) on Sun May 1st, 2011 - 8:27pm

Sorry for one paragraph. For some reason when I post from my droid, the ENTERs are removed when I save. I hear hopelessness and frustration in your post. I skimmed over some of your posts and I see you are coming back to the same place over and over again. You seems very stuck, much like I have been from time to time. If anything I might write offends, in this context you have every right to take it with a grain of salt. Even so I apologize in advance. If I read things right, you are in charge of the finances, right? It also sounds like your husband is open to ideas that work to cope with his symptoms. Do you think you can have a conversation about you having absolute control over them? There is a post somewhere on here that has a few thoughts about this very thing. See, for my entire marriage I handled the finances. For years I tried to get my DH on board and stick with an agreed upon plan. I didn't know what it was that caused his failures to do so at the time, so I kept trying and kept trying without taking his debit card away, because, in part, I didn't want to havve a husband that I had treat like a 14 year old by giving him an allowance. I WANTED him to be a successful and responsible part of the team. By the time I got to the point of finally doing so (controlling all the money), we ended up settling tens of thousands in debt and ruining our credit. I had hold of the reins all along and I didn't promote the needed changes instead of the ones I myself thought ought to happen (financial responsibility). We are still paying for it but it turns out he is not resentful, to my knowledge. All that to say, I had the power all along and could have changed our financial destiny if I hadn't been so bloody insistant on his responsible participation. Our marriage and our financial state had to get really BAD before I "tried differently." Perhaps you have more of your fate in your hands than you think. Also, what happens if you DON'T do everything around the house? If the last chip of paint falls off the house because YOU didn't paint it, what happens? Are you filling in all the gaps and letting him off the hook so to speak? I agree its awfully hard to step over the same clutter every single day until he "gets around to it" but I have found that patience pays off. Eventually my DH will realize theres no one else that is going to do "it" whatever task "it" happens to be. A side note about the house dream: we have been caught in the under water loan to value tide. I used to think a nice home was a great thing. Since then, for many reasons, I've come to realize that all I've got is an overpriced pile of stucco and wood that I would walk away from in a moment if I could do so without further damaging our finances. I might do it anyway if I knew for a fact it would save my marriage. My husband too, is underemployed because he loves his job. And its not even full time. You can imagine what its like telling that one to my ambitious intellectual professional friends and coworkers. Anyway I am gently suggesting that you look at what is really important in this life and if having a house supports your conclusions. I understand shattered dreams. It hurts like h-ll especially when you feel as though its the other persons fault that it gets taken away. I sometimes think I can literally feel my hands burning and aching, bloody and raw from holding onto those dreams so tightly while they were being torn away. So I'm not making these suggestions in a vaccuum. It may not be the things you wanted to hear, but I just ache for your being stuck. And as far as those old dreams go, I reckon Im doing just fine without them now. Im sorry your life isn't turning out the you wanted, as we all could likely say, ADHD and nons alike.

Submitted by Sueann on Sun May 1st, 2011 - 11:53pm

You said nothing offensive or ill-meant.

I am indeed stuck. My husband's father became an accountant (with no aptitude for it) because he thought it would make a good living for his family. He was such a failure at it that he made my husband phobic about numbers. The idea of balancing his checkbook is totally inconceivable to him. I was raised by a very "cheap" father whose checkbook was always balanced to the penny so I don't mind and I do it online.

The problem is that his job does not pay enough for us to live on. He is a peer specialist (which requires one be to in recovery from a mental illness) so they know about the ADHD and don't mind. But this job does not require any education (although he has it) and so does not pay a living wage. The state keeps cutting the reimbursements, and he's been cut 9% since he was hired. The immediate crisis is that his car died from the 30,000 miles of driving they make him do every year without reimbursement. If he turns back the dead car and buys another, we will pay ridiculous interest and our credit will be destroyed. If he doesn't, he will lose his job. His refusal to either try and find a job we can live on, or work a second job to pay for the gas for the primary job, has made me feel like he loves the job more than me. There are only so many cans I can collect, so many sacrifices I can make. I can only do so much.

Because I have physical limitations, I can't bear to live like this. Parts of my TV stand have been all over my living room floor for 6 months. I can't get down on the floor to assemble it myself and he won't. (but he did enough that I can't return it.) I am afraid of falling over it. I am talking real, realistic physical fear of living with my own husband.

The desire to buy a house is because I hate renting. I have 2 cats that my landlord does not know about so I can't get the landlord to come fix things. I live in fear of an inspection. I want to plant a garden. I want to grow lilacs and roses and have them come back year after year. You can't do that in a rented house. I want to have enough room to set up my loom. I can't adapt this house to my handicap because I don't own it. I can't live the life I want in this rented house.

My daughter has offered to come let me live with her. She does not want me to sign for a car for him to work at a job that barely works out to minimum wage. Where she lives, I am more likely to find a job in my field. The offer tempts me. But my husband is rather unforgiving and if I left temporarily that would end our marriage. I gave up alimony and my first husband's maximum social security in order to marry him, and I don't have a job, so I really do feel stuck.

Thanks again for writing. I appreciate the kind thoughts.