Latest on Dr. Phil Show About ADHD and Marriage

I'd heard from an aunt, who died some years ago, well into her eighties, that such and such grandmother had married a full-booded Cherokee. In the Deep-South of circa 1890?, it was considered quite risque!

I really don't know what to say, 'cause to be frank; everything you've said, is so...familiar. I feel for you, I do. I understand exactly what you are saying in regards to having these lingering resentments and what they signify. Your husband doesn't really comprehend that you have deep-seated resentments and he'd be astounded if he could sense their magnitude, or rather,  depth. He'll be distraught and confused when he sees that your resentment and bitterness go unabated, even well after he has finally got it and has started making changes - deep changes - attempting the kind of restructuring of one's core...something that only happens when a person realises that they love someone and its finally dawned on them. He won't understand that bitterness and resentment take a life of their own and just as he begins to become what he should've been all along, you'll be gone. Even if you are still physicall there, you'll still not see any of it - not because you are bad or wrong...its just human nature. The way things work.

People think, and ADDers are the worst sort to think that everything is virtually eternal, but its not. The windows for things like getting crushes; falling in love; driving for an hour after a long day's work - just to spend your last dime on a date and coming back home at 2 am feeling on top of the world, got to be up at 6am, but its just fine; eating some fellows face at a nightclub because he tried to dance with her ( and you've never been a fighter before ); having that long, hot shag on the floor - finally!; the trip to Maui on your honeymoon and all the things you did; the list goes on and on - the windows are in fact, very narrow and only occur in their own season. They add up as the sum of a life. The things, actions, inactions, lies, dissapointments that eat away at all of those leave a hole and none of us realise it.

Once they are gone, they are gone.

I was gonna say, I wish I could shake your husband and say ' hey buddy, wake up !'

But on second thought, maybe its just as well that he doesn't.

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There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course.
Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.
                                                                                                                                                                                                    -Carl Jung

Take care of yourself, take care of your son, take care of your finances.  Don't waste any unnecessary energy on your husband right now.  You have to buckle down and deal with you, and once you feel secure, then you can give more energy to him.  

Let him know what your priorities are, and then stick to them.  He can't get better until he really sees where he is and where he should be.  Be the example that he strives to be. 

Imagine for a second that you couldn't see the color red, even though everyone around you swore up and down that the color red existed, but you didn't see it because you were wearing glasses that filtered out the color red. Imagine that no one told you that your glasses filtered out the color red, and then one day, you changed glasses, or you decided to take them off and low and behold you finally saw the color red.  This is what I think it must be for a person with ADHD.  They work and work and work, and one day they take off those glasses and see what you have been talking about this entire time.  The ADD is not his fault, but he does have to work to get rid of those glasses.