My husband is not diagnosed and currently we are living in Africa, so getting a diagnosis will be a challenge to say the least.  I have been reading and researching, trying to educate myself and then sharing with my husband.  He's a bit in denial, he agrees this may be him, but feels it's very mild in his case and not much of a problem for us.  He thinks I'm just not relating to him in a positive enough way, that I make him nervous, and no one would ever be able to live up to my standards.  I just want honesty and reliability.  I swear I was nice and gave gentle reminders for the first year or so, but then I felt it wasn't working, so tried to let him reap the consequences of his inattentiveness and forgetfulness.  Then I began to just take over what he didn't seem able to handle.  And now I've become someone I hate, someone who yells just to be heard, to get a word in before he changes the arguments direction again.  I am at the breaking point.  I don't feel like I've got a partner, I feel like I've got a passenger.

I began to wonder about his mental capacity soon after marriage... Asking myself, is he special needs?  I seriously considered this.  I just couldn't reconcile the man who seemed to hold a job and appeared to do very well in that environment to the man incapable of taking the rubbish all the way to the trash bin and actually putting it in the trash bin.  Should we pursue an AD/HD evaluation?  Is this what it looks like?

When we have a disagreement, he is never wrong, very defensive, justifies every action or thought, and if that doesn't work he minimizes the situation, saying I'm overreacting, it's just a mistake, why are you so angry over this.  He doesn't get that I'm beyond frustrated that he is still making the same mistakes day after day, never learning from them, he continues to justify why it was okay to repeat the mistake this time.  He talks incessantly too, talks over me, changes tac so much I lose my own train of thought.  I can't keep up and we are so far off track by the end, I call it the merry go round of word vomit.  He lives in a perpetual bubble of pink frothy optimism!  He keeps telling me how much he's improved, What!  "I'm trying", he says!  When I ask him what does that mean exactly?  He has no answer other than that he sees the issue now, before he didn't.  But he's said that every time we've had the same argument.  Seriously, how many times does the light bulb come on before it can just stay on?  I've not seen any palpable change, I only get more, "I won't forget this time" or "trust me, I won't do that again", does he not understand those promises mean nothing after a few hundred times.  

Meanwhile I feel the resentment building, the taxes aren't done, we continue to live a life like "Groundhog Day" the movie, and always I'm the bad person who's got anger issues! I feel like a patsy, a fool, I feel weak, ineffective, I feel like I got the bait and switch and I fell for it.  I am utterly worn down emotionally trying to get him to change to see things from my perspective.

I think the worst part for me is that he is actually able to forget that we are having marital problems.  As long as we still had relations in the bedroom, all was well in his world.  We can have knockdown drag out fights and he's forgotten them the next day.  He diminishes them in his mind to minor disagreements that weren't that bad, that is if he remembers them at all.  If you ask him we have a great relationship!   If you ask me, I just wonder, is he even present in this marriage? Since I've stopped wanting him sexually he is still able to convince himself we are okay, that some how he'll do better and fix everything.  How long can he go on this way?  How many times will he turn the corner, see the light, not forget this time before he wants to actually do something about it.