My husband was diagnosed with ADD about 17 years ago. We have been married for 15 years and things are beginning to fall apart.Here is the current situation: my daughter (from another marriage) has a son aged 2 ½ . This little boy just adores my husband who has a hard time interacting with him. My husband is oblivious to the fact that he doesn’t really interact with him. My daughter has been angry about this in the past and I have had discussions with my husband to make hi m aware of his non-interaction and he had corrected his behavior for a while. However, over the past few months he has gone back to his old habits. I also have to note that he doesn’t really interact with me. And, of course, I have been feeling very much alone and unloved. Just recently, my daughter and grandson spent the weekend with us and my husband continued his non-interactive behavior. My daughter has had it – she became enraged that he just doesn’t pay any attention to our grandson. She has stated that she wants nothing to do with my husband and does not want her son to get hurt from his non-interaction. To me that means that they will no longer come to my house, my grandson will not stay overnight with us, and they will not spend any holidays with us. As you can imagine, I am absolutely beside myself with what has happened. Up until this time I had an extremely good releationship with my daughter but this has now ripped us apart. I told my husband what his inaction has done and he is very upset with the consequences. I love him very much but at this point I really don’t know where to turn or what to do. I understand that the non-interaction has a lot to do with his ADD. Does anyone else out there have this problem?
Trouble with Non-Interaction from ADHD spouse
Submitted by Sweetwater on 09/30/2010.
Oh yeah! Big Issue with hubby!
Submitted by soulful68 on
My husband is 55 and never been diagnosed, but has an assessment in 10 days and is 100% classic ADHD- inattentive. The non-interaction is a huge concern of mine. We have two kids of our own. We've been married 13 years and I'm quite a bit younger, and our kids are only 3 and 8 and far too often he just tunes them out. He's always tired, zoning out to the t.v. or computer, and rarely shows any initiative to be involved with them very much. It's like when I'm around he just shuts down and only does anything if I specifically ask him. We can be out at a restaurant with friends or family and he just socializes with them and practically ignores the kids while I spend the whole evening tending to the kids, distracted by the kids, and not able to ever have any interaction with whomever we're eating with. It's even been so bad that sometimes when he's supposed to be responsible for the kids he'll go upstairs and take a nap or fall asleep on the couch and not even realize that he's not appropriately supervising them. I hurt so bad for the kids sometimes when they want to tell them about their day or show him some art they've made, and he glances for a moment and then goes back to whatever he was focused on. Our oldest is becoming the same kind of couch potato slug as my husband too (although I now wonder how much is modeling and how much might be genetics at play here too). The non-interaction, withdrawing and shutting down is the other side of ADHD, as my own therapist told me.