I find it difficult to accept a lot of the feedback here. I'm not religious, so god ain't getting me through this. I also believe in my husband and know full well what he is/isn't capable of. While I concede that ADD impacts on the way we live our lives, as well as accept that, at times, I need to meet him beyond the middle, I have never been the romantic type and I have never expected my husband to fulfill any void in my life. I don't have an unattainable vision of the perfect relationship. And after observing his behaviours early on (which I simply accepted as his quirks) I learnt quick smart that I need to ask for my needs to be met, rather than hope he will figure it out. For the most part, he did and we managed well enough. We lived for years without ADD being overwhelming (yes, it was there but it was easy enough to work around) and its only our current situation which has exacerbated things to a point that is no longer tenable.
My point is not to criticse other people and their coping mechanisms (i truly respect that we all need to get through this in our own way). But, personally, I'm having a rough time and would love to hear from some like minded people, that is, people who have faith in their partners.
My husband doesn't plan/manage his time with his loved ones i.e. friends/family. I encourage him, time and time again to go and visit people and spend time with them but I dont see it as my responsibility to organise it for him (although, perhaps i will from now on?! any thoughts).
My problem is that when I recently asked for him to take leave, so that we can spend some much needed time together, away from the stresses of daily life, he hijacked it, in order to spend time with all those other people. But when I get upset about it, he thinks I'm being selfish. The thing is, in the last 18 months, he has used all his leave days for himself/work/family/friends and not one of those leave days was for me. I FINALLY asked for him to take a week of leave so that we can hang out together, get back to our equilibrium. Slowly but surely everyone elses needs have superceded mine.
He acknowledges that he probably has ADD but he wont do any research so he doesn't see what he's doing. He makes me feels selfish by explaining that he 'just wants to spend time with his family and friends', and he looks at me, almost as if I'm crazy for not understanding that. He is loving and caring and kind, which means he loves to please people. Except when I try to ask for my needs to be met (since being in another country), he just cannot see me for who I truly am (intelligent with a big heart).
I desperately want a third party to explain to him that what he is doing is typically ADD (and that it can be managed).
I would also love for someone to explain that he is not perceiving things correctly. He has got it wrong by assuming that I am trying to sabotage time with his friends/family. This is absoloutly ludicrous and he truly forgets who I am as a person when he talks to me as if I don't understand. He needs to accept that he is at fault when he doesn't manage/plan time with people and its unfair for him to hijack the plans I make for us as a couple. He is smart and intelligent and i have absoloutly no doubt that the ADD is stopping him from seeing the reality/me for what it truly is. I know he would work a lot harder to accept these facts if a third party was able to validate them. Until we go to therapy, he will get away with making me feel like the bad guy. I just want someone to validate me.
Getting through stuff 'together'
Submitted by Friwi on 08/11/2014.
validation
Submitted by dedelight4 on
I certainly hear you on the validation issue. It's something that I wanted for a very long time, but never, ever got. My husband was diagnosed about 7 years ago, and we've been married 31 years now. (Before then, I didn't know WHAT the heck was going on) We had ALL the same issues you've been talking about, and more. And, we STILL have them, because my husband still has not been to behavioral therapy. He knows he has ADHD, and he takes meds, but he doesn't acknowledge how much the ADHD impacts his own life as well as mine, and our family's.
We went through different counseling sessions before (before the diagnosis) and the counselors would tell me...."Your husband isn't a mind reader, you have to TELL him what your needs are". Well, I DID do that, but it didn't make any difference. I tried every way possible to tell him in kind, gentle, loving, and then even resorted to a few screaming fits (which wasn't me and I hated that)...you name it.........I tried it.....WAYS, of trying to tell him what I needed, whether it was physical, sexual, being supportive, etc. But, especially I wanted a little validation for things I DID. I wanted a little praise too, and not have to only give praise to him.
His main response was of anger and frustration, and his main response was this..."I cannot quit my job to give you hugs and kisses and attention 24/7, SOMEBODY has to work around here". I heard that statement every time I tried to tell DH what my needs were. He never noticed that I was WORKING as well......I worked a job, did all the housework, raised the girls, the laundry, shopping, cooking, yard work, AND kept the cars clean and occasionally waxed. He worked his jobs, which I DO give him credit for. He worked his jobs diligently, (hated them) but stayed there instead of quitting or getting fired like many other folks with ADHD. But, as far as relationship needs went......he just didn't DO that, and wouldn't GO there. And, he wouldn't talk about it either. It was like, if I talked about it, I was accusing him of "being bad" or something. It never seemed to make sense. Even when I praised him for doing something GOOD, he didn't "continue" the good behavior. It was forgotten quickly. He DID want what I saw as EXCESSIVE praise for doing things, even the "little" things, which seemed very childlike to me.
I had believed that a marriage is about having your own "separate" goals, but then having GOALS together in your marriage. Working as a team, being supportive of each other and working together to help support each other emotionally as well as in other things. But, I learned my husband never saw things that way. Our marriage was more about HIS life, his goals, his needs, his desires, his unhappiness, etc. He couldn't SHARE his life with mine, which I just couldn't wrap my head around.
I never thought we would be where we are at today, which is two people existing together in the same house. But, undiagnosed and under-treated ADHD (and maybe other things) hijacked our lives and put us on a path I couldn't see or never dreamed I'd be on. The one thing I positively DO KNOW NOW......it won't get ANY better, until my husband gets help HIMSELF, and works on the ADHD issues, and then we can work them out together. This site has taught me so much. I love reading other's stories because we all share such SIMILAR things. It's also given me insight into myself and shown me where I needed to do some things differently too.
I do wish you guys the best, and hope it changes for you.
If you believe in him except the reality of his feelings...
Submitted by c ur self on
(My problem is that when I recently asked for him to take leave, so that we can spend some much needed time together, away from the stresses of daily life, he hijacked it, in order to spend time with all those other people.) Friwi not sure if this will help you, but my wife lives her life in this exact same manner...Less now than earlier in our marriage...She is controlling and has to determine what is right for her...She really doesn't showed much interest in my feelings about get-a-ways for the two of us etc...She makes these plans in her mind and when she dumps them on me, they are all about what she wants and the people she wants to do things with...It's usually my stepson's and her sister's nothing wrong with that except, the marriage and her husband goes on hold, or takes a back set because what I think doesn't seem to matter....So it left me in the same place you are finding yourself in as you write this...(The selfish bad guy)
What I have done to combat it is...First I had to ask myself some hard questions: If I truly love her, am I going to accept her like she is or am I going to try to force life on her in a way she can't see or does not believe, because I see it that way? I chose to accept her....Now I just try to never do anything to spite her, and we definitely do things she wants to do much more than what I want...But, now if I share something i want to do with her...and she rejects it, if I want to badly enough, i just do it...Of course it's not as much fun without her, but it's her choice to make, and i refuse to suffer in my mind wishing the reality of our lives wasn't the reality of our lives...
Hey guys, thanks heaps for
Submitted by Friwi on
Hey guys, thanks heaps for your feedback. I hear what you guys are saying and it makes me feel like I'm not alone in this.
Its hard though, because until we moved countries, he DID put my needs first because I wasn't having to compete with everything that is currently overwhelming him. And making me happy, made him happy. Call it hyperfocus, but the fact is when I'm not competing with a whole country/cultural differences, we have an equilibrium - which may not be equal in terms of responsibilities, but we have an equilibrium which we've lost since being here.
Of course he still had his ADD tendencies, like taking a whole day/weekend/month to complete a chore (if he ever got around to it) but those things I could handle. Those things, I could look beyond the ADD as well as myself, and just accept him for who he is - to the extent that i didn't bother to go into any research because i just accepted him for who he is (i only looked further into the issue because i could anticipate being in the situation i now find myself in). He also had his friends in the same city, and I was more than happy for him to go and hang out with them and forget about me. I am really quite indepedent and I had my own life to get on with, so I learnt to accept the absentmindedness, the forgetfulness.... in fact, at the same time it drove me nuts, it was also proof of how amazing his brain is and thats what I love about him. I love watching him hyperfocus on stuff (not all the time but sometimes.... even if it stopped him in his tracks, I just find it so fascinating and feel voyeuristic through him).
The problem, well and truly is living in another country - his homeland. His head is overloaded because the language barrier impedes on me from being independent which means that he has to handle most of our admin/affairs and on top of that, he just wants to please everyone (work/social life/family). In NZ, a typically individualist society, this wasn't a problem because people didn't expect you to drop everything for them. But France, by contrast, happens to be very collectivist society, emphasising communal activities/bonds whose purpose is to overlook individual needs for the sake of the group. I recognise this because I'm bi-cultural and have done a lot of intercultural studies. But the cultural differences are compounded when you have ADD. ADD symptoms + people pleasing + collective culture = partners needs overlooked for sake of group. Whereas in my country, we had ADD + people pleasing + individualist culture = happy couple meeting each others' needs.
So in France, group things happen all the time and I often feel that people bully each other into group think. My husband is an excellent conduit for this because he just wants everyone to be happy and gets sucked into group think thinking it's for the greater good (he laughed, along with the rest of his family, when his grandmother got so upset she cried..... it is a French thing to ignore/downplay emotions, but I was so angry at him for this. She is one of the loveliest people I have ever met, she treats me like her own grandchild and he got so caught up in this 'group think', that he laughed at her when she was at her most vulnerable). This is why the ADD is becoming too much right now. But I know from years of experience that I can deal with his ADD alone. The issues are ADD + new country/cultural differences, not the ADD in and of itself (which i readily accept).
So, I know he can give me what I need once he accepts responsibility because he has done so in the past. And I know he eventually will because he is slowly taking responsibility for things (in the past week he has made a concerted effort to read the ADD effect + emailed the French ADD association who unfortunately haven't responded to him + started considering if it might be better to either return to NZ or at least leave France). He is a scientist and when faced with the facts he knows the game is up (the one bit of hope/power that gets me through). But as with you Dedelight4, until he accepts full responsibility, he won't have the ability to see what is going on, despite it being so obvious/clear to those who understand ADD.
I can't emphasise enough, how truly big hearted he is (although his anger makes him seem like Dr. Jekyl/Hide, which has begun to get scary and why i've told him I might need to considering returning home if he can't sort his crap out). So he truly feels sorry for me and looks at me with a pained look on his face when I get upset. He gets this look that says 'i would move the world for you if I could, but you are the one making things difficult'. What I need, is a whole lot of evidence that he cannot refute, to prove that he is responding to ADD symptoms + cultural expectations, which in turn are making him behave in a way that is contrary to his true self. This is the conundrum. I can't nag him, I can't force him to read resources, I can't force him to a therapist, I can't force him to take medication. But I know he can do all of those things....... I just wish he would believe in himself enough (ADD symptom right there). I dont want to have to buy tickets home for him to realise what he needs to do.
Thanks again for listening (or reading, rather!). I guess in the end, the frustration I feel will never be completely relieved until he can learn to take responsiblity for himself, which I know he can do (he created a life for himself on the other side of the world and he got himself through a PHD, so i know full well that he can do anything he puts his mind to).