Submitted by Lynnw on 02/05/2015.
Do any of you non-ADD spouses ever get apologies from the ADD person? In my house, my ADD husband would do or say something that even he knew hurt me, but (this was a real conversation):
ME: It really hurt me when you did that
HIM: Don't you think I know that? Do you have to rub my nose in it? Don't you think I've suffered enough?
ME: Sorry
Wait, what? Did I just apologize to HIM? Crazy-making.
not usually
Submitted by Jimbo on
She often claims later that she apologized but I think she just likes to think she did. Don't press it too much or you'll just into another pointless argument.
get used to it
Submitted by coco8712 on
in my relationship my ADHDer lets see 2years together and im not perfect im normal ill apologize when i need to him not so much. He has only said sorry and hes the one to blame for our arguments fights because he has NO FILTER let me think .......5 times or less i have received an apology i doubt they were genuine . i am a talker i want to know if my man is okay or how to solve our problem whats the solution etc... he hated when i talked or asked questions he said i made him mad ,annoyed him , and i made him feel nauseated :( WOW!!!i stopped trying to figure him out i stopped talking so much i let it go . i just short answered him or limited my sentences to not get into another argument . he didnt even notice either he didnt care. im saying this from experience stop expecting apologies from him . you dont need any validation from him you are important and so are your feelings thoughts ideas etc...
Accepting what I cannot change
Submitted by I'm So Exhausted on
Lynnw,
What I desire to get, versus what I experience, are not one in the same. The apologies are followed by so many quantifiers, they are diluted into a bunch of words. "Feeling offended is YOUR issue." "It's not my fault you were offended/upset/embarrassed. That is YOUR stuff." By the time the conversation is finished, it is made quite clear that . . . .well that I am about to lose my ever lovin' mind. LOL!!!
My new pat line for most conversations is this "I don't like it." And that is all mine. 100% ownership. I will fix that problem by removing myself from situations I do not like. After trying a multitude of ways, trying different words, or different approaches, or different ways to explain myself. . . . . in the end, it is not worth this much effort as it does not accomplish the desired result. I do not need validation or acknowledgement to make my feeling valid to me. However, I do need validation and acknowledgment to feel valued in a relationship. And there's the rub. Boy do I KNOW that he cannot MAKE ME feel anything. Sheesh.
Liz
Apologies? Yes..
Submitted by sunlight on
Apologies? Yes..
.. since diagnosis and since starting Adderall (although I think the Adderall isn't a necessary component now it was in the past because it calmed him down enough to be able to think coherently and now he has largely internalized/learned how to know when he's gone too far).
Freakouts/tantrums/wild irrational attacks are much reduced, but if they occur then he is very able to sit down and say "I should not have done/said what I did/said", "I behaved badly", "I need to stop doing a/b/c/doing x/saying y" etc etc. He sometimes uses the word "sorry" but not often because I've said in that past that it doesn't matter whether he says the word, instead it matters what he does and it matters that he is able to describe the things/words/incidents for which he's apologizing.
"He sometimes uses the word
Submitted by Lynnw on
"He sometimes uses the word "sorry" but not often because I've said in that past that it doesn't matter whether he says the word, instead it matters what he does and it matters that he is able to describe the things/words/incidents for which he's apologizing."
Good point. I wish I could have gotten there with my ex. If I asked him to describe what I thought he did or why I might feel hurt/disrespected by it, he'd just accuse me of badgering him, and he'd stomp away. Any discussion of his bad behavior had to be dropped immediately, so nothing was ever discussed or resolved. The unresolved issues still haunt us.
I often get a similar response...
Submitted by overwhelmedwife on
>>>>
ME: It really hurt me when you did that
HIM: Don't you think I know that? Do you have to rub my nose in it? Don't you think I've suffered enough?
>>>>
Him: Well, you deserved it. I hurt more than you do. I may have gone too far, but you've been a bitch all week, so if you didn't deserve what you got tonight, you deserved it earlier.
(H so often relies on the "you've been a bitch all week," excuse that he often forgets that either I've been away or he's been away, and therefore we weren't even together, so I couldn't have been a "bitch all week.")
Even today, I was trying to understand
Submitted by I'm So Exhausted on
I have always and forever been trying to understand my spouse. From my own inner spirit, I clearly get it. It is not up to me to figure him out. It is up to me to focus on - me, Liz. For me I will now align my thinking on Liz. Not why does he do that, but rather to remind myself I deserve to be treated in a manner which is kind and loving based on my own needs.
These are some lines that jumped out at me today. Does this align with the ADHD wired brain? Who knows. I quickly came back around to remind myself that none of this matters. While it explains a lot, it does not address the question one whit: "And, my dear Liz, you just live with this behavior, why?!?!?!?!?!
1. In a loving relationship perceived as temporarily damaged by one party's hunger or aggression, the injuring party ordinarily seeks to restore the loving tone of the relationship. In adults, the usual vehicle is the apology. it is difficult to forgive in the absence of the other person's genuine remorse.
2. When defense is operating, what is repaired is not the damage to the relationship, but the subject's illusion of perfection.
3. An important part of an apology is the admission that one is not needless and faultless.
4. The avoidance of apology is much more subtle, much less visible to those who might legitimately expect some expression of sincere contrition.
5. When defense is operating, what a person seems to do instead of apologizing is to attempt a repair of the self.
6. The injured person may suffer attacks of self-criticism for an inability to forgive, forget, and warm up to the partner. Both people wind up lonelier than they were previously.
7. When defense is operating, a person becomes adept at giving apologies that really amount to self-justifications.
8. . . . . . . . saying one is sorry represents an expression of empathy with the injured party whether the hurt was intentional or avoidable.
9. The woman who is kept waiting and worrying when her husband is late coming home will feel immediately forgiving if he expresses genuine sorrow that she has suffered on his account. However, people seem to go by the general rule that such expressions of sympathy and regret are called for only if they were "at fault" in some way. Thus, the tardy husband meets his wife's anxious greeting with, "It wasn't my fault; there was a traffic jam," communicating not remorse but resentment of her distress and rejection of its validity.
10. The organizing, overriding issue is the preservation of their internal sense self-approval, not the quality of their relations with other people.
11. When they feel their imperfections have been exposed, the pressing question for them is the repair of their inner self-concept, not the mending of the feelings of those in their external world.
12. They are likely, in a state of defensiveness about exposed faults, to protest that they meant to do the right thing, as if the purity of their inner state is the pertinent issue - to others as well as to themselves.
13. A related substitute for apologizing is the practice of explaining. Unless the listener is particularly sensitive, an explanation can sound remarkably like an apology.
14. A relationship between two people is apt to go on a considerable length of time before the party on the receiving end of explanations begins to feel a bothersome absence of genuine contrition in the other.
15, The advantage of the explanation is that it avoids both asking for something (forgiveness) and admitting to a sphere of personal responsibility that includes the risk of inevitable shortcoming. The illusion of personal needlessness and guiltlessness is maintained.
16. Non-apologies: "Maybe I was acting out my envy," or "I wonder if I did that because I'm going through an anniversary reaction to my sister's death," or "I must have been feeling unconsciously hostile toward you because you remind me of my father"
17. Attempts of explanations without apology produce either pained confusion, or understanding without warmth. Because the explainer is defending his or her action to an internal critic who expects perfection, the listener often ends up feeling inarticulately critical.
*****18. Recriminating - an accusation in response to one from someone else. ***** This is one I live with a lot. Anything I feel MUST have something to do with living in an alcoholic home or my long-since addressed eating disorders, or anyone or anything other than what I feel about something my spouse said or did. This basically attempts to invalidate both my feelings AND any emotional work I did coming through difficult situations.
Liz
I went from 22 years of never
Submitted by Strangebird on
I went from 22 years of never getting an apology and being told that he had apologized and I just didn't remember it; to pat apologies constantly with no qualification, reason, thrown around like candy. I'm sorry means nothing if you don't say what you're sorry for. And he always comes back later and says he wasn't sorry, and that he didn't do anything wrong. Worst of all? If he actually apologizes, and actually recognizes his bad behavior, he boils inside for having admitted it and apologized for it and the rage and anger that ensues over the next 10 day cycle is miserable. Ultimately he just drives me to a point where I'm apologizing for some imagined or unknown or twisted thing that I can't even wrap my brain around. I've yet to receive an apology that was worth what I went through afterward, or that he didn't revoke later.
My wife is exactly the same
Submitted by Jimbo on
My wife is exactly the same way. I think this is a case of lack of self awareness. She is learning some of that to. We just have to ry to shrug it off. It has to be difficult to function effectively when you can't trust your own memory.