In the spirit of making lemonade out of the lemon of a marriage that I ended up with (29 years on Sunday!), I'm trying to think of what I'd advise people contemplating marriage to talk to their prospective spouses about. This is not intended to bash people with ADHD. I think EVERYBODY should give more thought to marriage before they take the plunge. Here are some things I've come up with; please share your thoughts, too!
Talk about your plans. If your prospective spouse recoils at the words "plan" and "future," take note.
Discuss how you feel about intentional change. Does your prospective spouse think he or she is done developing and growing or does he or she think adults can purposely evolve and change?
Explore your prospective spouse's approach to problem solving. You WILL have problems when you're married; everyone does. The difference is in how people deal with the problems.
Observe your spouse's housekeeping habits. If they bother you now, they will probably continue to bother you.
This is an interesting
Submitted by c ur self on
This is an interesting question :) I married at 20 the first time, was married for 30 years, until breast cancer came along...I've been married for almost 6 years this time...I don't know if I could have heard (no emotional attachment, free to make a wise choice) the answers to these questions either time, once my mind was made up to make them my wife. I can truthfully say now that the dominant emotion that lead to my being married the first time was, people applied pressure that prompted a response from me due to guilt and expectations...This time the biggest emotion that sponsored my marriage was loneliness and a desire for companionship...My love and commitment grew over the 30 years with my first wife, just as my love has grown for my present wife...So, i wonder how many of us would actually have a great marriage, even if we could ask all the right questions, and think we heard all the right answers? Do really have that ability? Are we truly capable of looking into the crystal ball of life, and seeing what God see's? You have definitely ask a good Question Rosered :)
To me, this is not a matter
Submitted by PoisonIvy on
To me, this is not a matter of predicting the future. I don't think anyone can do that. Instead, what I'm suggesting is that people look at and talk with their prospective spouses and realize that there will be problems (yes, everyone's life and everyone's relationship has problems) and determine whether the prospective spouse is willing to work on problems. My spouse isn't. He never has been. I could have figured that out fairly easily.
The advice I have for people
Submitted by copingSAH on
The advice I have for people who are considering a lifetime relationship is to have them ask about their partner's family medical issues and/or mental histories. One should take everything mentioned or gossiped at family gatherings seriously. It's not something that can be overcome or "it won't ever happen to us or our children". When you have bipolar, NPD, autism, ADHD, ADD, cluster B, schizophrenia on and on .... in both sides of the families, it's a huge neuro genetic brew waiting to happen.
Sanity is an illusion.
Submitted by c ur self on
Would all the sane families please raise their hands :)....my hand is not up :)...
In my family, mental health
Submitted by PoisonIvy on
In my family, mental health issues are acknowledged and treated. In my husband's, they are ignored or mocked. Again, the difference is not in whether there are problems but in how those problems are dealt with.
Love by any other name
Submitted by jennalemon on
Yeah....we didn't know what we didn't know. Hmmmm. I was just as immature as dh when we got married. It was all about romance and desire. It was probably about our own father and mother and what we were comfortable with. Repeating what we knew. Hoping for the "happy ever after". If I knew then what I know now, I would be more pragmatic. I assumed sooooo much. I would find a counselor....an older woman who was happily married at least 2 decades to be my mentor to help me think and see clearly and give me a clear picture of what marriage and family is really all about. To ask the right questions. To keep my self esteem and boundaries and be able to rely on other, more mature people, rather than to rely on the one who wanted "to get into my pants" - Dh called that love.
I describe myself as having
Submitted by PoisonIvy on
I describe myself as having been young and stupid when I got married. 23 1/2 years old, and I knew that things weren't right, but I went ahead anyway.
So did I
Submitted by Linsy on
And I was 28! I can only claim that I had a sheltered upbringing with 10 years of single sex boarding school, so was probably a bit retarded!
Wisdom is this post jennalemon
Submitted by c ur self on
You probably know this...but the bible teach us just that..."It says the older women should teach the younger woman how to love their own husbands"...
Acknowledge and deal with ourselves!
Submitted by c ur self on
Isn't that the answer for us all? Taking individual responsibility for ourselves (anger, greed, add/adhd etc etc.) owning our own stuff...All the things that daily spill out and negatively impact those who are in contact w/us...esp. family. Would this forum exist...if everyone got up each morning focused only on their own words, deeds, and actions as they engage others?
haha....good one c ur self.
Submitted by jennalemon on
haha....good one c ur self.
I think about this all the
Submitted by MFrances on
I think about this all the time to try to instruct my children how to choose a spouse. No one offered me advice. My husband and I weren't Christians when we married. I'm trying to teach my children to wait to have sex until they are married (I know hard to do) but it really does create false intimacy. You think you know that person and that you love him/her but it's really just lust. The anger bothered me when we were dating but I didn't think to wonder what affect that would have on our future children, and it has had a huge negative impact on them. Looking back there were clues that maybe this wasn't the best relationship but like others have said, I went along with it anyway. And hindsight is always 20/20. I hope my children will talk to me, ask me questions, tell me about any red flags that come up, and take any advice I give them. My parents never did that for me. I feel all I can do is try to be a better parent than my own were and try to raise them better than I was raised.
The housekeeping is interesting, I was so impressed when I first started dating my husband with how neat and clean his house was. That changed as soon as we had our first child. You really need to see how people handle stress, and life altering changes, but sometimes those situations don't come up while dating. You never know how someone will change in the future.
panda123 the same here
Submitted by dedelight4 on
Panda123, thank you for the post. My parents did the same thing in not telling me what to look for in a future spouse, or advising me in decision making, or helping instruct me into adulthood. My siblings and I had 6 parents actually, which were, biological parents, adoptive parents and step-parents. All 6 parents were angry, abusive, self-centered and resentful of having children to raise. For many years, I felt like I was flying by the seat of my pants (so to speak) because I was so unprepared for life. I didn't know a lot of what TO DO.....but I certainly knew what NOT TO DO.....as far as being severely abused, and yet NOT DOING THAT to my own children. I spent many years in retrospect and searching and learning about myself, relationships and such. I can see where this also led me to choose an ADHD person to marry. I married him before I did all the searching and learning about myself and my family. There are many decisions that I would choose to do differently now if I could.
I think you are right about the sex before marriage causing a false sense of love. I know so many women who have told me they wish they would have "waited" to have sex until the met their husband, because they felt it spoiled things for them. I understood and agreed with that myself, because I did the same thing and wish I would have waited as well. Our society PUSHES sex before marriage so much now, that it's insane, even with all the horrific diseases and emotional turmoil it has caused, as well as all the teenage pregnancies (that now get televised).
Anyway, in the ADHD marriage (the undertreated and undiagnosed ones) marriage is very, very difficult. And, it certainly does change for the worse after the ceremony, (because of the stress) Many of OUR issues didn't come up before the wedding. There were SOME signs, but not like after we got married.
Issues
Submitted by boilergirl on
If there are any issues that make you uncomfortable, deal with them before getting married (or don't get married at all.) While we didn't know about the ADHD for the extent of the issues 14 years ago, I did see his anger. Once, I was going to his house and we were going to go on a canoe trip. I got stuck in traffic (this was before cell phones) so I was late. He went off and even threw the tv remote through the wall. He was like a monster. I went upstairs and cried. Later, he calmed down and apologized and we went. He also punched a hole in my apt. wall when we were engaged. I can't believe I just ignored that stuff.