Coping with anger at a sexless marriage despite treating ADHD as best as I can

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I'm editing this to remove any descriptions of what I'm experiencing. It has been repeatedly and intentionally misrepresented and used as the basis to make claims about my character and my actions that neither accurate nor in good faith.

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Well

You can’t expect her to reward you with sex for not hurting her as much anymore.

You need to make her feel good - relaxed, interested, happy - for her to want intimacy with you.

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‘stifled’ your anger

I get why you feel angry - you’re doing the work, it should fix the problem. Me and my ex were in this state before we split. He had been diagnosed about a year, he was taking the meds, taking on some more chores. Trouble was, I felt so emotionally battered and exhausted by the previous years, so let down and lonely that it was impossible to reconnect with him - especially as he wanted rewards and praise for stepping up and doing the bare minimum (not being angry at me for no reason, some cooking and laundry) usually quite badly. His approach to initiating sex was also to just rub my arm and expect me to do the rest. I would lie awake with my arm being rubbed till it was sore but I wasn’t going to take that on as well.

Whenever things were at their worst - baseline bad and then he did something horrible to add to that, he’d say that I had to get over it. I used to trust him, believe in him, and so really we’d just park the problem till the next disaster, and nothing was ever really dealt with or improved or resolved.

I think, probably, your wife has a lot of unprocessed anger and resentment too, and if you don’t work through it, rather than try and park it and move on, things won’t improve on the intimacy front. She needs more than you just doing your share of the chores and not causing immediate distress. You need to have those conversations and you need to show her your love.

Just to add to that

Have you perhaps conflated your partner’s needs with your shared responsibilities? My ex thought that in doing stuff that contributed to the household’s running, he was doing stuff for me. He was never able to see that I had needs separate from my need for him to contribute, as a fellow parent, adult and wage earner, to a shared responsibility.

sorry to keep on but

you did ask what you can do. And we don’t know your wife, so it’s hard to say what will help her specifically, but there are so may repeated patterns across ADHD marriages so I’m going to give a few suggestions re what might have helped me and staved off our split.

Accept that it will take time. It took time for things to get this bad; it will take time for them to get better.

Listen to her. Initiate opportunities for her to express her distress over the past and explore that with her. Don’t park it, talk over it, or minimise.

Offer everyday comforts with no attempt to move on to intimacy. Begin small with gestures like making her a cup of tea or offering her a cushion or a biscuit (I am English; if you’re from another culture you will have equivalents!). Show you are thinking of her. Build up to offering a hug. Don’t turn the hug into a grope (my ex always did).

Spend time with her doing things she enjoys, if she has anything like that left in her life. If she doesn’t, re-initiate something she used to like to do and do it with her.

Don’t focus on sex; work on the emotional connection.

If my husband had offered me anything like this, it would have helped immeasurably. But it’s a lot of work, focussed on another person, and that’s especially hard for someone with ADHD. Good luck.

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yes

That rather confirms my instincts. You won’t get back to a satisfying sex life while she’s still seething. That’s where the work has to go; dispelling her anger, making her feel happy and relaxed and trusting. And that really has to be about her, and the two of you as a couple, not as parents or householders. Good luck.

It may be beyond what you can do

To solve this, you’ll need to embrace her reality fully. To me it sounds you’re not capable of that. It doesn’t surprise me. Neither did my ADD ex. He was preoccupied with feeling unloved and unwanted. He thought that was the problem, rather than that I was suffering and exhausted after years of his untreated ADD. We are now divorced.

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Sorry to come across negatively

I didn’t mean to be hurtful. I know just how painful this can be for both parties.

Not being able to embrace the other’s reality goes both ways, I think, and is in a way natural when perception differs a lot between partners. I mainly meant perhaps it’s not doable. No blame intended.

Wishing you all the best.

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This right here

This angry response to Swedish’s heartfelt answer to your question is the root of your problem. You are dismissing what she has to say, becoming very defensive, and becoming angry at a total stranger who is only trying to help you. She has lived the life your wife has. So have I. Why do we even try to help others when they think they already know it all??? You asked for feedback, and now that you’ve got it, you’re angry. Your anger is blinding you to the truth of your situation.

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Nobody said your experience is irrelevant.

You need to recognize your symptoms right here. You are assuming we are dismissing you when we are trying to tell you the hard truth. You don’t want to hear the truth, while asking us why your wife is not responding the way you want her to. Swedish said you need to be patient. You really do need to work on that. Life does not run according to your timeline. Other people have feelings besides you. If you want to know where your wife is coming from you need to listen to us. We are not here to enable you. Neither is your wife.

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I can definitely tell you this

You said yourself that whatever you’re doing is not working with your wife. So you need to do something different. If you react to your wife like you’re reacting to us, you will find it very hard to make any progress. As a woman, I can tell you there is no bigger turnoff than a man angrily demanding sex.

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I read what you said

You want sex, and you’re so angry you’re not getting it from your wife, that you said you are thinking about getting it elsewhere. Your wife is not a machine who can stuff her feelings and have sex if she’s not comfortable, she’s obviously not getting her emotional needs met, but you are blaming us for telling you like it is from the wife’s point of view. You need to look at YOURSELF instead of blaming us for not telling you what you want to hear. You act like none of us have feelings. Women were not put on this earth as a mere vessels to satisfy men’s sexual appetites. You need to acknowledge the hurt and pain you’ve obviously caused your wife in the past, and make amends for those behaviors WITHOUT expecting sex as a reward.

Can’t you see

Can’t you see that she can sense your anger? You can’t “stifle it”, it’s obvious to us who are complete strangers. Your wife can definitely sense your anger, simmering just under the surface, ready to explode if she says or does the wrong thing. You need to focus on addressing your anger, not just stuffing it. It still bleeds through into everything you’re trying to accomplish.
Also, personal insults like a jab about “reading comprehension” shows that you’re not willing to actually face your behavior problems. You are acting like a victim and we are the bad guys. Very unproductive.

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You don’t have to SAY it

I’m sure your wife can sense your growing anger and resentment about living in a sexless marriage…. unless she’s in a coma. If you want intimacy in a committed relationship with your spouse and not just sex, why would you tell us you are considering going outside the marriage for sex???? Please stop with the personal insults like calling me a liar and accusing me of gaslighting. Quit gaslighting yourself. The truth is that you just don’t like what I’m telling you. If this is how you argue with your wife, I can see why you’re getting nowhere with her.

Your words:

“I'm craving sex and intimacy with my wife constantly. In addition to that craving, I find myself becoming angry at my wife for seemingly refusing to make any attempt to improve our sex life together.”

Your words:

“ I feel trapped in a sexless marriage, and that feeling of being trapped is creating anger, anxiety, and, if I'm honest, a temptation to find a way to fulfill my needs outside of my marriage even though I don't want to pursue it. I feel unloved, undesired, and lonely, and those feelings so quickly can become feelings of anger and rage that I don't know how to cope with.”

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Projection and gaslighting

I quoted your own words back to you and you accuse me of gaslighting??? You need to become more self aware because you are projecting all over the place here. Perhaps you need a lot more individual counseling before you attempt marriage counseling. You are nowhere ready to be the kind of husband you yourself said your wife needs. You said she needs you to be aware of her feelings and of how much your behaviors have hurt her. You’re just repeatedly defending your actions here, implying that you’ve already done all of the work needed to save your marriage, instead of being humble enough to admit that your perspective might be wrong.

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Go to an individual counselor

…and show them this thread. You are splitting hairs trying to win this argument, rather than perhaps learn something about yourself. You have called me a liar and a gaslighter who has “poor reading comprehension”. You said you are only “considering” having sex outside the marriage. If you told your wife that (in your words) how do you think she would react? Do you think she would be ok if you are only “considering it” as opposed to planning it? You are sending her all kinds of negative messages you are obviously not aware of. If you don’t want our feedback, why are you even here? To learn? … or just to vent your barely under the surface rage?

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Corrections?

Corrections? Or denials? You are DEEP in denial. See an individual therapist for your issues. These issues are not your wife’s responsibility to fix. The responsibility lies solely with you.

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Then you need to show him

Then you need to show him or her this thread, and let your therapist point out your issues. You can’t fix your marriage unless you fix YOU. That’s not your wife’s job. As I said before, the responsibility to fix yourself is solely up to YOU.

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So it’s all my fault.

Got it! Go ahead and think you’re doing everything you can to solve your problems then.

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I guess

I guess since you’re removing your replies means that you’re NOT going to show this thread to your therapist? Afraid of what they might say about it????

No, I'm afraid of wasting

No, I'm afraid of wasting their time like you've wasted mine. It's interesting that you assume I haven't brought up thier anger I've been talking about to my therapist. It's indicative of how you have a pre-decided idea of what my behavior is like that you're unwilling to divert from. I have said almost exactly what I initially posted to my therapist before.

If I’m wasting your time

If I’m wasting your time, why do you keep replying? You don’t seem to realize how much work it takes to mend a heart that you are responsible for breaking.

"That you are responsible for

"That you are responsible for breaking."

Here it is. Finally it's in the open. You think an ADHD person is solely to blame for "breaking" the heart of their spouse. No wonder then that you're so quick to project.

Then tell me

Then tell me how your behavior is HER fault?????

Your behaviors are not her responsibility

You had adhd before you met her, and you will still have adhd after she’s gone. I’m talking about your behaviors, not her reactions to them. Spouses normally expect reliability and honesty from each other. So if you are not reliable, and she reacts negatively to your behavior, that’s a normal response from her. If it’s not what you would like, that’s on you, not her. Remember the term “garbage in, garbage out”? If you treat your spouse badly for years, you’re likely to have a troubled relationship. It’s not her responsibility to continually fix your problems or clean up messes you’ve made. She’s probably given you lots of chances over the years, but if she’s been consistently disappointed, lied to, or hurt, she probably has no energy for absorbing more of your dysfunctional behavior. Yes, your behavior is totally up to you to fix. She can’t help you. She can only protect herself emotionally, and that sounds like that may be what she’s doing. Do you really expect her to fix a lifelong problem you’ve had since before she even met you??? Nope, it’s totally your responsibility to change your behavior and your perspective.

Responding to your last

Responding to your last question here because the thread has gotten too narrow for me to click "Reply". I'm not going to claim that my behavior is due to my wife. I will quote from Melissa's book though:

"While the tendency is to blame ADHD for all of your problems, this is not actually the case. ADHD symptoms create unexpected, and often insidious, stresses on marriage, as well as many misunderstandings. The destruction comes form a full pattern, though--one that includes the symptoms, the response to these symptoms, and then the response to that response.

[The ADHD spouse's] distractibility was not, in itself, a destructive characteristic. It was the combination of [the ADHD spouse's] symptom and [the non-ADHD spouse's] specific interpretation of that symptom that amplified the issue so that it became part of a larger symptom-response-response cycle of problems."

If your view is that it is solely the ADHD spouse whose actions "break" a heart, then you're not able to consider that both spouses contribute to a destructive cycle.

I'm not able to easily read

I'm not able to easily read or respond to your comments now that the replies have become formatted oddly due to the number of responses we've had to each other. But I will point out that you've again ignored the quote I posted.

Is it "normal" for spouse to react poorly when the reliability and dependability they expect aren't there? Possibly, but also, it's possible to amend those responses if what the expectations are change. For example, if a spouse expects their ADHD spouse to be reliable 100% of the time with no accommodation for ADHD symptoms, then that expectation is not realistic and whatever anger stems from that expectation not being fulfilled isn't the responsibility of the ADHD partner to fix.

Should an ADHD spouse work to treat their ADHD to mitigate symptoms? Yes, and I'm doing the best I can at that currently. Just because you happen to think my anger at you is somehow misdirected or misguided does not mean that I'm not managing my symptoms. My anger could be justified and the correct response. Obviously we disagree.

You've been on this forum for almost 10 years, and it's shocking to me that you still want put the entirety of the blame on ADHD spouses for the destructive cycles that can develop in marriages between ADHD and non-ADHD people. I wish I had realized earlier that that was the perspective you're coming from, and I wouldn't have bothered engaging.

If you expect

If you expect her to fix your symptoms and your marriage, then you will be very disappointed. She’s told you what she needs…. She needs accountability and an acknowledgement from you regarding how much your behaviors have hurt her. You seem to think you’ve done enough after 6 months of therapy. Obviously, she doesn’t. Try to look at yourself and see just how defensive and accusatory you’ve been toward me, a total stranger. Like I said before, your arguing or conflict resolution style could stand some HUGE improvements.

I am/have:

I am/have:
1. Treating my symptoms with medication
2. Treating my symptoms with individual therapy
3. Making tangible improvements in day-to-day reliability and trustworthiness that have been acknowledged by my spouse, my individual therapist, and our couples therapist
4. I have acknowledged in couples therapy and individual conversations with my wife that my past actions have caused hurt. I have not denied that I did those things or that I want to treat my symptoms better so as to prevent additional hurt in the future
5. I have asked for advice from my individual therapist and close friends who I've opened up to about my situation if there is a way I can address past hurt other than treating my symptoms and becoming more reliable and trustworthy and the answer has been repeated: "No, you can't change the past, you can only change the present and the future for yourself and for her."

Is there an impasse between us about whether and how to address the resentment, anger, and hurt of the past? Yes. We've acknowledged and are aware of it, but having read "The ADHD Effect on Marriage" and spoken with my individual therapist, I don't think it ultimately up to me to do that work. I only control what I do now and tomorrow, and I am fighting my best to make that reliable and trustworthy.

My responses to you have been what they have been because you've already decided what you think the problem is (that I'm not treating my symptoms to your satisfaction) regardless of the multiple ways in which I have tried to explain to you that your assessment is not accurate. That is rightly deserving of anger and frustration.

Unfortunately for both of us,

Unfortunately for both of us, I can absolutely identify with what you're going through. Due to the very longstanding issues in our marriage (my ADHD being a larger part than I realized), intimacy sometimes feels like a distant memory.

That being said, I arrived here after reading "The ADD effect on marriage" as well as several other books. Each has been useful and enlightening in there own way, even as they have been difficult to read sometimes as they shine a light on things I have not been able or willing to see for much of my life.

Arriving here I was a bit disillusioned with a lot of the negativity that is splashed around pretty liberally, mostly from former non ADHD spouses. I am not here to demonize them, but what you can sometimes see here is most likely also a reflection of the intense anger and resentment that is built up over years of existing in a toxic neurodiverse relationship.

This anger and resentment is most likely also in your partner whether you can see it or not. My wife eventually got very good at hiding these feelings from me which led me to believe that they weren't there anymore. It was a bad assumption, like most assumptions are. Please never assume things that have not been agreed to, and don't try to force agreement.

I am also trying to rebuild a relationship with my spouse, and can only tell you that it hasn't, isn't, and won't be easy. It most likely took a lot of time to arrive where you are and will take a long time to move back. The anger and resentment are very real and have most likely become bedrock "truths" to your partner's existence. They have a hard time remembering what it was like to not feel this way.

Please stay hopeful because despair will eat you from the inside out.

If I could offer any advice, and take this with a grain of salt since I am certainly in the trenches with you and not some success story (yet), it would be to become open as you can. Learn as much as you can about what ADHD does and what it does to relationships that don't have the knowledge or tools to either understand what they're seeing, or know what to do about it.

Learn to respond instead of react. The cycle of negative reactions only leads to the bad result, break it. Figure out what triggers your reactions and try to pause the reaction so that you can thoughtfully respond instead.

Be honest and open about what you are trying to do, but don't do it to seek approval or validation or buy in from your partner. Thats not their job.

Your job is to work on you, with the clear understanding that you CANNOT:

• Change how they feel

• Change how they think

• Make them feel anything

• Make them engage with you

• Make them accountable for anything

All you can do is examine your part and role in how you got where you are and work there. I think a worthy goal is to show them what life could be like instead of what it has been, and then hopefully be able to invite them to reconnect with you. They will be suspicious and wonder if (or even how) this can be real. They are on the watch to see if these are just the temporary acts of someone desperate to avoid catastrophe, but willing to go back to the same old same old once that has been perceived to have passed. Be the change you want to see.

When I said to stay hopeful, that also means to be hopeful about YOUR future as well. Learning about yourself and how you exist in the world can only help you become a better person. So even if things don't go the way you hope, you will be a better person on the other side no matter what. That's a good thing.

As for the intimacy, I can only tell you what I see and try to do in my situation, maybe that will help somehow. It's all about connection. We don't have it and desperately want it. It can't be forced, taken, or demanded. It has to be built, together. My wife had pretty much given up on connection and eventually only did as much as necessary to avoid major conflict. I am trying to find ways to connect in ways that are invitational as opposed to "expected".

It may sound weird, but letting go of expectations is a good thing all around. Some of the studies I have been doing have made it pretty clear that expectations (especially unspoken ones) are pretty friggin toxic. If you think about it as a number scale of happy, the best a met expectation will most likely score is 0, neutral, good job doing what I expected you to do. An unmet expectation will score negative. See, no positive with expectations. An agreement in the other hand has the possibility to be positive. You can be happy that the person did what they agreed to do and also be in a place to respectfully ask why they didn't do the thing they agreed to do. Win win.

I don't ask for things from her at this point, I offer instead. "I need a hug" and "can I give YOU a hug" have totally different energy. Don't be hesitant to ask "is it OK if I do this" with hand holding or stroking or other small initiations of physical connections. Don't be pitiful or she won't respect you and be able to see herself with you.

If she refuses your invitation (hopefully politely and respectfully as well), DO NOT SHOW FRUSTRATION, ANGER, OR DISSAPPOINTMENT. Take it in stride, say ok, and wait for the next opportunity to try something small (or smaller) again. When you get a successful connection build slowly and pay attention to their response. If you are anything like us, you are both most likely working against the established pattern of negative reactions that has gone on long enough to feel "normal" . Create a new normal. A better normal.

This has been a long, rambling, ADHD fueled response, but I hope it has helped in some way. Try to always stay in the positive and be hopeful. There are definitely some who come here to vent about their past relationships and interact with others of like minds, but that is just them using this place as free therapy or a way to source outside validation from social media.

Don't wallow in the "maybe it just isn't possible" talk. You won't know anything until you really try. So make sure you find systems supportive to your relationship and its goals and above all TRY.

Thanks for the thorough

Thanks for the thorough response. I appreciate what you've said, and I definitely am feeling like perhaps we've both been missing trying to build the connection between us instead of trying to mitigate ADHD symptoms, which is important but not the entirety of the work of repairing.

It definitely seems like there are some people here who just want to heap blame on the ADHD spouse and turn them into a villain. I'm dealing with that right now with another user.

Everything I said was in good faith

Everything I said was in good faith! Quit playing like a victim.

Read StayHopeful's response

Read StayHopeful's response if you want an example of a reply in good faith. Vehemently defending oneself against malicious mischaracterization is not "playing the victim."

Everything I said was in good faith

Everything I said was in good faith. Just because you disagree does not change my motivation for trying to help you. Good for the other poster. He said he’s an adhd guy in the same boat as you. Of course you can relate to him! I am coming from your wife’s point of view, and you just don’t like what I have to say. All of your behaviors, including the personal insults and accusations you wrote here today, are YOUR choices, and YOUR responsibility.

You don't know anything about

You don't know anything about my wife's point of view. You presume you do. I talk to my wife. We've discussed many of these issues without there being anything like the conflict between you and I because we've done work to try and avoid making assumptions about one another as best we can.

I don't like what you have to say because it's inaccurate and it doesn't take into account the realities of the situation. Further, I haven't insulted you. I've accused you of things that I believe to be accurate and nothing about your behavior has proven me to be wrong. I have no interest in resolving this conflict with you or else I would have used a different tone.

Forum topic: Coping with anger at a sexless marriage despite treating ADHD as best as I can

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