I love my husband, I really do. He is a great guy and for the most part I love our life together.
But I'm at a loss right now as to handle his career unemployment and the way he views himself with grace.
I work from home and make a very good living. He handles the household stuff. It works pretty well.
Lately he's been talking about getting a job (he's been unemployed most of his life), and he was up for a minimum wage position that had a chance to work into something bigger. He turned it down because it conflicted with all the kid stuff. Okay, I get that. Totally understandable.
Then he started getting down on himself, but at the same time, giving himself a lot of false pride. For example, he wants to run for city council. He has zero political experience, has never volunteered on any city boards, and the extent of his experience is that he knows a lot of people and talks a lot. He's also got a psychiatrist appointment (FINALLY) in a couple weeks for diagnosing ADD and possibly a few other things; he looked at me and said "I can diagnose myself right now. And I know most people would thing I'm just being arrogant, but that doesn't matter. The reason my career is not where it should be is 100% other people. If they would just do what I tell them to do I would be the CEO of Microsoft." I'm not making this up, he really does say this and lots more in this vein all the time.
He also started a home PC repair business several years ago; started by talking about it, then asking me to build a web presense, then promptly dumping it. He gets people calling for help probably once or twice a month (which I was unaware of), in fact, just had someone call in front of me. He TURNED THE BUSINESS DOWN, on the phone, and when I (in shock) asked him why he did that, he said that he was only interested in helping Fortune 500 companies.
I didn't even know this was happening, and I was so angry that he turned the people down that I had to walk away. Then he starts talking about how he "doesn't want to waste his time with home users". This from a man who has been unemployed most of his life, a business opportunity literally falls into his lap, and he's got the nerve to turn it down.
Is this more than ADD? Or is this full-on mental illness? Like I said, I love him and most of the time we do great together. But this constant refusal to face reality is honestly shocking to me. I want to know how I can handle it gracefully without, you know, boot-kicking him. :)
value of time and money
Submitted by jennalemon on
redhead, Our Dh's have this in common: Their judgement/perspective is odd (and un-partner-able). What seems to be important to them is ... their spur of the moment urge/ego/fun. Rather than being a contributing and needed member of the family, they do what they FEEL like it at the moment. They make decisions based on what they FEEL like at the moment. What matters to them is inappropriate for a grown up. Their value of TIME is skewed toward their ego/impulse/"retribution kicks". What their value of MONEY is, is that it means nothing to them, someone will take care of things (magically?), so why worry about it at the moment. The lack of executive function means that they don't plan ahead. They don't see a consequence of their actions or lack of action --- this could be upbringing or a factor of us taking care of everything when they drop the balls. A father and husband must look to their family's future for the family to have peace and trust and pride. When us nonADDers pick up the pieces and fill in the holes, life works for the ADDer and we prove them right - someone WILL pick up the pieces. But when we see them time and again ignoring opportunities to succeed and contribute, choosing instead to take it easy on themselves while we are stressed and worried about their goofyness (and their and our sanity), it swirls the entire family into a pond with everyone wondering "What's wrong with us all? Why are we stressed, confused and sad?" It is because there is an expectation that goes with the territory of husband and father. We try so hard not to point a finger or not to have too high of expectations, but we are not helping anyone when we permit someone with the title of husband and father to sit idle and take it easy.
WOW you are so right!
Submitted by Second Chances on
Jennalemon,
HOLY SH*T that was a powerful post. I read and reread it several times. WOW you are 100% spot-on, on target. Thank you.
WOW I'm bookmarking this.
Submitted by redhead1017 on
WOW I'm bookmarking this. This is amazing insight.
Completely spot on. He spends all day goofing up and gets upset when I don't get excited to watch a stupid YouTube video while I'm working. We have savings only because I work hard at saving. He has zero thought for the future, and any kind of talk regarding investments or savings or plans, he gets upset. His one contribution to future plans is that he wants to buy a big piece of land and build a house; I have zero desire to do this and have expressed this several times and he gets upset about that.
Here's a great example of his lack of executive function. Yesterday he took our dogs to get micro-chipped and it was expensive. He came home all happy that it was "so cheap!" Yeah, in YOUR mind it probably was because you're not the one earning the money to pay for it! He spent several hundred dollars on comic books a couple weekends ago, and pranced around how happy he was on how much money he saved, and all I could think of was well that was about 5 hours of work for me, glad you enjoyed it. He wants to take over some aspects of our home business, which I can't allow since the couple times I've done so he's completely dropped the ball and screwed it up, leaving me to pick up the pieces.
I don't rely on him at ALL for financial stuff, which was very difficult for me to get to that place, but after ten years of watching him get fired or quit or just sit around all day I took matters into my own hands.
Here's the thing though - I do want to figure out a way to handle this gracefully. I don't want to walk around resenting him. How do we do that?
Try this :)
Submitted by c ur self on
Love and respect him positionally, be faithful, honest and true...BUT, be wise enough to see the reality of add/ADHD in action and the effects it has on people. Let them be responsible for their own actions...Don't fall to the temptations to mother them are you will get disappointed...Don't take this wrong, but why would I continue to let my emotions get so effected by counting on and trusting in someone (regardless how much I love them) who a lot of the time has a reality towards responsibilities of an 8 year old ?? Adders have a normal and non adders have a normal and most of the time they look nothing a like...If we don't set up some boundaries, and both parties respect them, were just asking for Chaos!
because they are adults
Submitted by dedelight4 on
c ur self; We let our emotions get affected by ADHD'ers because they LOOK like adults, and we get taken back by that. It is very hard to comprehend that this grown adult you are talking to, who you are having sex with, has the mind of an 8 year old. THAT just seems creepy and weird. You WANT them to be responsible, to take care of things the way WE do, and to LOVE us the way we love them, only to be dissapointed time and time again. It seems impossible to always be in total control....and to NEVER let any of their bad behaviors and lack of affection hurt. We aren't in control....THEY ARE. Because no matter WHAT we want, our world ends up being THEIR WAY. (at least those of us who have spouses who won't deal with their adhd)