My husband was recently diagnosed with ADD about 6 months ago. He is seeing a therapist but progress is very slow. He is a really nice, good hearted person. I am constantly finding fires that he created and then I have to help find solutions to put them out. Two weeks ago he bounced a check to the IRS for our payment plan because he forgot to put money in the account. This week I found out he maxed out our credit cards. Even though I look to make sure things are going smoothly something slips by me. And I'm going insane searching for problems before they happen. It seems like we have to have a plan for everything. I can't trust him to do the little things or the big things like he says he will. After 13 years of this i'm exhuasted. How do you put all the anger and frustration aside, fire after fire and still love or even like your spouse with ADD?
Finding Fires
Submitted by aviatorjj on 02/16/2010.
well....
Submitted by txwife on
I'm lucky, perhaps. My husband makes me laugh. Even if I'm mad at him, or things are tense, he can always make me laugh. When we laugh together, I'm able to focus on the good times, and his good qualities (of which he has many).
I also focus on the little things that have changed. Fewer tense moments, better mornings, more stability in general. Things still happen, but it's getting better, and I have my spouse to thank, as he's the one willingly seeking ways to improve.
Just a suggestion: if the issue is financial irresponsibility, can you change the process so you handle the finances for a while, or so you're more involved? That way you feel more secure, and fewer fires occur.
fireproof
Submitted by arwen on
My ADD husband has a lot in common with yours. We struggled for 15 years and like you I was exhausted. When I was in your shoes, I couldn't put aside all the anger and frustration either. I'm not really sure it's possible in this kind of circumstance.
My husband and I have evolved to a much better relationship over the past 5 years through a variety of changes. We had long ago set up our finances so that my husband's ability to create financial problems was minimized. Starting 5 years ago, we implemented formal meetings several times a week (I have a blog post about this at http://www.adhdmarriage.com/content/improving-communications-through-for...). One of the results of these meetings was that they allowed us to head off potential problems by checking status with each other and making sure we were on the same page. In effect, we were finding the fires while they will still just smoke (or sometimes still an unlit match, to stretch the analogy). This has significantly reduced the frustration level in our relationship. It's true that at the very start, it took a bit more energy to do the meetings, because there were still fires to find and put out, but once we got things working better, it now takes a lot less time to do the meetings than it used to to deal with the fires. In effect, we "fireproofed" the areas where we tended to have the most problems.
For example: my husband has had some of the same problems as yours with credit cards. He is only supposed to charge something under $50 or for an emergency (he has a debit card he is supposed to normally use, to keep a lid on his expenditures), and if he has to use a credit card for more than $50, he is supposed to let me know. I look over the statements on *all* accounts. When I saw he wasn't always following this rule, we discussed it in our meeting and agreed that he would (1) move the cards to the least accesible part of his wallet (2) put a post-it note around them that reminded him "<$50 or emergency only" (3) put another post-it note around them that reminded him to put a reminder in his PDA for that evening to tell me about it. Of course this hasn't guaranteed that nothing will go wrong, but it does help reduce the likelihood quite a lot, without me having to do anything extra.
You say that you can't trust your husband. I couldn't either. But this is not an issue of will, or integrity, or sincerity, or caring. The ADHD brain typically doesn't work in a consistent, reliable manner -- so of course the ADHDer has trouble acting in a consistent, reliable manner. I finally recognized that blindly trusting something that is inconsistent and unreliable was folly, regardless of how much I wanted to be able to do so! Once my husband and I both accepted that any process we set up that was based on the assumption that he would be able to remember something or act consistently was doomed to failure, and we put aside the whole question of trust, and started trying to find ways to back up or supplement his memory and form simple habits, things got a lot better.
Hope this helps or sparks an idea about what might work for you to "fireproof" your relationship.