Hi everyone. My name is Amanda, I'm 30 and I am having a really hard time with my ADHD husband. We've been together for 7 years and things have been pretty bad off and on. He was originally diagnosed Bi-Polar a few years ago and it wasn't until recent that his new doctor told him the she believes he had been misdiagnosed and that he actually has ADHD. He's in the beginning stages of talking to her and getting his medication, but I need help in the mean time.
I have no idea what I'm doing. I feel as if im walking on eggshells. His anger is triggered constantly and over little things that shouldn't warrant that much anger. I understand that he is ADHD and he's going through a rough time trying to control his emotions and what not, but its really starting to take a toll on me. I wake up feeling both depressed and scared for what the day has in store for me. Its kind of driving me crazy...I feel like I'm losing my mind. I love him to death and I want to be with him, but I have no idea how to handle whats happening.
He doesn't physically abuse me but he def mentally abuses me and I really don't know how much longer I can take it. I don't want to give up on him and us...I honestly have no idea what to do. I try to tiptoe around him when I sense he's not feeling good mentally, but no matter how invisible i try to make myself, he always finds something to fight with me about. I learned along time ago to just ignore him when he's having somewhat of a tantrum and it used to be easy to do, but now I'm starting to realize that i'm over it and start fighting back. I know it only makes things worse but everyone has a breaking point...and I think i'm finally reaching mine.
For example. Yesterday he woke up around 11 am. I had breakfast made, we ate everything was fine. He said he was still tired so he went back to bed. He woke up like 3 hours later and I could tell he was in a horrible mood. The first thing he tells me is that its my fault he slept so long because I fed him breakfast to early...I mean REALLY?!? He gets really mad at that point grabs his headphones and goes upstairs listening to music for a few hours. (I know he needs his space to calm down so I let him). After a few hours he comes down and makes himself a drink. He takes a swig and spits it in the sink accusing me of washing the dishes with hand soap...He swears it tastes like hand soap and is now arguing with me about it. I know for a fact that I didn't wash the dang dishes with hand soap and I defend myself. He's always has to be right no matter what! At this point he's really ticked off. He throws the drink in the sink and stomps his way upstairs yelling and screaming how he's done with everything...and everyone....It really scares me when he says things like that because im not sure what hes going to do..I don't want him to harm his self of me for that matter. He goes into the room, he's throwing stuff everywhere, punching everything in site, yelling at the top of his lungs...Its driving me crazy...He always says sorry after, but his sorry''s are really starting to mean nothing to me...I just don't know what to do. I don't want to leave him because he is a great guy when he's happy and I really don't want to abandon him when he is at his lowest...I just just need tips on how to diffuse the situation before it starts...Please help!
when abnormal has become normal
Submitted by jennalemone on
This is not OK. not normal. He is not respecting you. This is not your fault. You should not be the keeper of his emotions. You need to go to people you can trust and share this with them. I have been where you are and I wish I would have been stronger and not cared so much about HIM....but cared about my own self respect and safety. He is drinking in the middle of the afternoon? red flag! Do not let your sensitivities and emotions run this show. Be strong. Get a hold of yourself and give yourself a break. He will be mad. So what? If you are afraid of the one who says he loves you.....there is something wrong. He is NOT a great guy if you have to put up with this. It is not abandonment if you leave.....it is self preservation. If you have kids, especially, don't let this continue....don't be part of it. I stayed with this myself....maybe not quite as bad as you have it but drinking and scary he was. Do you want to be retired and and still be with this guy? Or do you want to give yourself the courage and the strength to trust your own heart and live a life you can live with?
Why on earth would you stay!
Submitted by c ur self on
I'm sorry if you read my original post....It just breaks my heart when I hear this....You don't have to accept abuse....None of us do....
C
Self esteem?
Submitted by smd1409 on
Sounds like ADHD alright. Not sure about bipolar but everything you've mentioned not only matches the stories on this website but also the way he acts matches symptoms people with ADHD might experience in general.
First off and most importantly, I am not defending your husband whatsoever. His actions are his, no matter what. It's actually quite sad. For both of you. If he reaches his breaking point because of his own flaws and decides to do something rash about it, it's his fault. If it's because of your actions that led him to act the way he did, it's still his fault for acting in a rash manner. But it's also the same for you. If it's the former then he needs to be controlled. If it's the latter then although the fault is his at the end of the day, you're the one that mainly needs to change or else this problem will repeat itself no matter how you try to escape it.
I also neither agree or disagree with whether you should continue to be in this relationship. All I know this that you want to try and so I'll act accordingly.
Onwards, there is not enough information from what I've seen to think that your husband is trying to take advantage of you through abuse. A lot of things you state seems to stem from a possible problem of self esteem so raising it and helping him cope with his problems might be the way forward. I believe it's because of self esteem for a few reasons. When someone is abusive the two extremes that I am aware of is that it's because he wants control over you or he has no control over himself for whatever reason.
So he picks fights over the smallest of things. Someone who wants to control you will know that picking fights needs to be carefully planned during those moments where you can get the most benefit from it. Too many unnecessary fights will leads to resistance from the other side which is not what they want. This is too impulsive to be that.
When he gets into a fight with you he not only blames you but proceeds to blame everyone else. Somehow it connects to everyone else. Someone who wants control over you wants exactly that: over you. There's no need to bring anyone else into it except to make it feel as if it was him against the world so that you would support him. But then again if that was the case he would also plan that part. Rather than tell you how he is sick of the world right after getting angry, he would have used it against you from the very beginning.
He says sorry afterwards. Depends on how he says sorry. If he says we'll get through this, it's almost as if he's saying it's your fault. If he somehow gets something afterwards every time, then it suggests he's only saying sorry to get some sort of advantage over you. Both mean he is possibly manipulative. However if all he says is that it's his fault, then it sort of means that he accepts he needs to change himself. If you want to control someone else you never accept that something is your fault. Even if you do you only state it to gain an advantage over you. And even that is hard to say for someone who wants control over you.
When someone has ADHD, it really can feel as though the world is against you. I know that feeling all too well. It can be like you want to try your hardest to succeed in life and you can't. And it feels like no one understands what you're going through, not even yourself and so you see everyone as equal a blame as you. Deep down inside I acknowledged that I needed to change too, yet it always felt as though it was always expected to be me, never anyone else, and it hurt so much. I'd had enough of saying that it was my fault inside and being unable to change that, despite all my efforts, I unconsciously began to think that my life only could get better if everyone was just more helpful. And it's actually a true point, yet completely wrong (I won't bother explaining this). Self awareness is not an easy thing. Believe me, I've seen that lack of it enough from everyone around me, on the news and on the internet, not just ADHD. Including regularly in myself. I'm still actively learning about myself every day and have been for a very long time. Even when I try to show others their lack of awareness and their flaws they refuse to accept it.
If I'm right and it is self esteem, you might find peace in more positive and realistic approaches to his behaviour. If he gets angry right after waking up late after three hours of sleep, then it's possible that his anger was not directed at your breakfast, but his anger over the fact that he spends his days doing nothing and that sleeping for three hours proved that. The breakfast was just caught in the line of fire. Realising that his mood was triggered by his sleep, maybe you could raise his self esteem by accepting his tiredness, telling him that you trust that he had a good reason to be tired, even though you may not know what that is (and stating this too). Or be more realistic, ask him why it was so important that he needed to be awake, that he thought sleeping for three hours was so wrong, because clearly it meant a lot to him. But this is all about self awareness of yourself. You need to know what it is about yourself and himself that can be changed. Be able to spot the source of the problem rather than what's seen at the surface. And even if you spot it too late, drag the time back (in the right manner) so that it isn't. Asking him to change almost never works. It hasn't here. Most people I see technically here find changes when they change their own attitude towards their partners and inside themselves. But at the end of the day, I'm taking this guess of self esteem from a few paragraphs of your life. I could be completely wrong simply because there may be multiple other factors causing problems here that had not been raised because I hadn't heard more about your life.
You have to remember that right now you feel as though you are at breaking point and you want to break. Maybe he already reached breaking point at some point in his life and decided to take that same route? Someone has to stop this cycle.
Manipulation and Control
Submitted by kellyj on
I'm chiming in here to add a couple of thoughts and actually an analogy as well. Regardless of what he did to you or how that is effecting you, a couple of things that smd mentioned still ring true for me as well. No matter what he is doing and even if he's the cause....your reaction to him is still your responsibility and he is upset at something? My biggest failure with D is not seeing things soon enough but the big one that I'm now feel more than ever is understanding her Love language and actually listening to her instead of me trying to give it to her or looking for it from her....in another place as well. No understanding her limitations, and not understanding that "she had no other Love language in her"....that was the only way should could give and receive it and my expectations and what I wanted would not allow me to see it, even though I know she was telling me, I just wasn't hearing it from her point of view. And even though, I did eventually catch on or figure some of this out....I was woefully behind in not responding sooner. It may or may not have made any difference in the end game as it was......but to say that her feelings weren't hurt, that I did not hurt her in my failures to take action and do things when I could have, might have changed things some...but still not fixed the problem however....I didn't help her in the way she needed it and I hurt her instead. I still have to take responsibility for whats mine and my limitations are no different in that respect. They still caused D to suffer and feel the effect....the same as I did? Maybe even more amplified because we were both challenged in this way. What smd said is always true and I feel a lot of remorse and regret over some the things I've done and even more recently .....in hind sight, I can see where I absolutely failed and caused D to suffer greatly because of my failure. At some time I want to apologize but that is the big regret sometimes...knowing that you don't always get a second chance later? Sometimes later never comes.
The Love language in her case was "act of service"....and "gifts of service" are the return response from that I think. Not recognizing the importance and my failure on my part most definitely lead to conflicts that never got resolved and most if not all of it....came from my limitations even if not with intention and more with regret actually knowing and acknowledging that it's not the norm for everyone. Even with the awareness and with it being out in the open....it still has the effect...and the effect on him is just as bad in this case but that still is not your fault. In the long haul...you reactions will make a difference unless he is a manipulator nd has an "end game" in mind. What I've had to come to is being able to see the difference and the difference is immense but it also depends on you since for me as well....as part of it fits me to be in the that role..and I do or did get a benefit from it without a doubt. But there was also something very unhealthy in there too which wasn't my fault and comes down to the manipulation aspect which takes on a whole new set of "rules". It is very much like a game....and the game has "rules." Lots of rules and regulations and boundaries to cross. But it was said best in something I just heard on YouTube where the fellow said......"they have to put you down, to make himself feel good." This kind of down, is really is like saying you are "below"....never equal.....that's the point. And the "end game" is control and he who has the most....gets of the good stuff for themselves or the way they want it. It that's the end game....then I'd say he is a manipulator. If it's not...then it might be something else?
But in my analogy I just made up....."Picture....a basketball team. You have four players and a "Center" ,,,,5 and all. And like the 5 on a dice...the centers position is right there being the "middle dot" on the dice. And he's taller than eveyone too...so now...everyone needs to throw the ball to him so he can put it in the basket and make the "goal". And in this analogy...this is an undefeated team and that center is just putting them in the goal left and right. But in this case, he got all 4 other players basically setting up all the plays for him. They are more just satellites there to support the center, because it all about the center....because he makes the most points. And when ever he doesn't have the ball...he's always yelling at the other to throw it to him? Or get them arranged to he can make the basket which is does...because he always has control of the ball?
And in this game..."the ball"..is "control itself". So in this situation....the person who has the most control...is the person with the ball? And if the ball is control itself...then the person with the ball the most....has all the control. What the guy said on YouTube that resonated with me was.....when your choices get narrowed down to only a few. Maybe only one choice.......then you know your with a manipulator. When or if he has all the choices, and you end up with none of very few.....I'd say you need to take a look at that...and see what that is all about? In our case....we both did that too each other....so neither one of us is hold harmless....but there is a difference between a manipulator and ADHD or something like Asperger or on the spectrum which in both cases...is from being outside of your awareness and an inability ( or disjunction ) not with direct intention. But that doesn't means you can't have both that and being a manipulative person. It can be one or both....manipulation though with an "end game" of "power over and control"......is a separate issues and is the most troubling aspect of it if that's what's happening but good to make the distinction before you can really tell I think? But if yourself fits into that nicely and ......"gifts of service" and "acts of service" is what speaks to you most....then it's difficult to separate yourself from all of this? It's something I was thinking about...in terms of the 5 Love languages and with me not really understanding this as I needed to. That was my biggest failure of all.
J