I understand that men and women communicate differently, but I really think it is an entirely different world for an ADD mate and a non-ADD spouse. My husband was diagnosed 2 years ago at his own suspicion of what was *wrong* with him, and his progress is somewhat erratic though he has good intentions. We are actively working on getting him a new coach, we have some things we're working on from the AD/HD conference, and he takes his meds almost like he is supposed to. Not perfect, but decent improvement all in all.
My basic question is how do you help a person who loves spontaniety and everything flowing smoothly to appreciate that discussing deep thoughts and feelings at times (esp when it isn't part of fixing a problem or addressing an issue) is part of keeping a marriage flowing. He seems to think that discussions are necessary to "clear log jams when the river isn't flowing smoothly" but the rest of the time we should let it flow. That sounds to me he thinks you talk mainly to deal with *issues* but not so much because you want to. I need him to understand part keeping everything flowing smoothly is deeper levels of conversation. I love hearing about that hilarious thing he heard on the radio, or what is going on with friends of ours, & we have to discussor how we are dividing up the budget. But those are great for fun and surface only. I want deeper conversation--getting to know eachother and our hopes and dreams better. Sharing things that no one else knows about us. It isn't to solve problems, but to stay in synch for me.
As an exercise from the recent AD/HD conference, Dr Hallowell emailled a marriage workbook to go with his upcoming book Married to Distraction. It basically contains 30 days of 30 minute exercises and last night our exercise was to talk to eachother about our Dream of a Good Marriage for ourselves.
Fortunately our visions match up, and we went on to discuss things what things we should be tweaking. One thing I feel my husband lacks is more of a desire to communicate. He is definitely a better communicator than many men because when I want to talk or when I bring something up he is almost always willing to discuss it, but it is almost NEVER his idea. He doesn't start conversations, or probe into my dreams and psyche. Now to be fair probably part of this is because I am fairly open with these things, but some things I keep to myself unless someone cares to discover it (not deliberately per se but perhaps more of a way to protect some vulnerable parts of me.) It hurts me that while I would love to know everything about him and I frequently ask questions about his childhood and feelings about things, I don't often get this same reaction back.
When discussing why that is we hit some kind of profound areas. I told him that I had been guilty of asking him a question with a certain expectation of the answer for him & that I was hurt somewhat when he would answer with something silly (protective for him) or just surface rather than what I was hoping for. He apologized for the way he does this but mentioned that "it must be so hard for you to not get the answer you want." I admitted that at times it is and that I deal with it by trying not ask things with an agenda anymore. He said "that is so sad for you. I hate that I am doing that" I don't want him to feel he's failing. I shouldn't ask things with a hope of what I'll hear, but I do want him to think a little deeper at times or just express what he already feels. I do know that he feels what I want...he is a very loving husband, but one of my primary love languages is communication where he is not so much.
How do you help him see that this is basic marriage participation for women & that is doesn't indicate issues that you want to talk and hear about feelings. Because he thinks so many things should be automatic and not require extra effort (including prioritizing and scheduling and budgetting--all of which totally needs effort rather than spontaniety), it hinders his ability to get where he wants to go.
need for communication
Submitted by arwen on
Aspen, I have what may seem a strange view of the topic of communication in the relationship of an ADD man and a non-ADD woman.
In my experience, men in general don't find it as easy to communicate as women do. I believe this occurs for several reasons. First, our society in general doesn't really encourage men to communicate -- especially about feelings! Secondly, the acquisition of verbal skills tends to be a later/slower process for boys than girls, and there's always an inclination to slough off efforts on things we don't do well (either sex). Finally, I think most men don't feel the same level of need for social connectivity that most women do, so there's less incentive to communicate. Taking it all together, I think it's just as unrealistic for a woman to expect a man to communicate the way she wants as it is for a man to expect that his wife won't bother him with things he doesn't want to deal with! In any relationship, obviously, couples have to compromise to some degree -- with communication, the woman typically needs to learn to live with less of the kind of conversation she would like and as much sharing/communicating as the man can manage, and the man typically needs to make greater, concerted efforts to meet at least some of the woman's communicational needs.
But -- when ADD comes into the picture, it really throws a wrench in the works. Generally, an ADD man will be even less able to communicate than the average Joe. This may be in part because he himself does not necessarily know what he is thinking or feeling. (I used to hear a *lot* of "I don't know" from my husband.) It may be in part because his ADD makes it even harder to construct a coherent expression. (I still hear a lot of "I don't know what to say" from my husband!) It may be in part because past communicational experiences have been fraught with failure, so he's disinclined to even try. With my husband, the more his emotions are engaged, the less well his synapses snap in his brain! So, the more his feelings are involved in our discussion, the harder it is for him to communicate. Thus, communication can be a really Herculean effort for someone with ADD. It's important to understand that it may be as difficult for your spouse to communicate *at all* as it would be for you to, say, climb the Washington Monument's stairs to the top every day. It might be a healthy thing to do, but would you really want to? For a fairly healthy person, it may just require some extra effort -- for a cardiac patient, it would be a much bigger deal.
Unfortunately, at the same time, the need for communications is usually greater with ADD in the relationship! People with ADD often have trouble looking at a broad picture, and instead tend to focus only on a small subset of relevant facts/ideas, to avoid mental confusion -- they often have a lot of trouble even figuring out what is relevant to a topic and what isn't. So the ADD partner and the non-ADD partner are often looking at the same thing from two very different perspectives, and without communication, may be completely unaware of their differences. The assumption that one's partner is seeing things the same way you do can lead to all kinds of confusion, misunderstanding and conflict. Only communication can resolve this difficulty.
When my husband feels that what I'm asking him to try/change is a huge effort on his part, we try to figure out if there is some way to make the change as easy as possible -- cut it down to size, so it doesn't seem so daunting. After all, we pretty much all learned to crawl before learning to walk, this is no different. Another thing I've learned about my ADD spouse is that he doesn't have much faith in his ability to learn. When he was growing up, practice didn't have much impact on whether he got better at something or not, because he couldn't remember everything he needed to know in order to practice -- he'd remember a different subset of knowledge each time, so he'd get different results. So we try to set an interim goal that requires him to remember as little as possible, until that habit is firmly established.
With this in mind, I think if I were in your shoes, I wouldn't be requiring my husband to share deep thoughts/feelings in order to meet my emotional needs, but I would ask him to accept that I need to understand his deep thought/feelings in order to better work with his ADD issues. I'd ask my husband to trial an arrangement in which we'd set aside a special time, maybe a couple of times a week, to talk about deep thoughts and feelings, for say maybe 15 or 20 minutes each time. You may feel that's nowhere near enough, and your husband might feel it's way more work than is necessary. But surely it's not *that* big a sacrifice of his time and energy, in the overall scheme of things -- and surely you would be better off with this than with nothing. If you just give it a fair try, with patience and putting any expectations on the back burner for a couple of months, he just may discover that's it's not so bad as he'd expected, and it comes more easily with practice, and you may discover that you are getting somewhere with acquiring a better understanding of each other. That may lead to an opportunity to expand the arrangement a bit after a while -- maybe to half an hour or so each time, or maybe to three times a week instead of two. Small steps are typically more effective in achieving lasting change than giant ones. Eventually, you may be able to get to a point where it happens semi-spontaneously. My husband and I did not do something exactly like this, but we worked out an arrangement that worked for us, and while I still strive to keep our deep discussions to the formal structure we worked out, he accepts that sometimes events occur that make it more useful to tackle things "on-the-spot". Five years ago, he wouldn't have been able to do that.
I don't know if any of this helps, or sparks an idea. Good luck!