I've been on this forum for nearly 9 years and have separated myself from my spouse in many areas. We live together and do some things together but I no longer depend on him, fix his mistakes, or apologize for him. I've dealt with most of the issues others have posted about and will say that there is no fixing your spouse. They aren't going to clean, or take out trash, or pick up the kids on time. You must accept this if you intend to stay married. Stop wasting years while s/he half-asses therapy, makes empty promises, and blames everything on their condition. Becoming a functional spouse isn't going to happen unless they are committed to working on themselves and we all know how long anything difficult will last with an unwilling ADHD participant. You must take control of your life and your wants. You must take over whatever responsibilities that leave you exposed financially and socially in order to protect yourself from financial ruin and becoming friendless.
Married over 40 years now and lately I started to suspect there is something more going on with H. I did some research and found out that a person with ADHD is nearly 3 times more likely to develop dementia than those without ADHD, even when other risk factors are considered according to NIH and JAMA. The difficult part determining if there is an new issue is that many early signs (forgetful, lose thing, put things in wrong place, frustration, outbursts) are already in place w ADHD so it is easy to miss the early signs. Not sure how this will play out because broaching the subject will be WW3 no matter how gentle the approach is. I guess I will wait until something happens and he will have not choice but face reality. I have live one day at a time now and not worry about the future. Only God know what will be...
