Sorry if this is long. I am currently trapped on a "vacation" with my severely (worsening) ADHD husband and his very dysfunctional family, including his daughter who is also seriously ADHD, I think even worse than her dad. There are rampant issues in this family with generational PTSD, ADHD, mental health issues, anger issues and substance abuse. I have a complex 14 year history with all of them, including helping to save multiple family members from death by drug addiction, and receiving no real gratitude or recognition of how awful that extended nightmare experience was for me.
I should not have come on this trip, but did so for the sake of my partner and I guess everyone's need to have something resembling a family, even if it barely holds together and feels like it can explode into a million wrecked pieces at the slightest provocation.
I have no other family, having been the only child of two now dead parents, and now I have only far away cousins I never knew very well and don't really speak to anymore. To be honest, family has become really important to me as I get older and I admit to having very deep painful feelings over my sad lack of it. I never could have my own children. So really, it's just me, and my much older partner, and his family (he has other family on his sister's side who are very lovely and very emotionally stable, I love visiting with them but it happens rarely).
As I write, they have all gone off on a sailing excursion for the day and I have stayed behind. Which makes me feel really sad, resentful, and alienated. And yet it was my choice, because being with them all feels worse.
I feel self-critical that I am feeling like an abandoned child, self-pitying, even though this is my choice, to stay behind.
But the truth is, I feel abandoned daily and constantly by my husband's ADHD, as his presence is consistently not with me. I feel alone while sitting with him on the beach, or at a restaurant, as his attention just floats away into his own thoughts, or he checks his phone and disappears into it, and I am left feeling like I'm tethered to an inanimate object, like a bouy. Like I am just a boat bobbing out there alone on the sea. Just that feeling alone causes me a constant stress.
I am fine when ACTUALLY alone. It's being with him and his family that makes me feel sad and alienated.
Altogether I would say being with them all just feels so UNSAFE. Emotionally and also physically. I can't trust any of them to be safe while on this boat today. I know that their concept of safety is not mine. With all the ADHD, I am constantly on alert to things they are missing and forgetting. It just freaks me out.
I have been sailing with my husband multiple times where things have gone wrong, due to his oversight, or his lack of preparedness, and what feels like recklessness to me. Just plunging into doing something because he wants to, without being ready. That's how he lives his life. I am constantly on alert to everything that can go wrong that he is not noticing.
Yet, today I am also really sad that I am foregoing the chance to see actual whales, in favor of feeling safe and not stressed. I really wanted to see whales!
I am angry and resentful that I can't trust any of them, and in the end I am the one who misses out. When they come back tonight all thrilled about the whales they saw, I know I will seriously feel like crying.
This brings up feelings from my early childhood, like being at summer camp and feeling really alone. All of that makes me feel genuinely pathetic right now.
And none of them have any idea of how I feel, nor do I think they really care. I mean, my husband might care, but there is nothing he can do about it, so why even talk to him? It will just lead to his RSD exploding, I'm sure.
His RSD and anger are pretty much constant. Meanwhile his daughter is allowed to be rude and nasty at any moment and no one says anything because it would lead to more problems. Her mother is mentally ill, she was a serious addict, everyone is happy that she's alive and not dead, that she now has a husband and child of her own, and that is all that matters. I can't confront or challenge her on her awful attitudes, and I wouldn't even attempt to have a meaningful conversation about any of it with her. She has always had a love hate feeling toward me and she becomes frankly vicious and crazy when cornered. It isn't worth it to me to try. I don't think she cares a whit for my actual feelings, I think she resents them.
So here we are, and we are all supposed to just act like a family and smile and laugh for the little 2 year old boy so he feels good and thinks the adults are sane and safe. I realize a lot of families are probably this way.
So I am just dealing with all this dysfunction alone, dealing with my feelings alone, while the larger world is also in intense turmoil, I am doom scrolling, and I am feeling so much sadness just growing and welling up inside me.
In the end, I am left feeling like the best I can do is try to have some Buddhist transcendence of ALL my feelings. And actually, I can do that. But here's the issue .... should I? Should I strive to be this transcendent vessel of compassion who doesn't have any human need to really be understood or seen or to have her needs valued?
I feel like this is something of the mother archetype, the woman who just gives and loves and smiles and tends, and the other family members don't really see her as the individual she is or deal with the complexity of her own suffering. Through my partnership with this man, I - who have never been a real mother - am now a step-mother and step-grandmother, and I see how I am put in that role. And maybe that IS a role that you have to take in a family. Like, you transcend your own needs for the larger family dynamic.
Sometimes I think you have to do that.
But in this case, I guess don't really feel part of this family because these are not my actual children with this man. So I am less inclined to continue holding that phony role where I just put up with all kinds of crap to keep the peace.
But what is the alternative when you are dealing with emotionally volatile ADHD PTSD RSD people who can't really do a lot better than they are doing now?
I can have compassion for them, because I do think this is actually the best they can do right now. My emotions are like collateral damage in a war none of us really started. We are just caught in it.
Anyway. Thanks for listening. I feel better for writing it out.
Comments
beautifully put
I feel where you’re at; for me I categorised it as ‘inertia’ - that I had to carry so much I couldn’t bear to take on one more thing, even if I’d love to do it - so you miss out on lovely things. And the loneliness in their company I get too. I too have been so lonely in my marriage. We split now 10 months ago and after the immediate shockwaves it has been so peaceful and good, and I find I can do things without them being anything more to carry.
One thing I wonder might help you most immediately is reading - put down your phone, find a book, disappear into an ordered and interesting world all by yourself, where the crazy can’t touch you.
Longer term, I’d consider separation.
I hear how you are missing a sense of family; it’s not replacable but can you to look for connectedness and nourishment in community, through volunteering, support work, getting stuck into a good cause?
Mainly my thinking is, can you try to find ways to do more with and be closer to people who do you good, your friends, activities you enjoy and that make you feel seen and valuable, rather than having your life sapped away by this man and his family?
Life’s short. Not everyone is difficult. Sending love. X
Family
Your longing for a family to trust in and belong to is so relatable to me, as is the feeling the chosen partner and their extended family are completely wrong for it.
Sometimes letting go of hope entirely is freeing. Please remember the family system you’re in now effectively blocks out other people, who could make you feel safe and valued.
If I could suggest something, it would be to get in touch with your cousins. Perhaps they want to be an important part of your future. I know I’d be overjoyed if a half lost relative reached out to me.
And yes, as Honestly said, leaving this dysfunctional family is probably a safer choice than staying.
There is so much to what you wrote
I don't even know where to start except to say that I get it.
"I am left feeling like I'm tethered to an inanimate object, like a bouy." I have grown to feel like this, too, as my ADHD husband has aged and withdrawn even more. No interests, hermit life, sucked into his phone or bizarre TV shows (watches the same episode over and over and over). And the not feeling safe: Let me just put it this way . . . during a storm, my husband argued angrily with me, as he wanted to put a running gas generator IN our garage. That would have killed us. I feel I am regularly on "high alert" because of his missteps.
And, yes, being the "caretaker" and "watcher" is beyond exhausting (then my husband gets upset about it).
One thing I do for survival's sake as well as to embrace the positive is I have grown to live more and more my own independent (thus my "name") life. I have joined groups, I go to the gym, I am very involved with my work, I even go on solo vacations or get-aways with friends and other family. My husband is so far down in that "not here" pit that it's all ok with him (thank God).
I grew up in an alcoholic home and was the child with sense . . . the one who spoke the truth and tried to settle things down and smooth things over, but who also wanted to fix things. At the same time, I detached in many ways and went off on my own. I didn't realize I was repeating those patterns when I became involved with my husband so long ago. I tried so hard early on to "fix" him (I know, I know). Now I feel like it's all too late. So many years have passed. I'd have to sue him in order to split from him and survive on my own. So, I feel I'm "making the best of it" and living my life. God, I wish I had some guidance way back when.