Recent forum posts (all topics)

Hello;

Extreme guilt haunts me.  I ended a lengthy relationship with my fiance who has ADHD and, I suspect, bipolar.  We called off our wedding so he could seek treatment as we both felt that this was a priority.

My guilt stems from the fact that I feel I failed him.  Isn't " in sickness and health" a vow that I should have remained in the relationship?

I've been married to my ADHD partner for several years, and after the initial hyperfocus phase, I suspected infidelity. My wife, diagnosed with ADHD since college, seems to have lost focus on me. As a lawyer, she works extensively, and when she does focus on me, things can go well, but this is now rare. Do others feel the same sense of loneliness I do? We maintain intimacy on weekends, though she struggled with the schedule I established due to our busy household with six children, one with special needs. She admitted that without this schedule, we wouldn't be intimate.

My husband has severe ADHD, and the mask has been fully off for a couple of years now. Every marriage problem you can have with the ADHD effect, we've got it — plus a few bonuses, like intentional misuse of his medication ("binges," up to 3 days without sleep).

I’m seeking advice from others who’ve experienced similar challenges in their marriage. My husband struggles with job-related depression, and I have inattentive ADHD, hormone imbalance, and a validation complex (as my therapist calls it). I feel like a failure when I don't meet certain expectations, and it's affecting our marriage. We have two young children (5 and 7), and we've been together for 15.5 years.

Good morning, in trying to figure out why I'm irritated all the time, need to be doing something, and can't sleep in - I think I have high functioning anxiety or productivity anxiety. I know that if I slip on my projects/responsibilities things won't get done properly in our household and can easily snowball into bigger problems.

I actually asked him. 

I texted my ADD ex husband I was considering a new serious relationship, told him I’ve loved him and haven’t wanted divorce. I asked to know if there were any possibility of us resolving our conflicts and reuniting. I told him I can’t repair what’s happened to our relationship, but he could.

Yesterday my child wept, lying on my chest, that they want the family to be together. I can’t start something new unless I’m certain there’s no misunderstanding and no hope of reconciliation. 

I wanted to write this down before I forget. Our biggest obstacle, in my mind, is my Inabilty to discuss things that involve my feelings and my SO's hypersensitivity to perceived criticism, fault, wrong doing, etc. I'm wording it that way because that's her perspective. It very difficult to talk about things when someone is instantly on the defensive so, I've gotten in the habit of not.

I separated from him a week ago. 

I’ve made my kids cry; it’s the last thing on earth I wanted to do, but I had reached a point where I wanted to die. And when I realised that I was really there, it had gone that far, I also realised that what I was doing, staying with him despite all my unhappiness, was pointless: my kids needed a living, functioning mum more than they needed her to be married to their dad. So I told him we were separating and I packed a bag.

A strong marriage is built on understanding, communication, and mutual support. However, mental health challenges can sometimes create obstacles in even the most loving relationships. Here’s how couples can navigate these challenges together:

Have been reading up some on emotional safety. It’s apparently what a person feels when they and their emotions are fully accepted, by a person or a group of people. 

I struggle to understand what happened in my ADD marriage. At the end, noone felt emotionally safe. I ruined his safety by being critical for decades before his diagnosis. But despite conflict and trust erosion, I believe on the whole he’s made me more emotionally safe than anybody else.