Recent forum posts (all topics)

I found my ex has ADHD (he's 34) 5 months into our relationship. He never told me. He only mentioned sometimes that he's bad a organizing and scheduling. I found out when I saw Ritalin on his desk and asked him what it is. He told me it's to help him with organization skills. I went home later that night and googled Ritalin myself. So ADHD came up. But I didn't think it was a big deal. Now finding this site makes me realize ADHD stretches far beyond work ability. I'm now officially done with this guy after a year of physical and verbal abuse.

I'm going to throw out a bunch of questions I've been having about situations that come up over and over again with other couples.

I would love answers from both ADHD and non-ADHD spouses.

There are clear times when my ADHD spouse says something that didn't happen the way he says. I know this is common with couples. He acknowledges this sometimes and welcomes me to correct him. But then there are times he is not okay with it and gets flooded/overwhelmed because he really remembers it differently and wants to disagree with me. For example, I could say

I have a thought that expectations of the benefits of ADHD medication may be too high.  Maybe not so much for the non-ADHD spouse, but for the person with a later-in-life diagnosis of ADHD.  

A person with near-sightedness can wear a pair of glasses or contacts to 'improve' their vision.  At days end, they remove the glasses or contacts, and obviously those things did not 'fix' their vision.

I think if we had a clear list of specifically what the medication will do, than it may be easier to understand if the the medication is beneficial or not.

Just wondering,

My ADHD husband has zero coping skills and has a tantrum whenever things don't go his way. I will do pretty much anything to avoid engaging him in a fight but I'm only human and it happens. When we argue he has a tendency to scream that he hates me and wants me to leave. I never leave because I tell myself he's "not himself" and he doesn't mean it. When he calms down he will usually apologize and say he didn't mean it. But lately I've been struggling to believe him when he apologizes. I've told him that the things he's said to me in anger are hard to forget, even though I honestly try.

This is something that I do think is relevant to people with ADHD in terms of lying or perceived as lying or not telling the truth.  In this case it comes in the form of rationalizing which is something that I have worked very hard in eliminating in my repertoire.  It is simply trying to explain yourself or justify why you do things which in the case of undiagnosed ADHD.....this almost becomes second nature to do.

Do you think it's possible to have ways (techniques) to re-set your spouses hyperfocus back onto you if it has shifted away? Hyperfocus is what we non-ADHD spouses feel and fall in love with during the romancing early stages and find it wonderful. As we marry and time goes on, we non ADHD spouses begin to notice a drastic change in our marriage. Due to the ADHD symptoms, we begin to see our spouses turn away from us to more external stimulating criteria. Has anyone tried different approaches to get that focus back to you? 

So my H is not medicated. He hasn't been for his whole life. We are newlyweds who live in Japan. I am aware that things like Ritalin are actually illegal here... not even sure what medicine IS available. (Japan is a culture that loves to hide their head in the sand, refusing to admit there is a problem, so he hasn't been to see a doctor about his ADHD since his initial diagnosis at about 7 or so. )

I wanted to make a post around things that I have come to understand from the learning process I have gone through too date. This is more of just a summary and conclusions I have arrived to in my own thinking and applying them to my own experience. I thought about posting this in the section for couple seminar participants (as my wife and I am just coming to the end of) since I am applying a lot of the things that Melissa has provided there in the out line of the course itself.