A session is coming up for my ADD ex and me, with our former couples therapist.
Today my teenager and I ran into the ex, by chance. It was obvious to all of us how I reacted to his forced smile and few meaningless words, like to physical pain. We just passed each other by, but the day was ruined. My teenager was sad afterward, too.
I wrote to my ex later today, asking why he wants the counseling. What is his goal? To be able to talk and be in the same room, he replied.
So I sent him a text made to prepare him and the therapist for the session. Describing why I expect incomprehensible, hurtful and incoherent behavior. Why I don’t assume honesty. Why I can’t do anything about the current state of the relationship. And that I never want to work for his benefit again, ever.
Then I spent a lonely afternoon wondering how other people handle these things. Am I odd in not being able to stand my ex’ presence? I’m aware it would be more elegant to not show distress. I just lack the desire to pretend. I actually am neither weak nor ashamed. I want the whole awful thing to be acknowledged for what it is. Nobody understands the marriage or divorce except my ex and me, and he’s masking it. I feel that is another layer of hurt on top of everything.
Comments
Interesting...
Swedish, I'm so proud of you. It sounds like you stood for youself and you're standing firm. Well done. Keep standing firm. It's an inspiration. I'm in the s*** right now with my spouse but I've realised somehing - it's because I'm standing firm and he doesn't like it because usually, I would bend my own boundaries or trample on them myself in order to 'keep the peace'. You don't have to do that anymore and neither do I! You owe him nothing. Zip. Zilch. Zero. And you keep standing firm. well done.
Thank you
You just made me feel less miserable. Thank you for being there!
how other people handle these things…
Um; I run away. He’s friendly and wants to chat and I just want to run away.
I am not suggesting
that this is constructive or helpful or anything at all. It’s just my instincts kicking in and though he wants to talk i just wanna disappear in a cloud of roadrunner legs and dust. I think it’s because I’ve been (unintentionally?) gaslit for so long into believing I’m the bad guy, and because I’ve again and again been suckered into doing the work while he just reverts to type. I can’t get on that merry-go-round again. So I just run.
I understand that completely
Thank you for validating my feelings. I want to run, too.
I literally just did this
I literally just did this this evening. We were supposed to talk at swapover time (we are splitting time in family home) and yet I found myself running for the car with my bags before he got there (kids were in school / visiting friends so it didn’t impact them). My heart was racing and my hands were shaking and I juat texted and said Sorry, No, Can’t, and drove off. And he’s disappointed and I don’t even fully understand it myself, but I was so relieved to see your post and see that this, too, is a shared experience.
We don’t need to explain
Thinking about it, there’s no reason their obliviousness should make us explain why we want nothing to do with them.
If someone is bad enough as a partner, being manipulative and abusive, taking advantage et cetera, they at some point don’t deserve explanations.
I feel this is the thing about this upcoming therapy session. I’m afraid it will be hours of me explaining why I don’t want anything to do with him and him offering nothing as usual. It will put me in a defensive position, turning all attention on my avoidance, when it should rightfully be on his deceitful behavior.
I feel pressure from other people to be civil to my ex. That’s asking me to hide hurt and pretend things are ok to save face for him. Children would of course benefit from civility, but only if it were genuine. I have no genuine civility for the ex. I have a trauma and seeing him gives me massive adrenaline, just like you described today.
So if I’ll join the session, I’m opting at being very quiet. Not that it’s my normal way of doing things, but because I’m sick of working myself into a sweat for this inert person. Silence and avoidance is probably better than any ongoing dialogue with him. In fact, he does a lousy job texting about children’s needs and often leaves things hanging for months. I refrain from reminding him. I don’t engage for his benefit any more. He adds zero to my parenting and I don’t want more contact with him than absolutely necessary and via texts. And I’m not sure I want to go to the session, even if my boss does give me the afternoon off.
I once tried to explain my
I once tried to explain my inability to chat and hang out following our separation by suggesting he read this site and look at how so many other partners of people with ADHD felt. His response was to state ‘I understand your feelings’ and then tell me how ADHD did not define him. No indication that he could learn, grow, or contextualise, or maybe just do something for my sake, to make things easier or better for me, just that he already ‘understood’ because of course he understands, without even needing to read about it, he’s that intelligent and intuitive. And of course there is so much more to him than his ADHD. He has covert narcissistic traits so that last point is definitely true! But it’s also his ADHD operating there - he’s ultimately not interested in finding anything out that makes him have to reassess things; he doesn’t want to learn about this because his brain doesn’t want to make the effort for something he doesn’t really care about and feels uneasy about because it might get uncomfortable….
As I was writing this I had a flashback to my first pregnancy when we were given an NHS booklet by the midwife for us both to read. Simple, clear, designed for both parents - it can only have been 10 pages long. He never read it, nor the later books I bought about pregnancy or parenting. I used to read him bits and suggest he look but he never did. He didn’t care enough then and he doesn’t care enough now. He just wants to bolster his own sense of himself as a good person without ever having to do any of the work of being a good person.
And if I mentioned this to him, just the bare facts of it (the unread books, the unread forum) without my interpretation about what it says about him - he would sigh, and shake his head, as though I was being yet again being unreasonable, being a terrible, judgemental, cruel person. And I’d come out of it again with a slightly more shrunken soul.
Sorry that’s my rant. But hopefully it does help to know - yet again- that this is the same-but-different the world over.
They seem to avoid everything that challenges their self image
Exactly this. During divorce mine declared I was no longer to mention his ADD to other people, like the children’s friends. A bit late since it was up to that point no secret. I understood he no longer wants the diagnosis to define him, but to be his own private little thing. Which he is heavily medicated and on part time for, and which makes him unable to do many normal things people do for their children.
Of course, moving out made him less aware of things he cannot do, and describing me as mentally and emotionally unstable would be his best way of restoring his frayed self esteem.
They sacrifice us for exactly that. No matter how much we’ve already sacrificed for them. It’s perhaps not visible to anyone outside the relationship, but it hurts like few other things I’ve ever experienced.