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VickiesPath · Sep 18, 2009, 07:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theotterone

My husband of 6 years (we've been together 12, have two daughters 9 and 6) is adrift in a sea of estrogen and aboard an ADD ship. While he has his own issues and knows it, he has a hard time understand the girls and myself.

Quick rundown, I was diagnosed with Clinical Depression at 16 (34 now), a couple of years later Panic/Anxiety Disorder and most recently Inattentive ADHD. Our oldest is diagnosed Inattentive ADHD and we strongly suspect our youngest is ADHD/ODD. We are having the youngest evaluated.

While he will claim to understand, he doesn't seem to make an effort to actually understand. He gets angry (usually preceeded by confusion, which goes right to anger) I KNOW this is all hard on him. It took him YEARS to not get mad when I had a panic attack. He was helpless to help me so he'd go to...you guessed it...anger. My ADHD Coach has recommended a book for him about understanding and living with people with ADHD when you yourself do not. I don't know if he'll read it. He tends to take our symptoms personally. I am doing my best to reseach, get help and learn how to function better so that I can teach the girls, but it's hard when I don't know if I will have to walk on eggshells when I get home. And if he is in a good mood, but I haven't had time to guage that and do the eggshell walk, he gets mad.

I don't mean to paint him as an ogre. I know he is coping the best way he can and that he has his own issues. We are in Family Therapy, with the oldest daughter seeing the therapist alone and he and I seeing her together. Our last appointment, I got 12 years of resentment crashing down on my head. He's taught me that even when he says "it's ok", it may or will be used against me later. I don't expect him to be perfect, and I expect him to be upset. But how can I help him understand and support him when he isn't willing to understand?

So much of your post sounds familiar. The anger, walking on eggshells, your husband doesn't understand your illness.......

When I first married the man I am so in love with now, he and I did not know each other well. What I mean is, we were very much in love, had spent a lot of time talking online and over the phone. But, we had not spent a lot of time together in person. So, the first three or so years of our marriage were...interesting, to say the least.

My husband's way of expressing his opinion was anger. He blew up a lot and raised his voice a lot. I was not used to this. There were lots of tears during that time.

The first time I experienced a significant depression after we were married, he thought I was lazy. He didn't understand my lack of motivation. He thought I simply didn't want to go out with him, or do housework, or cook. He actually asked me why I was being lazy. I was very hurt and told him I wasn't lazy, I was depressed. He didn't understand because he hadn't seen actual clinical depression before.

It took us a long time to work these things out. I do have to say, though, that he has truly tried very, very hard to learn about bipolar illness. He knows that he will never completely understand it because he's never had it. But he is trying. And I love that he's trying. Any time I am not feeling well is still a big inconvenience for him.

And I tell him so. But we are always trying to work things out. It's a challenge.