vital,

What I have learned about my husband is that he has both Dyslexia "and" ADHD, so his brain is set up very differently than mine is. It was just this past year that my T, after meeting my husband a few times told me how he had noticed right away that my husband definitely shows the ADHD symptoms and to the extreme. If you read about ADHD, interestingly enough they do tend to talk over and interrupt and can be intrusive and state their opinions without even being asked and they are notoriously impatient and impulsive as well. They seem to need to be "in motion" and struggle to stay seditary, so my husband is often "very busy and on the go in many ways". They also can have a tendancy to exaggerate and even be grandios as well.

My husband was a binge alcoholic and I believe it was his way of trying to slow down, he also liked to do cocaine and speed, because stimulants calm him verses speed him up as would be the case with a more "average' type brain. Once I finally put my foot down and he realized he was in fact having a problem with alcohol and was a binge alcoholic he did finally stop and has been involved with AA for 24 years now. What I have come to recognize as well as my T telling me is that many alcoholics struggle with ADHD. One of the things practiced a great deal at AA meetings is learning how to "listen" and learn how to allow others to have the floor without interrupting them. Oddly enough, while my husband even chairs meetings and makes sure others follow this, he has never done that with me. That rule goes right out of the picture when he is with me, and he doesn't even realize just how bad it really is. I have dealt with this challenge for 34 years and I cannot say enough how much it has affected me and I find myself wishing I had been helped to recognize this many years ago when I did pound the pavement trying to get "help". This was not even explained in Ala-non meetings, yet now looking back, this was a challenge that others did have with their partners, they just did not have that piece that I did not have either so they could understand it better.

I can also see what others have said about how even when a person can see their bad behavior, they may not actually recognize it as bad behavior.

That being said, I have also noticed that there "are" self esteem issues that present with this challenge as well, so one has to be careful about "how" they point out these dysfunctions or what is deemed "toxic behavior patterns".

My husband is not a bad person, in fact I can say if you met him, you would like him a lot and may not recognize what I am discribing here. However, if I had a video to show what it is like to be in "my" shoes, you would see it and how bad it can get at times too.