[KitRacer]

To start with why I am on this forum, I was diagnosed with Bi-Polar 2 about a year ago and my wife was recently diagnosed ADHD-PI, though she always somewhat knew she was ADHD. I'm an engineer, so you might guess how I approach things, and she has graduated law school but works as a program coordinator for a non-profit. This will probably be a little long, but it's hard to judge from a smartphone. I don't want a he is right she is right response, I need to vent a little and maybe have someone try to see it from her perspective(which I'm sure will be skewed by what i think happened) to help me out.

My wife and I were supposed to have a nice 5 day weekend this past one and our 22mo old son was staying with my parents to give us alone time for our Anniversary. It turned out as we got closer, she needed to do some work during our weekend. I said it was ok, but I was clearly disappointed, and further disappointed as the time went from just Wednesday, to some of Thursday, to some of Friday as well. It drew a divide between us the whole weekend.

It didn't help that we didn't seem to see how the time she spent working should be used. It was her thought we could spend it doing things she needed to get done for work as well, like clean and organize her home office since it had gotten out of hand. Long story short the only time she actually asked me to help her with the office was Sunday night and it was less than effective because she wanted me to bring out ALL of her paperwork to go through since doing it in her office would possibly wake the baby in the next room over. I didn't understand she wanted all of it, that didn't make sense to me to take her whole office out of the room to put it back in. I don't even know what is actually important, but I guess if it were all of it, that wouldn't matter.

On the flip side, I wanted to change the oil in all of our cars, possibly build some shelves for storage in the basement and her office, and now the lawn. I did get one car, while she was out of the house, but the lawn mower was giving me trouble (not her fault obviously) and I didn't end up having time to do anything else.

We fought for I would guess at least 4 hours each day. It was exhausting. I am not one to typically fight a lot, but she is more apt to let her emotions out when something is bothering her and we usually fight about it. I honestly hate fighting, but I did get very upset this weekend. I was already down about her needing to work which felt like a product of her being behind at work and her ADHD keeping her from getting the work done. My intention was to leave her alone to get the things done that she needed to. Hers was to do tasks that she could do with me that still helped her with work. I don't think she really knew how to involve me though. He solution was to talk about a form she needed to fill out for her ADHD coach she just started seeing, help with the office and have me clean/do something around her the whole time, from what it sounded like. However, most of it was spent fighting because I was antsy and didn't want to do what she said.

So now we are still upset. At least I am. I completely broke down last night and then after consoling me, she got mad that I was falling asleep when she was crying. It was 10 pm and I told her I wanted to go to bed before we started fighting a hour before that. She thrives on fighting sometimes, I could swear it. I left to sleep on the couch, but she convinced me to come back to the bed only after she convinced me we just don't have to share blankets. She had been pulling them away from me leaving me exposed as a form of her anger and frustration at me going to sleep when she was still upset.

So... What do I make of this... I cant tell if I was being an asshole or she was being unreasonable. Or something else entirely.

[TishaBuv]

What happened to your quality time anniversary? You had a total communication break down. I guess when she realized she had all this work to do, which really doesn't seem so necessary to me, you both called off the whole nice weekend.

Was there some deeper underlying issue the reason for avoiding the enjoyable weekend celebration?

You could have done chores and fought with your baby at home and saved the baby sitting favor for a better time.

[KitRacer]

No, she has just been distant, though she constantly claims I am, because she is stressed about this job. She has only been at this job since July and she does not feel like she is doing well and is not meeting the goals that were set. She is not far off and they said she would need about a year to get the hang of it. She has not even received any negative feedback, but she also says she is hiding some actual numbers from them.

To come back to your question about the quality time weekend, my thought was to let her get all this work done that she had been saying she needed by just giving her the space to do it. Clearly miscommunication there because she was more interested in the quantity of time we spent together. We spent a lot of time together this weekend, just most of it was ****** because we were either mad at each other or thought the other was mad at them at the very least.

[hvert]

That really sucks that your planned long weekend got eaten up with work and fighting I have definitely had similar experiences. I am more of a planner than my bf. I want to wake up, get ready, and go. My partner is not like that. The different styles are a big source of conflict.

Your wife sounds like she is under a lot of stress with this job, so I can see why she wanted to spend the weekend working... and I also have been in your shoes, really frustrated while I am waiting for someone to finish doing X, but they start to do Y and Z instead.

Are you guys at the point where you can talk about how you'd handle it differently next time? Spending time together by helping her work does not sound like something I would want to repeat. Some things that have worked for me are a) not waiting for him to finish, just doing what I want to do and b) making him give me a time when we will leave to do X.