The ADHD Effect on Marriage

At the same time, the ADHD spouse finds that his wife is not behaving at all as he expected she would. She berates and belittles him, complains, criticizes things that never seemed to bother her while they were dating, and doesn't appreciate all of the hard work he devotes to supporting the family. He can't figure out why his wife used to accept him and love him for who he is, and now acts as if she can't stand him. She blames him for their misery. He blames her for ruining their relationship with her anger or coldness. As long as one or both of you is playing the blame game, nothing will improve. The person who is doing the blaming doesn't look inward enough to take responsibility for changes that he or she can contribute to your mutual well-being. Here's another example. As far as the implosion of the marriage is concerned, my husband sees his ADHD as a non-issue and has pinned everything on me. When I mean everything, this even includes things that never happened, things I didn't do or say, and things he did but doesn't remember properly so he assumes I did them. I've also been told that all sorts of really horrible things he did, including physical injuries that occurred due to his inattention, he didn't do, and that I'm a liar. I've been scapegoated and bad-mouthed by him to his therapist and family. It hurts more than I can describe to think that people I love believe I'm a horrible person because they've been handed a fictional account of our marriage. This is one extreme example. But if you find that you and your spouse are keeping tabs on who's doing what and who isn't, or if you're bad-mouthing each other to friends and relatives, you are participating in the blame game. I personally think the word blame should be banned in the realm of marriage. Chronic blame does a great deal of harm. Consider the following. 1. It creates an environment in which the experimentation needed to change adult behavior becomes dangerous. You fail, you get blamed. 2. It shifts the focus away from the blamer, making that person less likely to reflect on his or her own contributions to the issues. 3. It diminishes each partner's ability to be empathetic. 4. It impairs the ability to forgive. 5. It sets two people up as adversaries rather than partners. 6. It builds resentment in both partners. The chemicals that your brain makes in response to resentment, unlike those made in response to anger, take a long time to go away, poisoning the atmosphere in which you interact. And 7. It provides an excuse not to try harder. Why bother? I'll never be good enough. Or if I try, then I'll be admitting I'm the one to blame. What's the best way out of the blame game? To decide to stop playing it. Consider the words of one woman who did just that. My relationship has had its ups and downs, and in the beginning, I blamed my ADD partner. Once I began to learn about ADD, and how the mind of an ADD person worked, I was intrigued and very irritated with myself. I realized that a lot of my reactions and actions towards him were negative in every sense of the word. I used to get so frustrated that tasks weren't completed, or they were forgotten, or they took too long to be accomplished. One day I thought to myself, in the end, being frustrated over a task, is it really worth it? To me, even though I felt I was taking on more responsibility, I still felt that it wasn't worth the daily battles, let alone the aggravation. Strangely, coming to this realization brought me some internal peace. I stopped caring about what wasn't done, and started noticing the things that were done. I also acknowledged that ADD or not, he can't read my mind. I started giving him more positive reinforcement to encourage the good habits, rather than the not-so-good habits. I feel that this has been a more constructive way to approaching him, rather than constantly complaining. The more I complained, the worse things got. It was demotivating for him. Now we are working towards brainstorming better approaches.